Keyboard shortcuts

The theme binds four keys. This page is what they are, when they are listening, and where a reader who has never read this page finds out about them — because a shortcut nobody can discover is a shortcut nobody has.

#The bindings

The modifier follows the reader's keyboard, not the author's: ⌘ on an Apple one, Ctrl everywhere else. It is resolved once the browser is there to answer, so a prerendered page ships the safer Ctrl and swaps on arrival.

[ and ] stay inside the section being read. The last page of one section offers no next page into another — crossing a section is what the section row is for, and a key called "next page" that leaves the subject is not the same key.

#Where the reader is told

Four places, and all four draw from the same definition, so none of them can come to advertise a key the layer has stopped binding:

• The search button carries its own chord — ⌘K or Ctrl+K — in the cap on its right.
• The previous and next links at the foot of a page carry [ and ]. These were the keys nothing mentioned: a reader had to open the sheet to learn that the two links they were already looking at had keys.
• The keyboard button beside the search opens the sheet with a pointer, on every page from the lg breakpoint up; below it the header hides the button, since a touch screen has no keys to list. It is the answer to the circular part of the problem — ? opens the list of keys, and you have to know that to press it.
• The sheet itself lists every live binding with its keys, on ? or on that button.

#When a key stands down

A global single-character shortcut fires under a reader who never opted into it, so the unmodified keys are guarded rather than merely bound. Nothing fires:

• once something nearer the key has already handled it;
• while the reader is typing — an input, a textarea, a select, a contenteditable region;
• anywhere inside a dialog, menu, listbox, combobox, grid or tree, which answer keystrokes themselves.

The unmodified keys stand down once further: they fire only while the page's own content holds focus, never while a link, button or tab does. ⌘/Ctrl+K is the exception, because no control wants that chord.

A page focus target with tabindex="-1" counts as content, deliberately — that is where focus parks after a navigation, and a reader who has just landed on a page is exactly who [ and ] are for.

#Turning the bare keys off

shortcuts.singleCharacter: false unbinds ?, [ and ] and leaves ⌘/Ctrl+K. Switch access, voice control and dictation all emit bare characters as a matter of course, and a page that navigates away under one of them shows no cause; no input method produces the modified chord by accident.

The policy is a boolean rather than a binding table, and that is deliberate: see shortcuts in the configuration reference.

#Overriding any of it

The list, the guards and the drawing are one module — useDuxtShortcuts(). The two components around it are DuxtShortcuts, the sheet, and DuxtShortcutsTrigger, the button that opens it. Both are yours to replace the ordinary way; see Override the theme.