Unrelated: I think every web application should use keyboard shortcuts. This is possibly my favorite gmail feature. I can pretty much do whatever I want (save Logout and Attach File) using my keyboard.
Counter point: I configured my browser (Opera) to heavily use single-letter shortcuts, such as Q/E to navigate to next/prev tabs, W/S to scroll up and down, T to open new tabs, etc. This and mouse gestures were a great improvement in my browsing experience.
Things get horribly broken with pages that have their own shortcuts too. For example, when I'm quickly pressing E (next tab) to see all my tabs and happen to find an open Gmail tab, it'll archive the message displayed, no questions asked.
Thankfully Gmail allows the user to disable such shortcuts, and there's always the "undo" button, but I'm not willing to hunt this option in every single website I visit.
I have the NYT page open right next to this one, and I get stuck whenever I come across it because none of my shortcuts work there.
I think individual websites shouldn't be able to dictate what I can or cannot do with my browser. It should be a browser option to ignore such shortcuts, but while that doesn't happen, be mindful of users like me.
I disagree, I think it is the browser's job to get out of the way as much as possible. That the browser provides you shortcuts shows that it thinks of itself as being more important than the websites it renders (Opera knows Web APIs and chose to implement a feature that butts heads with one because it's rarely used).
Boppreh said he or she configured Opera to use those keys, are you suggesting that a browser ignore user configuration to better "get out of their way?".
If so, I strongly disagree with you. But I would agree that a browser's default configuration should be as unobtrusive as possible --but when configured it should meekly obey and not let websites act against your expressed will.
The browser is more important than the websites it renders, up to where preferences are concerned. Would you like websites to override your pop-up blocking preferences?
No, but that's a security preference, I don't want the browser overriding well-known Javascript APIs. Here's another example: Firefox for Android uses a swipe to the left to get to your tabs and a swipe to your right to get to favorites/navigation controls. This means that any site that uses swipe gestures for UI are broken. Google+ doesn't work on Firefox for Android for this reason. To me this is browser fail, not website fail.
