Keyboard navigation refers to an alternative
means of interacting with an application without using a mouse. In
particular, it involves interaction with elements of the graphical
user interface (GUI), such as menus and buttons. In the graphical
framework, you can use keystrokes to move through the contents.
A JViews application consists essentially of
Swing GUI components and graphic objects inside a manager view.
Keyboard navigation for Swing components is provided with the JDK.
Some Swing elements interpret the Tab key specifically or act as a
pseudo-focus cycle root, for example multiline text fields, JTrees,
and JTables. For these components, you must use Ctrl+Tab to
navigate out of the component. You can use Tab and Ctrl+Tab to
navigate through all elements of the GUI. Use Enter, Esc, and the
Arrow keys to operate menus, combination boxes, and buttons. You
can assign shortcut keys to the most important menus and buttons by
using JMenuItem.setAccelerator(KeyStroke)
and AbstractButton.setMnemonic(int).
You can implement navigation and operation on graphic objects
(instances of IlvGraphic) by using the keyboard
accelerators (IlvAccelerator and its subclasses). Keyboard
accelerators are associated with a key event and installed at the
highest level manager of a view. The accelerators also apply to a
submanager of the highest level manager. For details, see Handling input events: interactors and
accelerators.
Navigation between graphic objects is handled by the selection
mechanism of the manager. For details, see Selection in a manager. The selection handle
shows you which object is currently selected.
You can find a sample that illustrates the accessibility features
of the JViews Framework
in <installdir>/jviews-frameworkxx/samples/accessibility.