[PATCH] Automatic assignment of accesskeys

[Robert Ewald]

On Friday 08 April 2005 15:09, Lubos Lunak wrote:

>  What do you think of it?

Hello,

I am the guy, who tried to implement a similar feature before. I did not have 
time to make the patch good, so I am happy to see someone to work on such a 
feature. In this post I would like to give some input regarding the high 
level approach. When I was working on this kind of feature I had the 
following in mind:

* Only currently (without scrolling) visible elements are assigned a fallback 
access key. That is because no attempt is made to assign the same access key 
to the same element.

I imagne a use like a ping-pong: Request accesskeys - see all available 
elements assigned an access key (or sequence see below) - enter a key( or 
sequence) and have the respective element focused or (in case of an URL 
selected).

* accesskeys may not be only a single key, but also a unique key sequnce. That 
ensures, that there are always enough accesskeys available.

* During building of the fallback access keys the already by the web designer
assigned keys would be omitted. Also for sequence building. That would mean, 
if all possible access keys are taken by design, there would be no keys left 
to start a sequence for the fallback.

One could argue, that this approach does not have much in common with the 
original idea of access keys. That is true, but an approach like this would 
ensure that each element of a webpage is quickly accessible without using the 
mouse or using ' and having to hit F3 a number of times because of equally 
captioned links (like blogs with "Read more").

If you like, I can resubmit the work I have done so far, the patch is not as 
functional as I would like it. Namly it does not work yet properly with 
frames and the positioning of tooltips is also far from perfect.

Greetings,
Robert