Dear Netsurf community! I'm applying to GSOC for keyboard navigation, but got no response yet, and was told on IRC that I should post my ideas to the mailing list. Here are they (a little revised from what is in the application):
My proposal's content from the user's perspective: (this is mainly for the PC's keyboard, but can be extended for others too) - One-key default shortcuts for the most basic operations - like in Opera, for example F8 - focus the address bar Z/Backspace - navigate back in history X/Shift+Backspace - navigate forward in history maybe J,K,^F,^B,^D,^U - scrolling the content for Vi fanatics etc. - highlight current text field - this is beneficial for the user for detecting where is his focus as Jeff Atwood points out [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001055.html] - TAB and SHIFT-TAB for jumping between text fields (for example at login screens) - keyboard navigation - when the Shift key is being pressed, a little number or character or string of characters next to each link is displayed on the screen, which when typed on keyboard focuses that link. Four links will be special which next to the string also display a little custom colored arrow, each with different color, with the meaning which will be the next focused link when navigated with Shift+Arrows (this is called spatial navigation) An alternative way for displaying those strings next to the links without worrying ALT/CTRL/SHIFT portability problems is to do it the Konqueror way: hit and release CTRL. Just try it in Konqueror. It is pretty neat, pretty much what I have on mind, but in K. it is restricted only to one character. Altogether this is something like the spatial navigation + keyboard links together. The workarounds for the pages with lots of links or with long scrollable content should also be discussed well. The typing of links is very similar to MS Office's new GUI and to a Firefox extension or to Konqueror for which I have no screenshot (unfortunately I don't have much time to do it right now): again, a Jeff Atwood article for a screen shot of Office [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000825.html], and a screen shot of hit-a-hint can be found here: [http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2006/06/14/Mouseless-Computing.aspx] - support for Access Keys - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_keys] Konqueror seems to use this effectively in his navigation (when you press Ctrl twice) What do you think? Are these feasible ideas? Thank you! Bye! Balazs Kezes
