Skipping to specific menu items

[ptrautwein]

Is there a way to set up the code so that if we have a large sub-menu, the user is able to jump to a link title by simply typing in the first letter or two of the link text?

In other words, a visually impaired user or someone using only keyboards to navigate through the menus and sub-menus doesn’t have to keep clicking the down arrows to find the specific link they are looking for, but can skip directly to the link?

As an example, we are building a drop down list of courses offered by Department at a Community College. The sub-menu for Departments offering courses in the Spring Semester is quite long. We’d like the user to be able to skip directly to “French” by starting to type: “F” or “FR” on their keyboard.

I’ve seen this work on other menus, but it’s not working for me on this one. Is there something I can add to the script that will make this work?

Thanks.

[admin]

The default scrolling functionality doesn’t provide a handy method to scroll to a certain position at the moment (this is something I’ve already planned as a feature for a future release) but if the long sub menu doesn’t have any additional sub levels, then a real scrollbar can be added to it. Then it’s not a problem to scroll the sub menu programmatically and focus any item when a user starts typing – here is a live example on one of our customers’ site (except that the menu scrolls on a letter link click instead of keyboard typing) – check the “Alle marken” sub menu:

https://www.kosmetikkaufhaus.de/

The additional functionality to scroll as you type is simple to add when a real scrollbar is used (it can be implemented as part of a support response).

[Author]

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