Tabbing around safari

[Lt Major Burns]

one of my biggest little peeves (?) when i switched to mac was the inability to completely tab around a form in safari. specifically, you'd get stuck at a pull down menu, which you could only work with the mouse.

i just noticed that now you can do this using the keypad arrows like on other platforms. brilliant.

anyone know when this came about?

 

[macworks]

You should be able to tab right past a pull down menu. If you're not able to, it might have something to do with the underlying code for the site you're on. I'm a keyboard freak, I use the mouse as little as possible, so I'm very accustomed to tabbing around forms.

Also note that if you tab to a drop-down menu, you can press the space bar to open up the menu, then type the first letter of what you want to jump to -- very handy for long menus.

 

[eric2006]

Using this site as a test, I was able to completely fill out the form (pull-down menus and all), without using the mouse. I navigated the pull-downs with the arrow keys, and enter key to select. If the tab order (tabindex) of the options is set incorrectly, you may be unable to tab some elements.

I'm using Tiger, FYI.

 

[Mikuro]

I think this has been around since the introduction of 'full keyboard access' in the Keyboard & Mouse preference pane. I don't recall when that hit the scene, though. I'd guess Jaguar, but I could be wrong.

You can also navigate the menu bar with the keyboard by pressing control-F2 (assuming you have this enabled).

You used to be able to move menu selections with the scroll wheel, too, but it looks like that's gone now. Just as well, since moving the selection with the mouse when you can't actually SELECT it with the mouse is kind of silly.

 

[Lt Major Burns]

pull down menus have not been accessible from the keyboard, AFAIK, until very recently... it was one of my initial gripes.