Closed Bug 345817 Opened 18 years ago Closed 15 years ago

Adjust/create documentation for web content accesskey changes

Categories

(support.mozilla.org :: Knowledge Base Articles, task)

task
Not set
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED WONTFIX

People

(Reporter: zeniko, Unassigned)

References

()

Details

Bug 340902 changed the default web content accesskey modifier from Alt to Alt+Shift on Windows and from Ctrl to Ctrl+Shift on Unix. This change should probably be mentioned in the release notes for Firefox 2 (beta 2) and maybe in the Help as well (although I so far haven't found any mentioning of this feature in the shipped documentation).
Given bug 343909 comment #13, it might be a good idea to consider doing this for beta 2, so that complaining or confused users don't have to be referred to a bug or the MozillaZine Knowledge Base ( http://kb.mozillazine.org/ui.key.contentAccess ).
Flags: blocking-firefox2?
Keywords: relnote
Target Milestone: Firefox 2 → Firefox 2 beta2
Flags: blocking-firefox2? → blocking-firefox2+
Target Milestone: Firefox 2 beta2 → Firefox 2
Assignee: nobody → reed
I'm about 99% certain the changes that need to be made for this, if any, are not going to involve built-in documentation.  If this is even mentioned anywhere, it'll be in mozilla.org/support/ docs, so moving there...
Component: Help Documentation → www.mozilla.org
Flags: blocking-firefox2+
Product: Firefox → mozilla.org
Target Milestone: Firefox 2 → ---
Version: 2.0 Branch → other
djst, mind checking your support pages and seeing if there is something on this? I'm not seeing anything, but I could be blind.
QA Contact: help.documentation → www-mozilla-org
Reed: Is there any progress on this issue?

This change should really make it into the Firefox 2.0 release notes or some more prominent spot than some bugs here, some obscure KB articles or a forum thread over at MozillaZine.
(In reply to comment #4)

> This change should really make it into the Firefox 2.0 release notes or some
> more prominent spot than some bugs here, 

I agree. It can cause a lot of frustration when keyboard shortcuts are changed. As a minimum the change should be listed in the release notes. It would also be a good thing to include a description of how to use access keys in the online help (se i.e. Operas help page: http://www.opera.com/support/tutorials/nomouse/#access)
Filed bug 354830 for the release notes issue. Keeping this bug open to get this feature slightly better documented. Note that in this form, this bug applies to all products based on Gecko 1.8.1 and Trunk.
Keywords: relnote
Summary: Adjust documentation for web content accesskey changes → Adjust/create documentation for web content accesskey changes
Assignee: reed → nobody
Product: mozilla.org → Websites
Support documentation bugs should be handled on support.mozilla.com since www.mozilla.org doesn't host support content anymore.  Moving to support.mozilla.com product for discussion.
Component: www.mozilla.org → Knowledge Base Articles
Product: Websites → support.mozilla.com
QA Contact: www-mozilla-org → kb-articles
Version: other → unspecified
Reporter, could you clarify what this bug is about? 
(In reply to comment #8)
This is about the fact that many web sites offer enhanced accessibility by allowing the user to follow links or focus form fields through shortcuts. This concerns e.g. government websites, all MediaWiki installations or also Bugzilla (try hitting Alt+Shift+C to focus the comment field on this page [resp. Ctrl+C on OS X]).

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accesskey for further details or append the following line to your userChrome.css for actually seeing what might be accessible this way:

*[accesskey]:after { content: " [" attr(accesskey) "]" !important; }
What is it that needs documentation? Do you mean a Knowledge Base article on support.mozilla.com explaining that some websites allow you to use access keys and how to use that? To me, that feels more like something the websites themselves should provide help with, since it will depend heavily on the website.
(In reply to comment #10)
> Do you mean a Knowledge Base article on support.mozilla.com explaining that
> some websites allow you to use access keys and how to use that?

Pretty much so. Should you think that this really isn't something we'd want to teach our users, feel free to WONTFIX this, though - that's your call, I guess.

Then again, the trick with how to actually find accesskeys on web sites not advertising them (too aggressively) and maybe also the hint about how to change them from Alt+Shift+<key> to Alt+<key> (setting ui.key.contentAccess to 4) could also be of value to our users. At least that's what I thought the Knowledge Base was for.
Is using Alt+Shift for access keys unique to Firefox, or is this a de-facto standard among browsers?
It's unique to Firefox on Windows and Linux - and there's no de-facto standard at all (IE: Alt+<key>; Opera: Shift+Esc,<key>; Safari and Firefox on OS X: Ctrl+<key>; Konqueror: Ctrl,<key>).
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 15 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
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