Ribbon keyboard navigation - Ribbon for WPF Forum

Posted 14 years ago by AlexanderB - Software Developer, Edifecs

Version: 10.2.0531

Hi,

For example, we have ribbon with few tabs. One of tabs (lets say, "Home"), has KeyTipAccessText="H". So, by pressing Alt+H, we will activate this tab and its content will be shown. If after this we press Tab button on keyboard, the next tab will be selected and its content will be shown.
It looks strange. Tab button is usually intended to navigate through UI with ability to activate selected control later (e.g. with "Enter" or "Space"). In case of your Ribbon, Tab button activates next tab with one's own hand.
I think, it would be better to select next item inside currently active tab (like "Down" button current does) instead of tabs switching, like it's done in MS Word.

Our application is ADA-compatible, so such things like correct keyboard navigation are very important for us.

Thanks,
Alexander.

Comments (4)

Posted 14 years ago by Actipro Software Support - Cleveland, OH, USA

Hi Alexander,

Thanks, we've updated this for the next release so that Tab enters the group items.

Actipro Software Support

Posted 14 years ago by AlexanderB - Software Developer, Edifecs

Thanks!

Posted 14 years ago by AlexanderB - Software Developer, Edifecs

Few more suggestions:

1. When one of tabs is activated with keyboard, Left/Right keys should allow switching between Application Menu button, tabs and tab panel items cyclically. It works well in MS Word, but in your Ribbon selection sometime goes into tab contents. To go into tab contents Tab or Down buttons should be used.

2. When we activate Application menu with keyboard (usually Alt+F), first available menu item should be selected by default (there are no selected items in this case currently).

Sorry if these items are already fixed in 2010.2 build 0531, I have not tried it yet (I'm using 2010.1 build 0523).

Thanks

Posted 14 years ago by Actipro Software Support - Cleveland, OH, USA

Hi Alexander,

1) Sorry but I'm not sure there's much we can due for this with what limited WPF keyboard focus options are provided to us. We have looked into it in the past but it didn't seem like WPF had a way (at least reasonably easily) to support it.

2) The Backstage view being added hopefully in the next maintenance release will support the first item selection from keyboard activation.

Actipro Software Support

The latest build of this product (v24.1.3) was released 1 month ago, which was after the last post in this thread.

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