Re: KEYNAV:GtkMenubBar And Accessibility (bug 53543)

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

Padraig O'Briain wrote:

> The left-arrow gives focus back to the parent menu item but the submenu remains
> posted. For the use-case you describe of navigating the menu tree how imprtant
> is it that the submenu be unposted? I believe htat this navigation can currently
> be done using the arrow keys.

Well, you could argue that for people with cognitive disabilities, the
less extraneous information you show on-screen the better, but that's
the only reason I can conjur up at the moment.  (Just playing with the
way it is in 1.4, I don't think it's terribly obvious that pressing the
left arrow moves the focus back to the parent menu anyway-- focus
disappears from the submenu, but it's not obvious where it's "gone". So
it would help from a usability standpoint too).

So you're probably right, I'd say the unposting is probably a
nice-to-have, but not a high priority.

> Have you looked at the effect of the left arrow key when the focus is on a menu
> item which is in a submenu of a menu item in the menu bar? It moves to the
> previous menu item in the menu bar and selects the first menu item in its
> submenu. This loooks does not look correct to me. How about just moving to the
> menu item in the menu bar?

Hmm... I think I understand what you mean here, quite a lot of menus,
items, and submenus to parse in that sentence  :o)  I think you're
right, for the same reason that we decided the first menu title (rather
than the first item on the menu) should get focus when you press F10. 
Pressing left arrow in the case you mention above should probably
therefore still post the adjacent menu, but keep focus on its menu
title, for consistency with the F10 case.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson ireland sun com    Desktop Engineering Group
http://www.sun.ie                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems