F6 vs Tab Key Navigation

[joreneng]

Hi all,
Currently, Tab cycles between major sections, similar to how F6 works in other applications. This works well, but users wondered why F6 wasn't supported alongside Tab.

Questions

• Was there a reason F6 wasn't chosen for this level of navigation?
• Would it be worth adding F6 support for familiarity?

[joreneng]

Note:
On the same line of thought, the users expected:

• Tab to move between fields
• Enter to confirm
• Space to toggle buttons

[kmcnaught]

I am not familiar with F6 being used for the same level of navigation as Tab. I have seen F6 used in MS Office applications for moving between major regions. Is that the behaviour your users were expecting? If not, can you give some examples of other contexts that use F6?

[Editted after I realised this was on the blockly repo not the MakeCode one... ]
In MakeCode (beta link - you need to turn on keyboard controls in the settings) we have added region navigation via a 2 step shortcut: [Ctrl+B to open area menu, number to choose area]. In this context, having F6 as a "next region" could work well for people who are used to that.

[joreneng]

Yes, thank you - I did mean the MS Office applications.

[maribethb]

Blockly wouldn't implement region navigation within the library, because it doesn't have enough information about the rest of the application to know what the major regions are. This kind of shortcut is the application's responsibility, not Blockly's.

We do think it's a good idea for applications to have some kind of easy region navigation, perhaps similar to the Makecode implementation. We don't have firm recommendations on which keyboard shortcut to tie that to. If F6 is primarily used in MS Office applications and not more general than that then we don't think that's a strong enough reason to recommend every application use that shortcut, but maybe it makes sense for applications that are somehow tied or expected to be used similarly to Office.