Dan, Thanks for getting in touch. Field looks like a great plugin, and does have some interesting overlaps with the code I've been working on. They're quite complimentary, in that my tabindex and keyboard-a11y plugins are designed to work with DOM elements that aren't traditionally focusable, while yours is focussed on form fields. A unified API for handling both might be nice.
I also took a look at the Keynav plugin and it's really impressive. At the moment, my keyboard-a11y plugin doesn't support 2D navigation with the arrow keys, but it's coming soon. Fluid has been working on a component called the Reorderer <http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Reorderer> (here's an example of it in action<http://build.fluidproject.org/sakai-imagegallery-tool/component-templates/html/Lightbox.html>), which provides up/down/left/right controls for accurately navigating grids and the like. I don't know how will it handles very staggered or asymmetrical layouts, but the Keynav plugin example is very impressive. It definitely seems like there's room for collaboration here. I'll have to get in touch with the author. I've been making slow improvements to the keyboard-a11y plugin. I'll send along some examples soon, but in the meantime you can watch my progress here: https://source.fluidproject.org/svn/sandbox/tabindex/trunk/jquery.keyboard-a11y.js Colin On Jan 15, 2008 11:13 AM, Dan G. Switzer, II <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Colin, > > [clip] > > >As mentioned, I'm working on a larger plugin that helps add keyboard > >handlers for focusing and selecting items with the Tab key and arrow > keys, > >making it easier to support common accessibility keystrokes in your UIs. > >It's still a work in progress, but please feel free to take a look and > >share your thoughts. My blog entry provides more details about the API > and > >how to use it. There are a few bugs to fix, a few more methods to add, > and > >I'll be moving all of the code out of the fluid.access namespace and > making > >the low-level API private to the plugin. I'll send an announcement when > >it's closer to being ready, but let me know if you're interested in > >collaborating on it. > > > > > https://source.fluidproject.org/svn/sandbox/tabindex/trunk/KeyboardHandlers > >.js > > > https://source.fluidproject.org/svn/sandbox/tabindex/trunk/jquery.keyboard- > >a11y.js > >< > https://source.fluidproject.org/svn/sandbox/tabindex/trunk/jquery.keyboard > >-a11y.js> > > You might also want to check out the Keynav plug-in: > http://amountaintop.com/project/keynav > > It has some interesting code to determine the closest navigable element. > The > core problem I've found with the algorithm is that it calculates > everything > from the dead center of the element--which can provide unexpected > behavior. > > I've been modding the code to find the element which has the closest edge > (instead of based solely on the middle of the DOM element.) This provides > a > more predictable behavior. Using the middle of the DOM element works fine > when all the elements are similarly sized block elements, but doesn't work > well when lengths vary. > > I'm definitely interested in the work you're doing, since I'm currently > working on an application where keyboard navigation is a high priority. > > -Dan > >
