297210 - System keyboard pref shouldn't enable tabbing through links

Status: NEW

(Core :: DOM: UI Events & Focus Handling, defect)

Description

[jhp (no longer active)]

Mac OS X System Preferences->Keyboard offers a pref to allow tabbing through
items on the screen.  On 10.3, it is called "Turn on full keyboard access". 
10.4 changes the description, allowing you to tab through "all controls" in the
window.

Recently, a change was made in Mozilla/Firefox to notice that sys pref and
change tab focus accordingly in Moz/FF.  However, when that sys pref is set, in
addition to tabbing through all controls on the page, we also tab through links.
 But tabbing through links is the wrong thing to do for this pref, particularly
given 10.4's new wording for it (links are not controls).

Safari gets this correct.  With the pref unset, you can only tab through text
boxes.  With the pref set, you can also tab to buttons, drop downs, check boxes,
radio buttons, etc.  But not links.  We should behave the same way.

As for tabbing through links, we can either let users change the
"accessibility.tabfocus" app pref to "7", or we can expose some UI in the prefs
(Prefs->Advanced->General->Accessibility).

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

How is a link really not a control?  What's the fundamental difference between
the following:

1)  An image submit
2)  A button submit
3)  An image map
4)  A link

from the user's point of view as far as tabbing behavior goes?

Comment 2

[jhp (no longer active)]

An image or button submit are form controls so they should be tabbable by default, whereas an image map is basically just a collection of links and should only be tabbable if the user specifically sets the 'tab through links' pref.  Basically, I just think when the system pref is set, Moz/FF should only tab through form controls, but not links.  As mentioned in the description, Safari seems to get this right.

Comment 3

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

> An image or button submit are form controls so they should be tabbable by
> default, whereas an image map is basically just a collection of links

From a user's point of view there is no difference between an imagemap and a form with a single image submit button in it (common on the web).  I know they're different under the hood (in terms of the HTML and what the server gets), and you know they're different, but they look identical to a user.

Comment 4

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

Mass un-assigning bugs assigned to Aaron.