Ajax? Keyboard shortcuts in web app

feenster99 · 19 Mar 2007 at 23:00

Hi all,
I'm writing a Web Application (with PHP/xHTML/CSS/JavaScript etc), and want to provide the user with some keyboard shortcuts. I know this can be done, as FCKEditor etc allow keyboard shortcuts to make text bold and the like, but is there a "normal" way or doing it, or even better, is there an open source library I can use to help?

Cheers,
Matt

Augmented · 19 Mar 2007 at 23:16

You can do it simply with markup, using the accesskey attribute.
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/forms.html#h-17.11.2
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/forms/accesskey.html
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=8839164&postcount=2

Not sure where you're coming from with the AJAX, that's to do with asynchronous communication between server and client using XML, not fluff like hotkeys

.

feenster99 · 20 Mar 2007 at 07:35

Augmented said:
Not sure where you're coming from with the AJAX...

Hence my question mark - I assumed that some of these Ajax libraries that are kicking around would have keyboard shortcuts built in. The only one i've found mentioning it so far is Prototype.

Access keys aren't really ideal, as it restricts what keys I can tie up. However, I shall take a peek through the links you posted. Cheers :-)

Matt

.Andy · 20 Mar 2007 at 10:54

You want to be using an eventlistener on the keydown event. Check the keycode and do something accordingly