Tab order in message creation form

Contribute UX

AI-generated summary

amundo finds the tab order in the message creation form counterintuitive and suggests a revised order:

  1. Recipient
  2. Subject
  3. Body
  4. Message (send)
  5. Cancel
  6. This is an official warning (which they also think should be less prominent).

sam agrees with the suggested change, citing visual counterintuitiveness. jordan-vidrine requests clarification on how amundo creates messages, as their own experience differs, with the subject appearing first in the tab order. codinghorror emphasizes the importance of tab order for accessibility and suggests it should be checked with each release.

1

I find the tab order in the message creation form counterintuitive. It goes:

  1. Recipient
  2. This is an official warning.
  3. Body
  4. Message (send)
  5. Cancel

Note that the subject line isn’t in this sequence at all, which also seems weird.

Also, #2 is a little freaky to be honest, should it be so prominent? I could imagine it being outside of the default tabbing sequence: so maybe:

  1. Recipient
  2. Subject
  3. Body
  4. Message (send)
  5. Cancel
  6. This is an official warning.

(Rather similar topic to this other post on topic index order).

Thanks!

1 Like
2

It is visually counterintuitive (cause focus jumps around in weird ways), but yes, I agree with this change. Thoughts @Designers ?

3 Likes
3

Hey there, I like these suggestions. Would you mind walking me through how you are creating a message?

In my testing, I do so by clicking your name, then clicking message. The order for me (on firefox) is

  1. subject / topic title
  2. this is an official warning
  3. body
  4. Message (send)
1 Like
4

Tab order is critical for accessibility, we ought to make sure we check this for each release @sam @eviltrout.

4 Likes