Tabindex - What order?

[Moldarin]

Hi,

I just thought I should add a tabindex layout for my entire Website at http://thewebdesignjournal.com/...

But I'm so unsure about what to have and in what order. Especially in the journal and forum where I got forms.

I thought I'd do h1 title, first (second, third, etc) main menu element, the searchfield in the menu... And after that really got no idea.

So, any good suggestions on what order I shuold tabindex my site and how to do it on pages whit forms?

[Moldarin]

I've treid Firefox, Camino and Safari on my iBook (Mac OS 10.4) and all browsers ignores tabindex. Why? Really!? Tell me why they do that? Opera read the tabindex just fine.

Look at my Website (http://thewebdesignjournal.com/) now (and the sourcecode if you all think I'm mad). I added tabindex, but only Opera follows them!

Are Windows browsers better at this?

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=333927 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=333927)

[felgall]

As far as I am aware all Windows browsers follow tabindex. Certainly Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Opera do as I just retested a page of mine where I use it to skip over some help buttons.

[Moldarin]

All Windows browser do support tabindex. But only Opera on the Mac.

Why? :s

[<Eddie>]

So, any good suggestions on what order I shuold tabindex my site and how to do it on pages whit forms?Is it necessary to reorder the tabindex?

I would imagine the only need for tabindex is to assist usability in some respect but this often causes more problems than it's worth. If you find yourself using tabindex to focus on elements in some logical order on the page then I would question the order and structure of the markup.

There aren't too many cases on the web that justify their use.

[Moldarin]

I changed it a little:

1) Searchfield in the menu
2) h1 title at the top of the page
3) Each menu element (except the searchfield)
4) Normal behavior

[Green-Beast]

I'd suggest not messing with tabindex unless for some reason you need to have keyboard users or others relying on a tab functionality navigate your pages differently than the natural top-down order. Realize that once you employ tabindex, despite what the spec says, you're taking control and responsibility for something the user already has without you doing a thing. And know this, should you choose to add a section to a page, it may necessitate the need to go it tweak all of the tabindexing located downstream of your addition. Not fun. If you have large sections of anchors, you'd be better off offering a simple skip link.

I used tabindex on a site once and I'll never do it again. It ended up simply being a pain in the butt and it offered absolutely nothing of value to the user's experience or the site.

My 2 cents.

Mike

[Moldarin]

OK

Here's a good place to change the tabindex, right?

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/editor?type=rl&url=thewebdesignjournal.com/