drive-by request - keyboard accessibility of top-panel status icons

[Jud Craft <craftjml gmail com>]

I apologize for the audacity.

It would be lovely if GNOME Shell keyboard support included being able
to navigate the top panel's status icons entirely using the arrow
keys.  Very similar to how OS X allows you to navigate its status icon
bar (volume, brightness, etc) - like a series of menus.

Since each status icon in GNOME is in reality a glorified menu
launcher, such a consistent way to navigate them would add a lot of
ease of use.

Currently in GNOME 2.2x you have to use a combination of tab and arrow
keys to move to the status icon you want, with little indication
(aside from highlight) of which is selected pre-activation.  You must
manually activate and navigate each menu using a combination of
enter/space, shift+F10, and ESC to move between them.

Being able to navigate them like the series of menus they try to be
would be very handy.

I am aware this has some implementation gotchas to watch out for.
Some icons do not have a left-click menu (GNOME Do, Rhythmbox); some
have identical left and right-click menus (display status icon).  So
if this is impractical I understand.