Controlling order of tabs/focus in NN4

[bruhaha]

On part of our site we have a login form. The focus is set(via onLoad in the body tag) so that the cursor begins in the first box (username). Hitting tab should take the user to the next box (password), then to the "submit/login" button.

It works great in IE, and NN6. But NN4 insists on tabbing through the image-links of the navigation bar in the frame above
the login frame first. (It works fine if I take the page out of frames, but that is not an option right now.)

Setting "tabindex" values makes no difference.

One other note: if I begin by clicking the mouse in the username box it will follow the correct order. So apparently the browser "doesn't see"/ignores where the focus started.

Any suggestions?

[tedster]

Netscape 4.x has no support for tabindex, and as far as I know there is no workaround. Netscape just tabs through the links and inputs in the order they appear in the HTML. IN fact. this causes usability problems for people using assistive technology.

I followed several threads on the w3.org archives and everyone acknowledged the problem and no one had an answer.

[bruhaha]

Thanks for all the legwork, Tedster.

Funny thing is, hearing it could not be done made me all the more determined to find a workaround.

And I did! At least for the page I was working on.

I simply put the navigation bar in the other frame in <div> tags, setting their position --absolute or relative doesn't matter, but the positioning is necessary --

<div id="" style="position:. . .">

(I'm not sure why the person who originally designed the page did not do this, since it was the pattern they followed elsewhere on the site...)

Now when I tab NN4 skips right over the other frame and on to the next field (the one I wanted).

I suppose if you were to use absolute positioning you could use a variation on this method to re-order your code and trick Netscape into following the tab order you want. . . ? Wouldn't that be a pain!

[deepakt]

bruhaha,
what if your navigation bar contained a few input fields? would the div have still fixed the problem?

[bruhaha]

what if your navigation bar contained a few input fields? would the div have still fixed the problem?

Haven' tested it, but I think so. Since positioning the layer makes NN skip over the frame completely --including elements it would normally tab to (mostly links)-- I don't think inserting an input field in their place would make any difference.