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User Input
Also use Option for a keyboard equivalent that is a convenience or power user feature. For example, the Finder uses Option-Command-W for Close All Windows and Option-Command-M for Minimize All Windows.
Remember that other languages may require modifier keys to generate certain characters. For example, on a French keyboard, you generate the “{“ character by pressing Option-5. You can safely modify any character with the Command key, but avoid using Command and an additional modifier with characters not available on all keyboards. If you must use a modifier key in addition to the Command key, use them only with the alphabetic characters (a through z).
Keyboard Focus and Navigation
When using the mouse is undesirable, difficult, or impossible, users can move the onscreen focus (highlight) with the keyboard to access controls, menus, the Dock, toolbars, and so on. In Roman systems, focus always begins at the first field that accepts keyboard input and follows a reading path from upper left to bottom right.
Focus is indicated with a ring in the appearance color (Aqua or Graphite).
Figure 9-1 Keyboard focus for a text field
Focus ring
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User Input
Figure 9-2 Keyboard focus for a scrolling list
Focus ring is appearance color (Aqua or Graphite).
In list and column views, a selected item should be highlighted across the full row. In column view, the selected item has a dark highlight and the folders containing the item have a lighter highlight. When a window becomes inactive, all selections inside it should become the lighter highlight color.
Figure 9-3 Primary and secondary highlight colors in columns
Primary highlight color
Focus ring
Secondary highlight color
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Navigation between most controls in achieved by pressing the Tab key and the arrow keys. Shift-Tab navigates in reverse direction.
Full Keyboard Access Mode
In default keyboard access mode, focus moves only between fields that receive keyboard input, such as text entry fields, list boxes that support type-ahead, and scrolling lists. Mac OS X 10.1 and later provides the option of full keyboard access mode, in which users can navigate through windows and dialogs. Cocoa and Carbon applications that use system controls get this functionality automatically in Mac OS X version 10.2. For a complete list of the key combinations reserved in full keyboard access mode, see Table 9-6 (page 178).
Users can turn on full keyboard access in the Full Keyboard Access pane of Keyboard preferences. Control-F1 is a reserved keyboard equivalent for turning full keyboard access on or off; don’t use this combination for any other purpose. Control-F7 temporarily overrides the current mode in windows and dialogs.
In full keyboard access mode, the arrow keys move between values within a control. For example, if the user selects a slider with the Tab key, the arrow keys move the slider control along the slider track. For vertically oriented choices, such as menu items, the Up Arrow and Down Arrow keys move the selection. For horizontally oriented choices, such as a row of tabs, the Right Arrow and Left Arrow keys move the selection. In some cases, it makes sense to support both orientations. For example, a vertical slider could use both the Up Arrow and the Right Arrow to increase the value.
In some cases, such as radio buttons, moving the focus to an item selects it as well. In other cases, such as push buttons, the user chooses a selected item by pressing the Space bar. In full keyboard access mode, pressing the Space bar is equivalent to clicking the mouse button.
The Escape key is used to cancel a dialog and to cancel a selection in a pop-up menu or list. In a Dock pop-up menu, Escape dismisses the menu and moves focus to the frontmost window.
The user can also quickly place focus in the menu bar, the Dock, toolbars, and utility windows using the key combinations described in Table 9-6.
184The Keyboard
Apple Computer, Inc. June 2002