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 graphic
user interface (GUI), such as menus, buttons, and so on. In the
case of diagrams and charts, you can use keystrokes to move through
the contents.
When you use this kind of navigation, visual
feedback shows the currently selected GUI element, for example, a
node or link in a diagram, or a point in a chart. You can also use
keystrokes for the most important menu actions.
A JViews Diagrammer
application consists essentially of Swing GUI components and
graphic objects inside a manager view. JViews Diagrammer uses the
mechanism of the graphics framework within JViews Framework for
keyboard navigation. For more information, see Rogue Wave JViews Advanced Features
Framework Keyboard navigation.
Most of the keyboard accelerators in the graphics framework can
be used in a JViews
Diagrammer application with the exception of :
- IlvStartEditTextSelectionAccelerator
- IlvExpandSelectionAccelerator
In a dashboard diagram, in addition to the selection mechanism of
the graphics framework (at the IlvGraphic object level), you can also use
the provided selection manager (IlvDashboardKeySelectManager) to circulate
the selection of the symbols. The symbols are arranged in a
selection chain, according to their locations in the dashboard
diagram. The selection manager keeps track of a selected symbol,
and you can move the selection to the next or previous symbol in
the selection chain. As a default implementation, the provided IlvDashboardInteractor class processes the
keyboard input events and invokes the selection manager when you
press the Arrow keys. When you press the Enter key, if the selected
symbol has a target dashboard URL (see the IlvDashboardSymbol.setTargetDashboardURL
method), the IlvDashboardInteractor
shows a dashboard diagram displaying the dashboard contents
specified by that URL.