Using IDs to Improve Web Navigation with a Keyboard

We evaluated two variations of a keyboard-only web navigation technique. “ID Navigation” assigns a unique, incremental identifier (ID) to each interactive web page element. The ID is displayed as a tiny label beside each element when an activation key is pressed. One variation used numeric IDs, the other used a set of IDs limited to four sequential keys each associated with a fixed finger. The time to select elements using a mouse, TAB-key navigation, and the two new techniques was analysed using a keystrokelevel model and measured in an experiment. Selection time increased linearly with the number of elements for TAB-key navigation and was constant for ID navigation and the mouse. ID navigation was significantly faster than TABkey navigation however the mouse was fastest overall, as expected. Numeric ID navigation was the faster of the new methods and was better liked by the users.