101689 - Request keyboard shortcuts like numbered links

Status: NEW

(Core :: DOM: UI Events & Focus Handling, enhancement, P4)

Description

[Ben Escoto]

Hi, I would like mozilla to be easily useable without a mouse.  Right now it is
very hard to select links using a keyboard.  One way to make this easy would be
to display little captions with numbers on them on all the links when the user
presses a key like "Alt".  Then the user can select the link by pressing the
numbers and releasing alt.  So alt-72 would select the 72nd link on the page.

I'm sure this is already in here but I'm not a mozilla programmer and bugzilla
system is very complicated.

Comment 1

[Jesse Ruderman]

-> Keyboard navigation

Comment 2

[Ashley Bischoff (blog at handcoding.com)]

Links can be navigated using the Tab key, for instance.

In addition, web authors can use the ACCESSKEY attribute to links and
form-buttons to assign hotkeys, just as you describe:
http://www.idocs.com/tags/linking/_A_ACCESSKEY.html
(that link mistakenly mentions that IE doesn't support ACCESSKEY, whereas it
actually does)

-> WONTFIX / INVALID?

Also, please include your Build ID in all bug reports. Or, if you file bugs with
the Bugzilla Helper, your Build ID is automagically added for you:
http://www.mozilla.org/quality/help/bugzilla-helper.html

Comment 3

[Ben Escoto]

Thanks for your comments, but they don't really make Mozilla usable without a
mouse.  The tab key is not convenient at all - if there are 50 links on a page
the Tab key must be pressed 50 times worst case (O(n) relationship) but with a
number scheme it would only take 3 keystrokes to press Alt-50 (O(log n) - a huge
improvement).

About ACCESSKEY, that is good to know, but my goal is to browse the web without
a mouse, not to write webpages.  Or are you suggesting that it isn't mozilla's
responsibility and it should be handled through some sort of web proxy that adds
ACCESSKEY to everything?  Interesting idea, but how would the user know which
shortcut key goes with which link?

A mouse isn't the best solution for everyone - some people have medical
conditions like RSS that make it painful or impossible to use the mouse, some
are on laptops where the mouse isn't very ergonomic, and some just don't like mice.

Comment 4

[Adam Hauner]

As common user I could agree with opinion presented by Ben Escoto, accessing
concrete link by shortcut could be useful also for users with mouse. So I'm
voting for marking NEW untargetted.

Alt+# (on numeric keyboard) in on PC reserved for pasting special chars (any
char of charset), so another key combination (Ctrl+#) should drive this feature.

There are also several problems with rendering numbers inside webpage (images of
any size should be hyperlink).

Comment 5

[Aaron Leventhal]

Would any of the proposed solutions in these bugs be satisfactory to the reporter?

bug 67684
bug 58852
bug 66587

Comment 6

[Jesse Ruderman]

Adding to aaron's list of possible solutions:

bug 66597 after using search>find, tab should go to the link containing the 
start of the selection or the first link after the start of the selection.

Comment 7

[Ben Escoto]

Firstly, let me say that I am quite impressed with the response I've gotten so
far.  At first I thought that I was wasting my time trying to figure out
bugzilla, but I see that I was quite wrong.

Ok, Aaron Leventhal has listed some bugs which proposal ways of making Mozilla
usable without a mouse.  Perhaps some of these are easier from the programmer's
perspective, but I can't comment since I am only a Mozilla user.  However, I do
think that my proposal is better for the end user than the others I've seen as
far as making Mozilla easy to use without a mouse.

Let's take two of the suggestions:

1.  Allow a link to be selected using the arrow keys.  E.g. if a link is
currently selected and the down arrow key is pressed, the link below it on the
screen would become selected.

I think this would be inconvenient because it would require many many keypresses
to select an average link.  For instance, if the links are in a line, or
basically in a line (as they often are), this would be no better than using Tab.
 However, it may be doing anyway, as may be more intuitive initially to the
user.  Still, I don't see how something like this alone could make Mozilla easy
to use without a mouse.

2.  Emacs-style searching, where a user could press Cntl-S, and type in the
first few letters of the link in question.  The first link starting with those
letters would be highlighted.

This would be better than 1 I think, and, being an emacs user, I had considered
suggesting this, but this method would not allow picture elements, text fields,
buttons, etc, to be selected easily.  It would also require more keystrokes than
my proposal.  BTW, I did not come up with this proposal - lynx has had numbered
links for a long time.  I am just calling it "my proposal" because in this bug
report I first mention it.


