Response to Fluid demo page

[Joseph Scheuhammer]

All,

A few weeks back, I posted a message to the wai-xtech DHTML style guide 
working group asking for their opinions about the fluid demos on 
http://build.fluidproject.org/. Specifcially, I asked:

> In terms of keyboard accessibility, the Reorderer currently defines:
> 1. the arrow keys for navigating among the orderable items, and
> 2. control+arrow to move an orderable item to a new location.
>
> The latter constitutes a kind of keyboard based drag-and-drop. In 
> terms of this interest group, are these reasonable keystroke 
> definitions given the context?

I received a number of interesting responses. In particular, one fellow 
had a lot of comments about the visual feedback regarding selection and 
focus in the lightbox. I asked him if he would mind my forwarding his 
email to this group, since his ideas were of a "design" nature. I have 
not heard a response. But, since his ideas are worth discussing, I've 
decided to just quote his suggestions and post them here without 
providing his email.

So: these aren't my ideas, but someone else's. What do people think?

> Keyboard Interaction:
>
> The use of the ctrl key with the arrow keys is good. We usually also 
> map Ctrl+Home and Ctrl+End to move the items (here the image) 
> horizontally , similar to the effect of standard home and end.
>
> Recognition:
>
> I think it is quite helpful to indicate the use of the Ctrl key. But 
> the indication currently is counter-productive because while moving 
> the user needs to know where the object has moved to. Due to the 
> half-tone coloring it is much harder to recognize than using the 
> standard focus coloring . From my opinion the focus should keep the 
> current colo rs (you don ’ t really lose the focus here) but a small 
> icon or other additional indicator shows the effect of m oving, most 
> favorable a similar indicator as the mouse would indicate when moving 
> objects in all directions. (Use Alt+Space, then select “ move ” in 
> Windows. The mouse cursor changes to indicate the effect.)
>

-- 
;;;;joseph

'A dog, a panic in a pagoda'
 - "Bob", W. A. Yankovic -