RE: [Usability] Keyboard navigation- outstanding issues

["Erik Pukinskis" <erikthelephant hotmail com>]

> 1) Always have Tab insert a tab character, and Ctrl+Tab navigate out.
> This is the current proposal, but it makes tab key navigation through
> dialogs rather irritating.
> 
> 2) Always have Ctrl+Tab insert a tab character, and Tab navigate out.
> This makes navigation nicer, but breaks our usual meaning of Ctrl+Tab,
> and makes it non-obvious how to insert a Tab character if you don't
know
> the trick.

So do we make it irritating to navigate out or non-obvious to insert a
tab character?  As irritating as holding down the CTRL button is, it
doesn't come close to the irritation of not being able to figure out how
to insert a tab character when you REALLY have to.  I think the decision
to go with (1) is a good one.

> 3) Don't allow tab characters to be inserted in single line text
fields,
> as they're rarely needed.  (But still need to pick 1 or 2 above for
> multiline text fields).
> 
> 4) Allow the programmer to set a flag on the text field that specifies
> whether it allows the entry of Tab characters or not.  If it does, Tab
> should enter the character, and Ctrl+Tab should navigate out.
> Otherwise, Tab should navigate, and Ctrl+Tab should do nothing.

Both of these seem to introduce unnecessary consistency if we pick (1).
If Tab means tab, we don't need (3), and if we're going to teach people
that CTRL-Tab means "next widget" then we don't need to make the
distinction in (4).

Perhaps to teach people we should pop up an alert that tells users they
can use CTRL-Tab to navigate when they do Tab-Backspace-Tab or
Tab-Tab-Tab or something that seems like an attempt to tab out.

-Erik 

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