Helping your readers can sometimes be easy

Granted, sometimes you'll be afflicted by readers who don't know what links are or how to scroll on the page, and for them, sometimes there is little help to give. But for other readers, tabindex is a simple way to add some really effective usability to your Web page. Take this page, for example. It doesn't use the tabindex at all (because I have no control over the HTML of the page). This means, for someone without a mouse, in order to get to the first link of the first blog entry, you have to hit tab over 60 times. That's a lot of tabs! If I were to gain control over the HTML of the page, the first thing I would do would be to add the tabindex attribute to the links in the blog entries, so that they would be the first choice. If I worked in the sales department, maybe I'd put the tabindex on the advertisements first, as it's over 50 tabs to the second ad on the page (the banner ad is first). That's still a lot of tabs. And all for the want of a simple attribute.

• Tabindex

Add Tabindex to del.icio.us