Normally that's fine, because the tab stop points to the next field. That's the whole point of tab stops― you place them at the beginning of fields on a forms.

Normally that's fine, because the tab stop points to the next field. That's the whole point of tab stops― you place them at the beginning of fields on a forms. (Yeah, you also need to be on the right line, so a single key press rarely gets you there, but we were working with purely mechanical controls.) Where it goes off the rails is when we embed a user interface inside another user interface. That's not a problem specific to the tabulator, but also with all novigation functions, like home, forward, and back. I rarely use web-based email interfaces, but when I do, I accidentally send half-written email messages, because I'm trying to use a block quote or something similarly indented. It's especially bad when the next field is the 'Send' button, and pressing the spacebar sends the message.