One advantage that my proposal has over every other possible one is that when
there are n links, it only takes 1+log n keystrokes to select any element.  The
log's base is the number of digits allowed for numbering.  If numbers and
letters are used, the base would be 36, so any of 1296 links could be selected
in only 3 keystrokes.  I believe this would make navigating the internet by
keyboard _easier_ than by mouse.  I don't think this would be the case with the
other proposals.

Of course, it is possible that I have not read enough about the other proposals
or missed some bug report entirely (for instance, I would have thought someone
would have suggested numbered links already).  If so, my apologies.

Comment 8

[Jim Werster]

I would like Mozilla to behave like lynx in this regard.  Just punch the number
and <enter>.  One can then navigate solely with pgup, pgdn and the number pad.  

Tabbing is inefficient on pages such as slashdot.  To get something in the
middle column you must tab all the way down the left side.  Also the number of
links present a problem. This bugzilla page for instance has over 90 links. 
Numbered links and forms solves these problems.   

Comment 9

[Ben Escoto]

I suppose there should be different options.  My keyboard doesn't have a number
pad, and generally laptops don't either.  Also, if there is no key required to
indicate the start of keyboard navigation, then all the little numbers by the
selectable items would have to be there from the beginning.  That would probably
annoy the people who only use the mouse so it should be an option, but it could
be the easiest way, if the numbers were not too intrusive.

BTW, there hasn't been much activity here recently.  I am unfamiliar with the
usual procedure - does this mean that the developers are considering it and are
waiting to see if enough people want it?

Comment 10

[Aaron Leventhal]

I would love to implement better keyboard methods for selecting links. I'm not
110% certain that this is the best option, but I'm not opposed to it either.

Marking FUTURE, at least until I can think about this some more. I'm working on
higher priority items. Other Mozilla developers are welcome to tackle this.

Comment 11

[Steven G. Harms]

As we approach the release of 1.0 may I ask if any new thought has been given to
this issue?

I have grown more and more anti-mouse (ion WM, emacs etc.) and would love to see
lynx like numbering.  Were that zippy Gecko engine combined with a rapid link
selection mechanism browsing with Moz would be a joy.

Comment 12

[Robert Kleemann]

I would love a feature like this.  I don't know enough about the Mozilla code
base to architect this feature but I can definitely help with testing and bug
fixing.

I think having readable letter/number hotkeys on every link on a given page
would be somewhat unreadable--or at least ugly.  It may be better to have some
kind of quick navigation mode that you toggle into, then use the short keys to
navigate, then toggle out of that mode to view the web page.

Comment 13

[michael turner]

I imagine that from a readability and layout standpoint, that the numbering (or
whatever) should "pop-up" in an alt tags like way when you press the appropriate
key.

Comment 14

[Rob Spearman]

This is exactly what I have been wanting to see in Mozilla!  (Thanks, Aaron, for
pointing me to this request.)

 I want to be able to browse the Web just using voice recognition software.   To
have the mode were links are numbered would by far be the best way to accomplish
this task.  

Numbers are very  accurately recognized,  and there's no question about which of
10 page links titled "click here"  that you want to follow.   

The numbers should show up next to each link, including  linked graphics.  This
may not look  that great, but we're talking about a serious  accessibility issue
here.    It's more important  that people relying on voice  recognition be able
to use the Web then that this look pretty.

Some key sequence like "ALT-somekey LINK_NUMBER RETURN"  would work great for a
voice macro.

I have an overuse syndrome and browsing the Web is the one thing that I still
have problems with,  as it  basically requires using a mouse.    

Because there are more and more people in my situation, I think that this should
be viewed as an accessibility issue and given higher  development priority.

Anyway, this is my two cents.

Comment 15

[Aaron Leventhal]

To me, this seems like it might be best implemented by the voice control software.

Both Mozilla and IE implement MSAA (Microsoft Active Accessibility) to expose
content and links in a document. This means the voice dictation software would
only need to code this once for all browsers that support MSAA. All they need to
do is use MSAA to find the links and their screen positions, etc. Then they can
draw the numbers next to the links. When the user asks for "Link 33" it can use
MSAA to activate the link. Everything they need is in MSAA.

This has only been requested for use with voice dictation, so doesn't it make
sense for it to be done on that end?

Comment 16

[Aaron Leventhal]

I just realized thst the bookmarklet approach might be good here. Jesse, you
want to take a look at inserting a number in at the beginning of each link's
text? Then typing the number and pressing Enter would do what people are asking for.

