Does anybody use F12 in their browser?

[brothercake]

I need a "hotkey" to send focus to a navigation bar, from which you can move around using the arrow keys.

But what key to use ... it has to be a control key, rather than a letter or a number (because the keypress handler returns 0 for the keyCode of letters and numbers, and it has to be keypress rather than keydown so that preventDefault works)

I originally went for "Insert", but that's going to conflict with JAWS which uses it as a primary control key .. and anyway Mac keyboards don't have one ..

So I've gone for F12, which on my computers has no pre-existing function in win/ie5, ie6, firebird or camino. Opera, Safari and mac/ie5 don't matter, because they can't support the key navigation anyway; sooo ...

Q: does anybody use a build of win/ie5, ie6, or mozilla for any platform, in which F12 already has a function?

[Ben@WEBProp]

I think that I am one of the few people who would actually have a slight problem with that button, but then again I would have the same problem with pretty much any button that is not a-z or 0-9...

At home, I have THE best keyboard EVER!!!! It is a wireless keyboard with a ton of awesome shortcut-keys built in. Most of them are normal everday functions that replace the F1-F12 buttons. Instead of pushing alt+F4, f5 does the same thing...etc. This means that F12 already has a function. But the people at microsoft provided a way around this and put an "F Lock" button that can be pressed to restore normal functionality to the F keys.

I am not sure what the current button configuration is, but if I do try to initially run the accesskey code with F12, anything from "View Source" to "Edit" to "Lob Heavy Blunt Object At Face" may occur until I get my act together and realize that I need to push the F lock key.

Other than that I cant think of anything!:thumbsup:

-Ben

[brothercake]

Thanks for that - F12 does look like it's shaping up good - as long things like what you mentioned are not unpreventable, then its cool.

I plan to make it user-reassignable anyway, but the default still needs to be minimal intrusion to prevent confusion.

Actually I just got the Google Toolbar for Phoenix, and it uses "Ctrl-F12" to send focus to the toolbar ! So I had to add a little check to make sure no modifier key is pressed.