First candidate up for something Camino could offer that would make it unique... proper support for the 'accesskey' attribute...
The HTML 4 specs introduced the 'accesskey' attribute to form inputs and anchor tags (details at http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/interact/forms.html#adef-accesskey if anyone wants them). This attribute was supposed to provide rapid navigation around forms and to hot links through the ability to make these areas respond to single key-stroke activation. Now, whilst most browsers do now offer support for this to some extent, it still remains a little-used feature of web pages. I suspect that this is largely because even on those sites where it is used, it is rarely visible to the user. Currently, if a web author uses 'accesskey', almost no user agents notify the user of the fact, so the user remains totally unaware of the fact that single-key navigation is available unless the author also takes measures to advertise this fact. As a web designer, I find this to be something of an irritation.
The only browser I know that will advertise the presence of 'accesskey' attributes is iCab, which places the assigned key character within < > marks next to the link, so that a menu line might appear thus:
Home<0> Contents<1> Help<2> etc.
Because of the general lack of browsers that behave like this, it is common for web authors to have to advertise the presence of 'accesskey' values in some way -- either with additional tag text, or through the use of CSS *[accesskey]::before or ::after selectors. The only problem with this approach is that it advertises the keystrokes even within browsers that don't support the action.
If you haven't seen this kind of stuff in action, point your browser at http://www.stonegnome.info/music/news.php and take a look at the bottom navigation bar to see the kind of thing I'm talking about: with Safari, say, pressing the designated key in conjunction with ctrl enables you follow the advertised navigation links with simple keystrokes. (iCab goes one 'better' and doesn't need the ctrl key, which seems nice initially but, if you think about it, is rather silly!) As Camino doesn't seem to support 'accesskey' settings yet, though (unless it uses a modifier key I haven't thought of pressing yet!) the presence of the adverts for the keystrokes is something of a nuisance.
Now, it strikes me that what would be REALLY NICE is not only for Camino to support 'accesskey' operation (presumably it's in the pipeline) but for it to support it in a way that no-one else yet does. As a web designer, I regard iCab's approach as something of a nuisance, because I have no control over the appearance of the 'accesskey' notifiers. How much better it would be if these weren't embedded text � la iCab, but rather appeared as widgets (bearing the appropriate letter, of course) that floated over their associated link text in some nifty sort of way whenever I pressed, say, the ctrl key (on its own). It strikes me that tieing the appearance of these widgets to the pressing of the 'accesskey' modifier key would make them more obviously associated with 'accesskey' actions than does static text on the page and would Camino with a truly unique feature.
-Steve -- _______________________________________________ Camino mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mozdev.org/mailman/listinfo/camino
