Tab order vs Mobile order [#2145031]

In templates/page.tpl.php - I would like to have the first sidebar:
$sidebar_first = render($page['sidebar_first']); print $sidebar_first;

come before the Main Content so that the tab order is consistent. Right now when you tab through the content it doesn't flow from left to right. You tab through the main content and then jump back to the left sidebar before jumping on to the right sidebar.

This isn't consistent, but is there as there's this -100% applied here:

.region-sidebar-first {
    margin-left: -100%;
    width: 20%;
}

I'm pretty sure that is there so that in mobile sites the main content actually does come first (which is the desired behaviour).

Is there any way around this?

Comments

Comment #1

Jeff Burnz CreditAttribution: Jeff Burnz commented 27 November 2013 at 12:52

If it were possible to use Panels then that would be an easy way around it, because the responsive panels in AT are not content source ordered.

Other than that you would need to manually edit the templates and CSS files to switch the layout.

Because of the mobile/responsive use cases I am not tempted to change this. In D8 you will be able to change this easily. For AT D7 development is essentially frozen baring the next release which contains a lot of fixes and minor changes, however due to how the layout works and limitations of the float layout model I am essentially bound to maintain the status quo.

Comment #2

mgifford

he/him

English

CreditAttribution: mgifford commented 27 November 2013 at 15:26

Thanks Jeff. We'll see if we can address it using Panels. I understand the complexity of this problem, and happy to hear it will be easier to fix in D8.

Comment #3

Jeff Burnz CreditAttribution: Jeff Burnz commented 27 November 2013 at 20:22

In AT D8 I have abandoned the idea of "a fixed page template that bends a lot", instead page templates are "defined" in yaml files and generated, so they are a sort of plugin. CSS is entirely written by you, no CSS theme settings at all, but it ships with a SASS library of layout fragments. I'll be making some videos about this in the coming months, it's very easy once you see this in action.

In short you could get exactly what you want a in a few minutes. The major problem with AT D7 is inflexibility, you are locked into what I say goes or learn some pretty heady PHP and write quite complex page or panels layout plugins. This is slow and the only real advantage is that they are dry, you can reuse them over and over. AT D8 you can still use the layouts over and over, but they are far far easier to set up.