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You know those sites that have top-ten stuff, or lists of images or sections of content that sometimes we just want to go one after the other without having to

You know those sites that have top-ten stuff, or lists of images or sections of content that sometimes we just want to go one after the other without having to scroll exactly to the next one? (smashing magazine comes to mind) Well, wouldn't it be good if modern browsers could skip to the next section with the press of the spacebar instead of having to scroll manually? Like adding an attribute to the new <section scroll="stop|flow"> tag in html5

randallsquared 17y ago
Thereby breaking the current behavior of the spacebar, which is to scroll one window-height? No, thank you, I use that all over the place.
- ken 17y ago
  Thanks to frames, javascript, etc., space bar is already broken. The last browser I remember where space bar consistently worked right was Netscape 1. I'm not saying this particular feature should or shouldn't be added, but "right here" seems a strange place to draw the line. I can see either (a) don't let webpage authors muck with it at all, or (b) give them enough control to make it do something intelligent. What we've got now is enough control to screw it up for the user, but not the right abstractions to do what authors really want anyway.
  - randallsquared 17y ago
    As long as focus is on the window, I've had few problems with the spacebar-to-page-down behavior in Firefox 3 or Safari 3. When it does break, I do notice, because that's my default paging mechanism, so I think it works way more often than not, even now.
- TweedHeads 17y ago
  scroll="flow" would be the default, and for backwards compatibility. Wherever page designers want to put a section stop AND ONLY THEN they use scroll="stop" so users enjoy a better surfing experience, like I described earlier: going pic by pic, topic by topic or section by section. Don't like the spacebar? use any other mechanism. I am pointing a users need worth being considered.

randallsquared 17y ago

Thereby breaking the current behavior of the spacebar, which is to scroll one window-height? No, thank you, I use that all over the place.

ken 17y ago
Thanks to frames, javascript, etc., space bar is already broken. The last browser I remember where space bar consistently worked right was Netscape 1. I'm not saying this particular feature should or shouldn't be added, but "right here" seems a strange place to draw the line. I can see either (a) don't let webpage authors muck with it at all, or (b) give them enough control to make it do something intelligent. What we've got now is enough control to screw it up for the user, but not the right abstractions to do what authors really want anyway.
- randallsquared 17y ago
  As long as focus is on the window, I've had few problems with the spacebar-to-page-down behavior in Firefox 3 or Safari 3. When it does break, I do notice, because that's my default paging mechanism, so I think it works way more often than not, even now.
TweedHeads 17y ago
scroll="flow" would be the default, and for backwards compatibility. Wherever page designers want to put a section stop AND ONLY THEN they use scroll="stop" so users enjoy a better surfing experience, like I described earlier: going pic by pic, topic by topic or section by section. Don't like the spacebar? use any other mechanism. I am pointing a users need worth being considered.