Fwd: More on Fluid's approach to keyboard bindings

[Paul Zablosky]

Hi Allison,
    I did make an attempt to identify the behaviour of common keystrokes 
across the Fluid components, and summarize the results in a table.  I 
soon found that this is difficult to do -- many of the key controls are 
modal, and can't be shoehorned into a 2-dimensional table. ( You really 
need a dimension for each mode.)   The result is at 
http://wiki.fluidproject.org/x/TJY7  -- which also refers to the DHTML 
Style Guide <http://dev.aol.com/dhtml_style_guide>.  The DHTML Style 
Guide uses a simple linear list with hierarchies, which may be the best 
way to represent the behaviours, but isn't really good for comparison 
across components -- or their widgets for that matter.  I never did come 
up with a presentation format that really does the job.

Paul

Allison Bloodworth wrote:
> Hi Paul, 
>
> A few of us were recently discussing how to determine the proper 
> (default) key command to use for a particular interaction (e.g. moving 
> around in the date picker). This came up with Erin & I again when we 
> talked today with Mike Elledge about date picker accessibility. Daphne 
> reminded us that she thought you may have started working on a summary 
> document about this a while ago, but I couldn't find it on the wiki. 
> Is that out there somewhere that we could reference? I think something 
> like that (or even just a document summarizing our thinking if we 
> aren't making concrete recommendations for particular keys) would be a 
> great thing to put in the UX Toolkit.
>
> Trying to make sense of the various resources I've found...
>
> I'm wondering if we should just be following the guidelines in the D 
> Group's document: http://dev.aol.com/dhtml_style_guide
> I think there's also a bit of info on this topic 
> here: http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/aria-practices/#aria_ex
> This possibly (tangentially?) related document was in an email Eli 
> sent out to fluid-work last month: http://unixpapa.com/js/key.html
> And below is an email that Colin sent out about the Fluid approach to 
> keyboard bindings a while back.
>
> Any advice other folks have for us on how to handle this would be very 
> helpful--thanks!
> Allison
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
>> *From: *Colin Clark <colin.clark at utoronto.ca 
>> <mailto:colin.clark at utoronto.ca>>
>> *Date: *March 20, 2008 2:45:54 PM PDT
>> *To: *fluid-work <fluid-work at fluidproject.org 
>> <mailto:fluid-work at fluidproject.org>>
>> *Subject: **More on Fluid's approach to keyboard bindings*
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I have received a couple of questions off-list about how Fluid is  
>> handling keyboard mappings for our components, and thought I'd try to  
>> clarify our approach in the Reorderer and underlying framework.
>>
>> Recently, Anastasia, Joseph, and Jonathan have been doing a lot of  
>> testing and analysis to come up with some good, screen reader-friendly  
>> default keyboard shortcuts for selecting and moving items with the  
>> Reorderer. We think really good defaults are important, but we also  
>> want to enable customizability. The Reorderer will support more than  
>> one keyboard mapping, and will allow alternatives to be inje ration 
>> time or dynamically in by a preferences editor.
>>
>> Michelle and I are currently sketching out some Fluid framework code  
>> that will provide a simple API for components to support customizable  
>> keyboard mappings. This will prevent developers from having to  
>> hardcode assumptions about keyboard controls, making components more  
>> future-proof and interoperable. This approach is in line with our  
>> general philosophy of allowing flexibility and customization for  
>> different contexts and user needs.
>>
>> With the help of Mike Elledge and Amy Chen at Oracle, we're also going  
>> to do some quick, targeted user research to learn more about how users  
>> of screen readers tend to accomplish tasks that are otherwise done  
>> using mouse-based drag and drop. This will help us to continue to  
>> refine our designs based on real feedback from users.
>>
>> Colin
>>
>> ---
>> Colin Clark
>> Technical Lead, Fluid nology Resource Centre, University of Toronto
>> http://fluidproject.org
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> fluid-work mailing list
>> fluid-work at fluidproject.org
>> http://fluidproject.org/mailman/listinfo/fluid-work
>
> Allison Bloodworth
> Senior User Interaction Designer
> Educational Technolog ersity of California, Berkeley
> (415) 377-8243
> abloodworth at berkeley.edu <mailto:abloodworth at berkeley.edu>
>
>
>
>

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