Absolutely, Craig. An insightful contribution.

I respectfully disagree that the default of IE8 to the IE7 engine represents a zero market influence upon CMS application development. Its influence needs to be accounted for not only for the application’s customer base but also for future releases of Internet Explorer. Granted, development applications such as Adobe Dreamweaver will account for it sooner than a development application such as GoDaddy’s Web Site Tonight. That is a difference of their customer demographics rather than any presumption of a ‘zero’ market influence based upon any browser dominance and/or lack thereof. Both will require time and that is what Microsoft is giving to them.

To presume that Internet Explorer will be set to IE7 as a default into perpetuity is a wide stretch. Arguments of prior acts using IE6 as an example to support such arguments are significantly out of context, in my view. I only present this in that such argument has been made by many in belief that Microsoft is a total moron and will lock such a thing down, forever.

Thanks.

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Bruce–

I will acquiesce to your request even though the basis for my reference to an individual’s surname over that of the individual’s christian/given name is that it breeds familiarity with someone whom isn’t personally known. Such a thing, to me, is disrespectful. As you pointed out, its a jarhead thing.

I am sorry but I cannot cite any specific Web site, from direct memory or wherein I have bookmarked such a site, wherein failure to assign tabindex values presents keyboard navigation problems. Over the years, I have run across many, whether or not they were semantically correct, I do not know. [That preceding statement would last long if this were a court of law, huh.] A lot of those navigation issues could be a result of failure of the content to be laid out in a linear and logical order. If a specific site suffers that problem, assigning tabindex would reduce that problem. Granted, such a ‘fix’ would be ass backwards to a more significant problem.

In defense of tabindex, several years ago I was managing a project that included a form control. Within this specific form, there were three buttons. For this explanation, the buttons are labeled A, B and C. Logic of the form required that button B take initial focus because it was the most prevalent response to the form. As I recall, keyboard navigation order was not following logical order within the form which was, button B, then button A and lastly button C. Assigning tabindex resolved this issue however it also required assigning tabindex values to all necessary links, form controls, etc that preceded this specific form. It looks as though this was is a similar issue that you pointed out in your thread. From that point on, all managed projects required assigning tabindex values.

Some will argue that such use adds un-needed bulk to the code in that same manner they have argued that use of the IE8 meta tag version switch adds un-needed code. I compare such arguments to the body mass index of muscle mass versus body fat. Some body fat is a good thing and that, however, too much towards lean or vice versa is rarely good.

In addition, when creating ASP.NET standards compliant content, either hard-coded or using Visual Studio 2005/2008, use of the CSS Friendly Control Adapters is necessary. However, one drawback when using these adapters is that tab order of any one of these controls falls to the bottom of the tab order on any given content page wherein the adapter is used and regardless of its linear order within the content. Use of tabindex resolves that issue.

Use of tabindex can be cumbersome. Much of this is reduced if tabindex values are assigned as blocks based upon the various segments of the linear layout of the content. I simply consider it a best practice in the same manner, for example, that a modified version of the United Kingdom Standard for accesskey values and the ICRA label should always be used. I concede that the majority of my views are, more often than not, in a distinct minority.

Again, please forgive me. I am at the age wherein I recall the creation of hydrogen but cannot recall what to hell I had for breakfast.

Thanks.

I’ve never found any use for tabindex on well-structured sites, but I don’t want to rule it out. Can you give me an example of when a site made with semantic markup is made more accessible with explicit tabindex (except to counteract the IE bug discussed above)?

(Can I ask another favour? Can you call me “Bruce” rather than “Lawson”? We’re not in the military on my website!)