Using Cognos Analtyics 11.1.7IF9.

I have a user who, oddly enough, wants Cognos to make his workflow more efficient. (The nerve!) He thinks that if he can use the TAB button to navigate a prompt page, he'll be faster because he never needs to reach for the mouse.

To test this I created a simple report with a very simple prompt page using only textbox prompts. As I tab I notice it tabs to everything in the browser: browser tabs, the address bar, other objects in Cognos, ...even the labels (text items) I created for the prompts. Oh... and yes, at some point focus lands on a prompt control.

Within Cognos, I see that the tab order generally appears to be from the top down. (I haven't tried multiple columns of prompts in a table yet.) I must tab through the visual elements between the prompts. Also, while value prompts get focus, there is no visible indication of this.

Is there a way to set the tab order for the prompts on a prompt page?

Can I force it to skip the non-prompt elements?

Can the prompts be made to indicate that they have focus?

I tagged this question with javascript because I figure the answer will likely involve a Custom Control or a Page Module.

Of course, then I'll need to figure out how all this will work with cascading prompts and conditional blocks.

I found a similar post complaining about this being a problem in Cognos 8. The answer contains no detail. It just says to go to a non-existent web page.