Comments on: Economist/Drupal – Design Principles for CRUD-In-Place

By: kje

kje — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 13:00:36 +0000

Your’r only able to tab to links on OS X if you enable the setting in System Prefs:Keyboard & Mouse:Full keyboard access

By: Wim Leers

Wim Leers — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 10:58:26 +0000

That’s not what I meant.

However, it seems that current browsers (Safari 4 and Firefox 3 at least), do allow tabbing to links and clicking them by pressing enter as if they were normal buttons. So, my question is void, at least for those browsers.

Sorry

By: fschaap

fschaap — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 07:12:39 +0000

As long as I can remember, you can tab through the links on a webpage, as long as the browser viewport is active.

I just tried it out with my current Ff3.5 on this page: click anywhere in page, hit tab button repeatedly, watch statusbar to see selected link.

This might however not work when Javascript hides the link… I haven’t checked.

You can even search for specific links in a page with the backtick. More shortcuts here:

http://www.accessfirefox.org/Firefox_Keyboard_and_Mouse_Shortcuts.html

By: Wim Leers

Wim Leers — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:05:23 +0000

I understand the rationale of choosing a text link over a button because of its visuals. However, what about accessibility?

To fill out a form, I click on the first field in the form. Then I completely fill out the form using the keyboard, without touching my mouse. I tab from one field to the next. And I also tab to a button and press space to click it.

As far as I know, you can’t do that with text links. So, I’m wondering how you approach that?

By: Marieke

Marieke — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 18:56:22 +0000

On some screens actions only show up when you hover over an element. This might work for people who use a site regularly and/or are trained, but I’m not sure it will work for any site. On some sites I feel like an explorer and I don’t always want to be . I want to know which actions I can perform, not being forced to find actions like easter eggs. Besides, I’m not sure about the effects on accessibility.

By: fschaap

fschaap — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:44:52 +0000

Interesting set of screenshots. Two things come to mind:

1. I like the yellow background indicating that something is editable (says, scribble here, like a yellow pad). Click in the yellow and edit.. nice. The yellow might be done a) on hover, or b) permanently for users with certain permissions, so it won’t mess up the display for others. As an alternative to the yellow background a textlink indeed looks best.

2. Yes, a little button on every editable element on a busy page will not work very well. So, besides tuning the edit tools themselves for simplicity and context, you’re looking to minimise the message of “this is editable”. If you’re going to go for some solution “on hover” then I’d suggest testing that for usability with your target group. I’ve (informally) learned that quite a few people are rather sensitive and dismissive of “pop-out”, “drop-down” or “fly-out” menus. They’d rather click something for a menu (like the menu bar in most OS based applications) than have something pop-up on hover.

By: Garrett

Garrett — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:20:37 +0000

Principle one is so important. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen an interface developed according to the underlying system, not to the goals of the user, to the detriment of the experience of everyone concerned.

Certain nameless 3rd party CRM systems, I’m looking at you here.