Keyboard Traversal/General Widget Issues
I'm a bit disappointed with the combo-box (or maybe just some 'small' things) in general.
In the combo box ... Alt - Down Arrow doesn't drop the list.
Wierd keyboard traversal/focus things, e.g., in the demo page at:
http://www.activewidgets.com/grid/
If I click in the input box and then tab ... everything is OK. Now suppose I tab to the checkbox ...
1) Doesn't seem like the spacebar toggles the checkbox.
2) Doesn't seem like I can shift-tab back out of the checkbox (or maybe its that I can't 'shift tab' into the tabs). Or, now that I test it a bit more ... seems like shift-tabbing out of anything is iffy (e.g. I can tab from the button to the hyperlink, but I can't shift-tab from the hyperlink back to the button).
Interesting that space-bar works in the checked-list, but there's no obvious focus indicator at first (e.g., click on, say, Favorites in the list, then tab into the checked list). If you hit tab again, you get the focus rectange on the text of checked list.
Also, its not clear whether the tree control supports keyboard navigation at all.
With the tab pane ... it seems like because the tab is 'just another control' and not a 'focus container', I can't tab from the last element on a page back to the tab row header.
If it matters, I'm using IE 6, SP 2.
Maybe I'm missing something obvious, maybe the demo page just doesn't have the tab indexes set correctly, or maybe there will be a 2.1 in the near future that fixes all of these things, or maybe these is a function or 2 of JavaScript that would make things work much better.
But, my application is more of a forms type application, and keyboard operation is important. I expect to have to write some widgets, autocompleter type stuff, etc., but I don't really expect to have to fight to get keyboard traversal to work.
Not trying to flame here, just part of an honest evaluation of whether this is the best toolkit for my intended use and to give the ActiveWidgets community a chance to correct what might be some of my misunderstanding.
Regards,
In the combo box ... Alt - Down Arrow doesn't drop the list.
Wierd keyboard traversal/focus things, e.g., in the demo page at:
http://www.activewidgets.com/grid/
If I click in the input box and then tab ... everything is OK. Now suppose I tab to the checkbox ...
1) Doesn't seem like the spacebar toggles the checkbox.
2) Doesn't seem like I can shift-tab back out of the checkbox (or maybe its that I can't 'shift tab' into the tabs). Or, now that I test it a bit more ... seems like shift-tabbing out of anything is iffy (e.g. I can tab from the button to the hyperlink, but I can't shift-tab from the hyperlink back to the button).
Interesting that space-bar works in the checked-list, but there's no obvious focus indicator at first (e.g., click on, say, Favorites in the list, then tab into the checked list). If you hit tab again, you get the focus rectange on the text of checked list.
Also, its not clear whether the tree control supports keyboard navigation at all.
With the tab pane ... it seems like because the tab is 'just another control' and not a 'focus container', I can't tab from the last element on a page back to the tab row header.
If it matters, I'm using IE 6, SP 2.
Maybe I'm missing something obvious, maybe the demo page just doesn't have the tab indexes set correctly, or maybe there will be a 2.1 in the near future that fixes all of these things, or maybe these is a function or 2 of JavaScript that would make things work much better.
But, my application is more of a forms type application, and keyboard operation is important. I expect to have to write some widgets, autocompleter type stuff, etc., but I don't really expect to have to fight to get keyboard traversal to work.
Not trying to flame here, just part of an honest evaluation of whether this is the best toolkit for my intended use and to give the ActiveWidgets community a chance to correct what might be some of my misunderstanding.
Regards,
Jeremy
March 27,