in reply to PM pages should have Tabindex attributes

Teach your password manager to look for the form named "login", instead of a specific number of tabs. We added the name attribute to the form for the specific purpose of making the site more automatable. However, the best WTDI is, at least for this site, to see what CGI parameters the form uses, and use them. We consider this a stable interface, unlike the specifics of the generated HTML.

As to using tabindex, I find tabindexes not implied by the semantics of the page or it's layout confusing and counterintuitive -- when I hit tab, I expect to go to the next link or form element. You're suggesting optimizing for login over all other use, which I think is a bad tradeoff.

I'm not going to respond to your suggestions for changing around sections.

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  • Comment on Re: PM pages should have Tabindex attributes

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Re^2: PM pages should have Tabindex attributes
by Prior Nacre V (Hermit) on Aug 08, 2004 at 10:51 UTC
    As to using tabindex, I find tabindexes not implied by the semantics of the page or it's layout confusing and counterintuitive -- when I hit tab, I expect to go to the next link or form element.

    In general, I'm in total agreement with this. However, there are situations where this, as a general rule, is not applicable. Given a form like: 

    Prompt 1:  [ -- default-prompt-1 -- ]  {link to help on Prompt 1}
Prompt 2:  [ -- default-prompt-2 -- ]  {link to help on Prompt 2}
Prompt 3:  [ -- default-prompt-3 -- ]  {link to help on Prompt 3}

    [download]

    If the tabindex on the form controls was 'n', you'd possibly want to make the tabindex on the associated help links 'n-1'.

    There are other situations like this. Perhaps you want to tab through all 'required' fields first and then through any 'optional' fields.

    Regards,

    PN5

[reply]
[d/l]

      At least for me, as a western left-to-right, top-to-down reader, your idea of having the help come before the input would be weird, as I expect the focus to advance in the same fashion I read, that is, left-to-right, top-to-down. Breaking that order for jumping between required versus optional fields is also disorienting - if the optional fields are less important, move them downwards on the page and don't play funky games with the tab order.

      The tabindex should only be used if funky CSS is used to rearrange the page layout.

[reply]

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