#88558 - labels being focusable

[Martijn Klingens]

On Tuesday 19 October 2004 20:01, Tobias Anton wrote:
> >  Oh, it's simple. Labels are not supposed to be activated (meaning
> > _really_ activated). They don't work that way in Qt. They don't work that
> > way in other browsers. They don't work that way anywhere. Users don't
> > expect labels to be focusable, let alone activateable. The only things
> > labels are good for are simply being there, showing some text, and moving
> > focus to their real UI element after they're "activated".
>
> In which spec did you read that?

Just create an empty QWidget in Qt Designer with a QLabel and an input box. 
Make the label the Buddy of the input box, hit Ctrl-T and see which widgets 
get focus when you hit Tab. Users will expect *that* behaviour since users 
don't expect a so-called 'web interface' to react different from a GUI that 
uses real toolkits.

Also, I expect Enter to submit a form, so I definitely will never expect to 
hit Enter to focus a widget. And given the other browsers out there I don't 
think anyone else will.

As for your accessibility argument up this thread, I think the definition 
should not be "Everything that can be activated by mouse should be 
activateable via keyboard as well", but instead "Every task that can be 
performed by mouse should be possible via keyboard as well".

In other words: mouse users may have certain alternatives to make their work 
easier (buddy widgets, tooltips and other on-hover events, toolbar buttons, 
etc.) that are not available by keyboard. They don't need to be either 
because there are other ways to access their functionality like KAccels and 
menu bars. The same holds for labels in HTML.

Martijn