On 13.01.23 23:07, Corey Huinker wrote:
1. Add static hints to each link, so "Next" becomes "Next [n]". Fairly
simple, but visually clumsy, and it might not actually clue the user
that they need to hit ALT+n, not just "n". This chrome extension is an
example of how it might look
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/display-access-keys/gpicedcgegaokienkdbbcagodgacpbpd?hl=en <https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/display-access-keys/gpicedcgegaokienkdbbcagodgacpbpd?hl=en> . The extension itself seems stale if not completely abandoned, but the screenshot gives a good visual representation.
2. Add the hint to the hovertext of the link. So, for example on
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/libpq-exec.html
<https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/libpq-exec.html> the Hovertext
for the "Next" link would become: "34.4 Asynchronous Command Processing
[ALT+n]". This would lead to more accidental discovery, but wouldn't
alter the existing static page appearance.
3. Add hotkey that launches an overlay which displays all available
keyboard shortcuts. A common example of this is typing '?' in gmail or
any other google web app.
4. Actually implement arrow keys with javascript, but leave the
accesskeys as-is. I'm not a front-end programmer of any great skill, but
it should be easy to capture the keydown event, filter for
ArrowUp/ArrowLeft/ArrowRight, and then either search the DOM for the
anchor with the corresponding accesskey, or rely on element ids
(example: "nav-left", "nav-up", "nav-right") to find the anchor and
invoke a .click() on it. Currently the navigation anchors do not have
IDs, but adding them for this purpose might close us off from a future use.
I agree that hot key discoverability could be better, but I don't think
this is an issue in the PostgreSQL documentation; it's something the
browser should handle. The job of the HTML markup is to declare the key
-- then it's up to the browser how to present it. Otherwise, every
single web page in the world (well, those with hot keys) would have to
repeat this analysis, which seems on the wrong level to me.
