[thesite] Re: Read the article, and a usability issue with the site

Ben Henick persist1 at io.com
Fri Mar 2 07:18:19 CST 2001


On Thu, 1 Mar 2001, aardvark wrote:

> 
> Ben, I hope you don't mind, but I'm bringing this over to thesite (the 
> list devoted to discussions of, well, the site) so that some others 
> can have some input.  I think your points are good points, and I'd 
> rather not make unilateral assertions without letting other people 
> take a whack at my logic.

Go for it.

> Good.  Dammit.

*chuckle*

> Agreed.  While my own testing with impaired users hasn't shown 
> this, that suggests I need to do more testing.  One thing we might 
> want to consider is gathering the alt-key combos from the major 
> browsers and making those off-limits.

"Me too."

> But that begs the question, what if we run out of letters?  Do we 
> dump the accesskey attributes?  And who can we blame for this, 
> browsers or us?  I need blame to made.

As the list at the bottom shows, there are still plenty of letters to play
with once you get through the most-important stuff.

when everything is said and done, you've got lots of keys to work
with.  With three keys to shift bit positions, and a long list of
barely-used function keys, there are lots of possibilities.

Or mahybe I'm just optimistic because I've seen kanji being typed into a
computer, in person.

> So, is it better to kill the accesskeys or force users to use the 
> mouse?  I don't know that answer...

If certain macros are ascribed to under unwritten rules... well, there's
definitely a problem there.

However, I think it'd be possible to have the cake and eat it too.

What's discomfiting is finding a solid info architecture for documenting
the macros employed on the site.

> > ...Which bothers me, but that's another thought for another time.
> 
> That you're the first to comment on it?

Yep!  Maybe I was a Luddite in a previous life.  :-)

> Anyway, verboten letters from the windows browsers i use regularly:
> 
> IE5: f, e, v, a, t, h
> N6: f, e, v, s, g, b, t, h
> N3: f, e, v, g, b, o, d, w, h
> O5: f, e, v, n, b, m, g, s, w, n
> 
> Any others?

Alt [sp] & Alt-F4, though Windows may itself put the latter off limits.

Well, an investigation of Ctrl macros seems advisable as well.

O, P, X, C, V, A, F, R, N, B, L...


-- 
Ben Henick
Web Author At-Large
http://www.io.com/persist1/
persist1 at io.com

"Are you pondering what I'm pondering, Pinky?"
"I think so, Brain, but... (snort) no, no, it's too stupid."
"We will disguise ourselves as a cow."
"Oh!" (giggles) "That was it exactly!"





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