>this is one of two counter-intuitive keyboard behaviors i'm aware of. the >other is tab, which most users would expect to get them to the next form >element.
I'm still scratching my head at how this is counter-intuitive? If you called it that, you must not understand the entire scope of tab, and the fact that it has no scope, it loops through the entire frame of the browser, including the address bar and links. With JavaScript you can prevent it from looping through links and the address bar by defining where it goes and what it does. YES, if it did infact stay within forms if you select a form element it would be counter-intuitive, but at this point, it is far from that based on logic. There are also more reasons to redine the default behaviour of tab.