As a Dvorak user, all of these JS games with their hardcoded keys are impossible to play without changing my layout back to Qwerty.

1,2,3 + arrow keys would be a better choice for sure.

It's tough to use the arrow keys for JavaScript games. If you bind events to those keys, the web browser won't care and still use those keys to scroll. It's bad design since then you'll be scrolling and manipulating the game at the same time.

The reason that this isn't a problem for Flash is because Flash grabs and steals all keyboard and mouse focus away from the browser; not something anyone should re-implement in JavaScript.

Yup! I do most of my browsing with keys, and I can't tell you how many times I have hit CTRL+W repeatedly before realizing flash had the focus. Eww.

What ever happened to standard mapping of ctrl, alt, space, shift for arcade games on PC?

Thanks for the tip. I should have noticed this myself, as I live in Berlin (but have my keyboard set to English). Will be changing the controls to try and support Dvorak, Qwerty and Germans.

Just don't hardcode.

^^^THIS!^^^

Seriously, if you haven't done it already, find or make yourself a module that lets the user customize the keyboard controls to his/her preference. Then you can just drop it into any game you write, and presto! You're good to go!

For even more gooey goodness, make up some one-click "profiles" for different keyboards that users can pick at a click. You don't need to make it top priority, and you may not even need to do all the work yourself. If you just ask for people's preferences in a forum, or a feedback form with the game itself, you can probably get a ton of helpful input.

Best of luck!

Equally unworkable with french (AZERTY) keyboards.

asdw would be better for qwerty anyways.