The Focus Manager Node Plugin makes it easy to manage focus among a Node's descendants. Primarily intended to help with widget development, the Focus Manager Node Plugin can be used to improve the keyboard accessibility of widgets.

When designing widgets that manage a set of descendant controls (i.e. buttons in a toolbar, tabs in a tablist, menuitems in a menu, etc.) it is important to limit the number of descendants in the browser's default tab flow. The fewer number of descendants in the default tab flow, the easier it is for keyboard users to navigate between widgets by pressing the tab key. When a widget has focus it should provide a set of shortcut keys (typically the arrow keys) to move focus among its descendants.

To this end, the Focus Manager Node Plugin makes it easy to define a Node's focusable descendants, define which descendant should be in the default tab flow, and define the keys that move focus among each descendant. Additionally, as the CSS :focus pseudo class is not supported on all elements in all A-Grade browsers, the Focus Manager Node Plugin provides an easy, cross-browser means of styling focus.