scratchpad
blazar
<h3>Keyboard-driven Navigation (For [shmem]) #1</h3>
<p>I've tried the beast: all in all, I <em>already</em> like it!</p>
<blockquote>Key driven navigation must be turned off whenever a textarea is entered, or a text field. Sadly, there's no uniform id for composition textareas or title textboxes...</blockquote>
<p>Is this the case? If it were, then indeed it would be <em>extremely annoying.</em> But then I've tried e.g. to go to the node consideration text field, both with the hot key and scrolling with the mouse. Then I did not consider the node and move out of it say, with a Tab. And I could start using the keybindings again - <em>seamlessly.</em> Or did I misunderstood anything?</p>
<blockquote>To disable, enter <c>document.onkeypress = '';</c> in a suitable javascript console (e.g.firebug). Oh.. that reminds me...
<b>Firefox only</b>, I guess. Haven't checked IE yet.</blockquote>
<p>I <em>believe</em> that the <c>javascript:</c> pseudo-protocol may do. Again, FF has it: don't know 'bout IE, let alone other browsers.</p>
<blockquote>all sections:
<ul>
<li>p - go to posts / replies section</li>
<li>[...]</li>
</ul></blockquote>
<ul>
<li>p - go to posts / replies section: at first I found this behaviour counter-intituitive. On a second thought, it <em>still is</em> counter-intuitive: (the difference being that on the first one my reaction was along the line of "this damn thing doesn't work!" while now I know "I have to press p first...") I have a list of nodes, and I do not necessarily view the first one as having a quite different nature from the replies. Specifically, the p key <em>is</em> useful and should stay, but if possible j should bring to the first reply as well, and k on the first reply should be an alias with m. <em>If possible!</em></li>
<li>n - go to nodelets: hadn't even thought of that, but works fine for me!</li>
<li>c - set focus and jump to chatterbox entry box: ditto!</li>
<li>m - jump to main node: I have found this not to work when switching to some other navigation mode. I would expect that once I tab a few times or click in an "empty" point, it would do. By contrast, v <em>always</em> brings me to the vote button, which means that it should be roughly doable</li>
<li>? - show alert box with key bindings: very good!</li>
</ul>
<blockquote>main section:
<ul>
<li>+ - set ++ vote for current post</li>
<li>[...]</li>
</ul></blockquote>
<p>I'm giving you my impression in terms of UI:</p>
posts:
<ul>
<li>+ - set ++ vote for current post: very good! One annoying detail with the partial keyboard driven navigation I was using before is that I left the radio button selected and while <em>moving</em> down I would occasionally change a ++ into a --. Of course the cure is simply a tab away or a click out of the button, which is, after all <em>twice</em> the effort, or 100% more. Yours is definitely clearer and faster.</li>
<li>- - set -- vote for current post: here, I'm afraid I must tell you of the first actual <strong>bug,</strong> although the behaviour has changed over the past few days. As of the last time I tried, i.e. this morning, - plainly <em>doesn't work</em> with an error alert. Yesterday . did the trick instead: I'm sure that this is in connection with me <em>not</em> having selected the null vote in my preferences. Today, pressing . doesn't vote -- but doesn't do anything either. I wonder if a solution is possible at all, that would work with both kinds of user settings...</li>
<li>. - set 0 vote for current post: ditto, I don't have it. But, as a <strong>feature request</strong> and if possible at all, I'd like it to clean the vote anyway.</li>
<li>v - set focus and jump to "vote!" button: this is also perfect; much faster than moving to in any other way I have access to.</li>
<li>t - jump to note composition text area: to be fair, I'm not sure what this is for.</li>
</ul>
<blockquote>posts and nodelets:
<ul>
<li>j - down one post/nodelet</li>
<li>[...]</li>
</ul></blockquote>
<ul>
<li>j - down one post/nodelet: in terms of UI, there's another gotcha similar to that with the main post. Precisely, one gets the feeling that repeatedly pressing j she will get "to the end." At some point, however, posts do not scroll down any more: of course that's when you've hit the last one. And you <em>do</em> realize it, but you have that fraction of second of psychological unesiness with it, if you know what I mean: I believe that hitting it one more time on the last node should either give a clear visual indication that there no more posts, or more simply and IMHO intuitively act as an alias for v. Vice versa, hitting k on v "should" bring back to the last reply. I'm also afraid to have spotted another possible <strong>bug.</strong> Namely, when for some reason I switch to some other navigation method (and I was forced to, because of the aforementioned difficulties with +, . and -) j and k ended up <em>not</em> moving between posts but between links within a post, and no way to "escape."</li>
<li>k - up one post/nodelet: ditto!</li>
<li>l - set focus on first link in current post/nodelet: good!</li>
<li> From there, access links with the <Tab> key: ISTR having had some difficulties with this too, within posts, not nodelettes, but as a general rule I've not toyed too much with it.</li>
</ul>
<blockquote>posts:
<ul>
<li>r - set focus on [reply] link</li>
<li>[...]</li>
</ul></blockquote>
<ul>
<li>r - set focus on [reply] link: I must say that while for v it is very sensible to only set focus on the vote button, because one may change his mind, I would consider a very good idea to have this key actually open the reply link in a new window/tab and switch to it. If one changes her mind, then she can always close it.</li>
</ul>