how do you rearrange comment form

udon

Being a PHP novice... how can i rearrange the comment and new discussion form have the submit button be right after the text box and the "Format comments as" radio buttons be last? (i.e. switch the order of the two) This makes keyboard TAB button much more efficient, especially if you've set up your default Format option in forum prefs. you only tab once to the submit and hit enter.

jonezy

you would do it with the css...

find these classes in the css

Button SubmitButton

and add float:right; to the definitions.

dom

You don't need to move the order, just apply the "tabindex" attribute liberally

lech

I think either you or mark would need to either A) define a tab order, or B) physically switch those around.

jonezy

oh oh i guess i should have read the post :/

dom

jonezy, I think you misunderstood the reason behind the request...

Gah, concurrent posting == trouble. Someone write a "checkout" extension to lock posts for 60 seconds... <_<

jonezy

lol @ me and you

lech

i r smrt

dom

lech r teh c00l

Scottish

Screwing with the default tab order is bad usability practice, mates :)

dom

Screwing with tabindex is not only not bad usability practice, it's recommended usability practice! This is provided it is done in a sensible, expected way, and I agree that in this case you could argue that it wouldn't be beneficial.

Scottish

Well, if your markup is well-formed, the default tab order should be sensible. But yes, sometimes you need to make small adjustments.

But still, as you say, changing it to jump from the text box over the format comments radio buttons to the submit button is bad, because it's unexpected behavior to the user. Most users expect the tabs to go left to right, top to bottom.

Minisweeper

Yeah, but what they're saying (i think) is just to move the add button to above the format options - so it would be the next thing to move to. This makes for sensible practice, but i suppose could result in...unusual...aesthetics.

ichigo

how about displaying the format options as select box instead of radio buttons? i think that would add more usability..because you can hit it more easy and dont have to move the mouse that much to be able to choose between all options. but of course you wouldnt be able to see all options before klicking on the select box...that might substract a sense of usability...so it might be no better solution... actually i thought about the same when i saw the search section of the vanilla forum software. BUT you could add the options for formatting to the right side of the textarea... and under it you could add a sort of ajax preview...shouldnt be that hard to implement i think. that would rock :)

Scottish

minisweeper said: Yeah, but what they're saying (i think) is just to move the add button to above the format options - so it would be the next thing to move to.

That's not what some were advocating:

You don't need to move the order, just apply the “tabindex” attribute liberally

Minisweeper

oh.. i didnt know what tabindex did. pardon me.

Scottish

NP :) EDIT: Douchebag... ;)