Spatial navigation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In computing, spatial navigation is the ability to navigate between focusable elements, such as hyperlinks and form controls, within a structured document or user interface according to the spatial location.

This method is widely used in application software like computer games.

In case of web browser, traditionally, tabbing navigation was used to change the focus within an interface, by pressing the tab key of a computer keyboard to focus on the next element (or Shift + Tab to focus on the previous one). The order is based on that in the source document. For HTML without any style, this method usually works as the spatial location of the element is in the same order of the source document. However, with the introduction of style via presentational attributes or stylesheets such as CSS, this may not be always true. Spatial navigation overcomes this problem by using the arrow keys (with one or more modifier key held) to navigate on the "2D plane" of the interface, for example, pressing up arrow key will focus on the closest focusable element on the top (relative to the current element). In many cases, this could save a lots of key presses.

This accessibility feature is available in a number of applications, e.g. Opera. Doug Turner, the Minimo lead developer, has created a couple of special Mozilla Firefox builds with this feature. Eventually, this may build as a default part of Firefox.

In games such navigation is represented by for example camera-relative movement.