Access website drop-down menu in Chrome with keyboard only?

[Mactaculious]

How do you access the drop down menus on websites in Chrome with a keyboard only? Is there a default command to do this without having to set custom shortcut keys?

Let's take imgur.com for example.

Imgur
1) Once on the page and logged in you can do a command+F (for search) and type in the name of the user
2) Then press ESC to highlight/select on the user box which is highlighted in blue
3) From there how do you access the drop down menu with keyboard only?

 

[bennibeef]

If you can focus the drop down menu (tab until it highlights), just use the down arrow key.

 

[Mactaculious]

If you can focus the drop down menu (tab until it highlights), just use the down arrow key.

Tried this, following my steps and tabbing through, focuses the user name and highlights the username box in blue, if you mouse over this–you see the drop down menu options however using the down arrow, does nothing. This is of course using imgur as an example.

 

[bennibeef]

I dont have an account on this website but if its a true HTML dropdown menu if looks like any other dropdown menu on the web arrow-down key works. If its some kind of menu you get by clicking on some username and it displays some fancy menu then there is no way of just doing it with a keyboard. (Well there can be a way but thats not on your end just if the website takes the time to implement such things because lets say they are cool but gimmicky.)

 

[Mactaculious]

I dont have an account on this website but if its a true HTML dropdown menu if looks like any other dropdown menu on the web arrow-down key works. If its some kind of menu you get by clicking on some username and it displays some fancy menu then there is no way of just doing it with a keyboard. (Well there can be a way but thats not on your end just if the website takes the time to implement such things because lets say they are cool but gimmicky.)

Well it's definitely not taking the keyboard input, for example let's take this page. I tab over to 'Roundups' on the menu bar and the box is highlighted in light blue, then i try to use the down arrow and nothing happens.

Even by mousing over to the 'Roundups' drop-down menu, when the block is highlighted in dark blue and pressing down with the arrow keys does nothing.

 

[bennibeef]

Well there you got your problem.

Lets get in the coding side of things here:

A "real" dropdown menu is if focused, operable by the down arrow key. (the one bottom right of this site Forum Jump)

The dropdown menu you see here under round ups isnt a "real" one. Its technically a different thing because of that it doesnt know it is a dropdown menu. There is a javascript which shows/hides the links under the round ups title. It is not possible to open this dropdown menu with a keyboard because the event to show the menu is triggered by a mouseover or a mouse click, not a focus.


If you are try this to make some automated script you can actually tab-focus to this link but it is never showed because the box is hidden.

To automate this I would load the webpage stripped from CSS code which makes it into a pretty ugly looking page but easier to automate.

 

[Mactaculious]

Gotcha, that makes sense. I guess true navigation with keyboard only in Chrome isn't possible, unless using Vimium the extension that allows everything to be selectable by keyboard.