You're gonna shoot yourself in the foot if you go one step further without diving as deep as possible into answering the question "why does he want this?"
If you're making something that looks like a web form on a web page to be accessed by web users, then it's pretty clearly folley - a short test with some users will bear this out. Do it in front of your "insistent client" and he'll have a hard time disagreeing with you. If you're making something that looks like a tax-form wizard on an interactive/business application that just "happens" to be delivered via a browser and is targeted at people with 30 years of data-entry experience, then the same test will reveal that having their form submit when they hit "enter" (instead of moving between data fields) will be a terrible usability burden. Know thy user as thy self =) Either way you'll have a difficult time overiding the default behavior of a browser, so you better count on needing javascript enabled (and a healthy testing budget) to develop this behavior. When you get down to it, it's not that hard to implement with some keypress listeners. The idea about a confirmation dialog (while not-efficient) seemed a good one, when used as part of a "smooth degredation" scheme. </bd> On 2/27/07, Andrew Maben <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Nick Roper wrote: Hi, A customer has requested that they should be able to navigate between input fields on a form by using the Enter key - i.e. to replicate the action of the Tab key. I've seen examples of Javascript code to do this, but I'd be interested in any feedback on whether there are any issues with this and what the best approach is to implement. Thanks, Nick I have to agree with Darren and Barney, it is an astoundingly anti-user proposal, as you present it. But perhaps your customer has some convincing rationale for wanting to do this? If so, I'm sure we'd all be fascinated to hear it. Andrew 109B SE 4th Av Gainesville FL 32601 Cell: 352-870-6661 http://www.andrewmaben.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] "In a well designed user interface, the user should not need instructions." ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *******************************************************************
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