Hey guys,

Alright, so let's say that we use a webpage as a means for data entry.

The page is actually relatively simple. We really just have a table of select tags so the html looks like this :
Code:
<tr ...>
    <td ...>
        John Smith
    </td>
    <td ... >
        <select ...>
             <option ...>
                ...
            </option>
        </select>
    </td>
</tr>
Now, there's a lot of rows in this table and of course there's more than one option. What I want to do is implement full keyboard navigation of the webpage.

Each row contains something useful, a column with a name in it. So for each <tr/>, there's one <td/> which contains a name (a basic string) and then another <td/> which contains the <select/> stuff.

I want the navigation to be based off the name contained in each row and I want the user to be able to make every selection without once touching the mouse.

So, I was thinking, let's take JavaScript and use that to focus() on the right elements. I found out about focus() last night and, like, freaked out about how amazing it is.

I was thinking, maybe every time the user starts typing (only alphabet keyboard input) a small search box pops up in the middle of the screen and then when the user hits enter, the page is focus()'d to the proper select-tag.

Is this bad design? I've never thought about this before so I was looking for some design ideas. What's a good interface that'll give the user the ability to navigate this page by keyboard and string?