Comment 17

[timeless]

actually a user style sheet would be ideal, unfortunately we don't appear to
support counters. the theory goes something like:
a[href]:before{
  content: counter(link) ". " ;
  counter-increment: link
}

this example stolen from http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-CSS-TECHS/#Generated

as for responsibility for implementing, I enable numbered links (actually number
links+form fields) whenever i use lynx.
and now that mozilla has typeahead, I'd be quite likely to use it with this
feature. As for getting counters working, i'm sure somewhere out there is the
bug. (Or perhaps I messed up on the code)

Comment 18

[Aaron Leventhal]

I don't even know if our find service can find :before or :after text, so I
don't know if that would work.

I was thinking more of actually inserting the numbers as text via the DOM.

Comment 19

[Kuno Woudt]

*** Bug 167416 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 20

[Jo Hermans]

see also bug 30088 (incremental search)

I know it's something completely different, but they have a 'linksonly mode',
where you press ' (quote) and the first few characters of the link. When a match
is found, the link is automatically selected without pressing enter.

And it will be found in Mozilla1.2a, which should be released one of these days.

Comment 21

[Rob Spearman]

Regarding comment No. 15:     I'm using Linux, so it doesn't sound like a
Microsoft API  is gonna work (?).   I'm hoping  I don't have to go  over to the
dark side just to browse the Web by voice ... :)

Also,  the original request was to browse without using a mouse, not necessarily
voice recognition.

Comment 22

[Aaron Leventhal]

Starting on Saturday, you can browse without a mouse by typing in letters from
the name of a link. See
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/ui/accessibility/typeaheadfind.html

I should have mentioned, on UNIX/Linux the API is called ATK (Accessibility Tool
Kit), which is being finished up by Sun. I imagine that someone will use the ATK
in their voice recognition software.

Comment 23

[Rob Spearman]

This feature is great.  It allows me to browse the Web mostly by voice.  I can
see some ways to improve it however:

1.  Could non-text links be searched as well?  Namely alt text on linked images
or titles on image submit buttons.    These still require mouse use, or lots of
tabbing.

2.  On Web pages with multiple links that have the same  text, could there be
some key to step through all the matching links?  Not as important as (1).

Comment 24

[Steven G. Harms]

All things being equal i think that type-ahead find, in the event you don't
browse by  voice covers the keyboard nav. issue.

I think that it would be nice if you could hop to form elements and images -
although the only sensible way of doing that, that i can tell, would be to
number them.

It'd be nice if you could toggle 'numbered mode' into:
 - number links
 - number form elemnts
 - number images

FWIW.

Comment 25

[Aaron Leventhal]

Rob,

Request #1 = bug 158757
Request #2 = F3 or Ctrl+G (Cmd+G on Mac). Add the shift key to go backwards.

As far as voice navigation, I really like what Dragon Naturally speaking does
with  IE. You say the name of the link, and it numbers all of the matches. You
can say "this one" to take the default link, or a number to choose a different one.

I belive it does something similar for form controls. For example, you can say
"text box" and it will number them.

Comment 26

[Aaron Leventhal]

Not that this is a real solution for this bug, but just for fun.

Paste the following "bookmarklet" into your URL bar and hit Enter.

javascript:for (lnk=0; lnk<document.links.length; lnk++)
document.links[lnk].firstChild.data = (lnk+1) + ". " +
document.links[lnk].firstChild.data; void 0

Then use typeaheadfind to find the links by typing in the number.

Comment 27

[Steven G. Harms]

Aaron,

That for loop is seriously cool.  If you could get that turned on for every page
us keyboard guys would be another step closer to pure bliss.

Comment 28

[Aaron Leventhal]

Wouldn't it be cool if we could specify a script to be run on every new page
that's loadde?

Comment 29

[djk]

> Wouldn't it be cool if we could specify a script to be run on every new page
> that's loadde?

Aaron,

This XPI (by the same author as the Tabbrowser Extensions) has the ability to
run a custom script on page load.  (I haven't tried that particular feature, but
it's in the docs...)

http://www.cc-net.or.jp/~piro/xul/_extensions.en.html

Comment 30

[Jesse Ruderman]

User javascript on page load is bug 89016.

Comment 31

[Prognathous]

Attachment: Lotus Notes implementation of this RFE

Lotus Notes v5 uses a very similar solution for toolbars - press Alt and
buttons are marked with numbers/letters.

Prog.

Comment 32

[David Bolter [:davidb] (NeedInfo me for attention)]

Mass un-assigning bugs assigned to Aaron.

Comment 33

[Michael Kohler [:mkohler]]

This is a mass change. Every comment has "assigned-to-new" in it.

I didn't look through the bugs, so I'm sorry if I change a bug which shouldn't be changed. But I guess these bugs are just bugs that were once assigned and people forgot to change the Status back when unassigning.