"Tab based navigation" is the default strategy for keyboard based navigation. The process is:
Identify what you want to click
Press tab until what you want to click is focused
Press enter
"Hint based navigation" seems to be the most popular alternative in browsers today. The process is:
Identify what you want to click
Bring up hints
Identify the hint matching what you want to click
Type the hint
Analysis of Existing Keyboard Navigation Strategies
The shortcoming of tab based navigation is the sheer amount of key presses it takes to reach your destination. The advantage is simplicity - it's easy to execute fast consistently.
The shortcoming of mouse based navigation is the complexity of the motion which limits how fast you can execute an action. The advantage is flexibility, you can express a wide range of subtly different intentions.
The shortcoming of hint based navigation is the extra attention it requires. Hint navigation requires an extra round trip between Human -> Machine.
Human (signal intention to click)
UI (display hints)
Human (react to hint)
UI (execute hint)
The bottleneck is the cognitive burden of reacting to the hint. The reaction is hard to train, because the hints can't be predicted.
Existing Approaches to Keyboard Navigation
"Tab based navigation" is the default strategy for keyboard based navigation. The process is:
"Hint based navigation" seems to be the most popular alternative in browsers today. The process is:
Analysis of Existing Keyboard Navigation Strategies
The shortcoming of tab based navigation is the sheer amount of key presses it takes to reach your destination. The advantage is simplicity - it's easy to execute fast consistently.
The shortcoming of mouse based navigation is the complexity of the motion which limits how fast you can execute an action. The advantage is flexibility, you can express a wide range of subtly different intentions.
The shortcoming of hint based navigation is the extra attention it requires. Hint navigation requires an extra round trip between Human -> Machine.
The bottleneck is the cognitive burden of reacting to the hint. The reaction is hard to train, because the hints can't be predicted.
Summary of tradeoffs:
Alternative Approaches Keyboard Navigation
I haven't tried it, but Vivaldi has a Spatial Navigation feature.
I imagine it lets you focus whatever is up/down/left/right. Kind of like mouse keys, but your mouse snaps to whatever is focus-able.
Here's a prototype of spatial navigation for Roam, see #5 for more thoughts on this: