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?