Basic Keyboard Navigation Concepts

The current active area of the screen is enclosed with a rectangle formed by dotted lines. This is the area that has focus. In the following illustration, the Contents label in the navigation pane has focus.

Contents Label Has the Focus

Following are general rules for navigating the help window:

• Pressing the Tab key moves the focus to the next active area. Following are some examples:
• If a toolbar button has focus, pressing Tab moves you to the next toolbar button. Continue tabbing to cycle through the toolbar and move to the Contents label of the navigation pane.
• If the Contents label has focus, pressing Tab moves you to the root entry in the table of contents.
• If focus is in a topic's HTML page, pressing Tab moves you to the next hyperlink.

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Tip    Hyperlinks show focus in the same way as other elements-with dotted outline formatting.

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• Pressing Shift+Tab moves the focus to the previous active area. For example, if the Contents label has focus, pressing Shift+Tab moves you to the toolbar.
• Pressing the up or down arrow key selects options within a function. For example, use the down arrow key to scroll the list of topics found by a search.
• Pressing the Enter key activates your selection. Following are two examples:
• After scrolling the list of topics found in the Search tab, press Enter to display the selected topic.
• In an HTML topic, after tabbing to the Next link, press Enter to display the next topic.
• Pressing F6 moves you back and forth between the navigation tabs and the HTML page displayed in the contents pane.