[html4all] Tabindex

[Robert Burns]

On Sep 20, 2007, at 7:32 PM, Jason White wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 20, 2007 at 12:45:07PM -0400, Gregory J. Rosmaita wrote:
>>
>> one of the major problems with tabindex is that it doesn't allow
>> for user override -- the user should always get the "bang important"
>> option for what is and isn't enabled or disabled...   one of the
>> problems with the reCAPTCHA code is that it contains a tabindex
>> order that will steal focus away from items on the page that contains
>> it -- just as users can override CSS changes to background and
>> foreground colors and set user-preferred fonts, so too should they
>> be able to inspect and decide whether or not to follow a tabindex,
>> just as they should be able to change/choose the modifier key for
>> the attribute currently known as accesskey...
>
> Is this a problem with @tabindex as specified, or with user agents?  
> I think
> it's more a user agent issue, namely regarding what configuration  
> options are
> supported.
>
> It is unfortunate that W3C/WAI has not invested effort in a second  
> version of
> UAAG. If they did, this would be the logical place to raise the issue.

On the heels of Jason's message about XHTML2, i think that they offer  
a very elegant solution to tabindex too. That is XHTML2 includes  
nextfocus and prevfocus attributes. that take an idref and allow  
authors to set exceptions to document tree order for tabbing focus.  
That doesn't really address this thread so much, but I thought it was  
worth mentioning.

Take care,
Rob