Hotkeys for keyboards connected to mobile devices

[elynema]

Description

As part of 7.7 release, we did a fair amount of hotkey testing on mobile devices. However, hotkeys are not inherently built into mobile devices, and would potentially only be used if a bluetooth keyboard was hooked up to the device. This seems most likely for iPads?

We should investigate best practices for hotkeys for mobile devices with bluetooth keyboards.

The particular area where we found hotkeys on a keyboard don't work on mobile devices is the up/down arrow key for volume control. Instead of raising / lowering volume, it scrolls the screen. In addition, the 'm' hotkey did not work to mute in full-screen Safari on iPad.

The scrolling with use of down arrow key is shown on iPhone in the following video (ignore the accidental full-screen at the beginning):

Private Zenhub Video

For past work, see: https://github.com/avalonmediasystem/avalon/issues/5645

Done Looks Like

• [ ] Investigate best practices for hotkeys on mobile devices with bluetooth keyboards

[Dananji]

I tested Ramp demo site on Browserstack for the following devices;

• Google Chrome and Safari in iOS 17.4 in a iPhone 15: none of the hotkeys worked
• Google Chrome and Safari in iOS 17.1 in a iPad Pro 12.9: none of the hotkeys worked
• Google Chrome in Android v13.0 in Samsung Galaxy Tab S9: all the hotkeys except for up/down arrow keys for volume worked
• Google Chrome in Android v14.0 in Samsung Galaxy S24: all the hotkeys except for up/down arrow keys for volume worked

Then tested on following physical devices with a Bluetooth keyboard;

• Safari in iOS 17.4 in a iPhone 12 Pro: all the hotkeys except for up/down arrow keys for volume worked
• Google Chrome in iOS 17.3 iPad Pro 11: all the hotkeys except for up/down arrow keys for volume worked

NOTE: in mobile devices the player is built with the mute toggle button instead of the volume panel, thus the up/down arrow keys aren't suppose to work in this context. The device's volume buttons are expected to be used to increase/decrease volume.

[Dananji]

@elynema and @joncameron I didn't test this on a physical Android device and I'm not sure whether the behavior in Browserstack can be accepted as working. I think we probably should test it on a physical device. What do you think?

[joncameron]

Testing on a physical device would be nice if possible but I would be satisfied as long as iOS is covered. I unfortunately don't have a physical Android device to test with. I wonder if Library IT has one we could borrow for this purpose.