_____/ On Thu 10 Nov 2005 22:48:09 GMT, [Denis de Bernardy] wrote : \_____
They [accesskeys] make Web interfaces as productive as native
desktop software.
I disagree with this statement. Unless I am mistaking, most people who
actually use keyboard short cuts are fluent with computer programming.
I can't see the correlation. Persistence of use, not necessarily in a pro-
grammatic context, gives the motivation to favour keystrokes. Have you
seen travel agents and how they handle these repeatable queries? *grin*
I
meet highly educated people everyday who have 10+ years of experience using
Word and Excel who have no clue how to copy, cut and paste using the
keyboard.
I'd suggest a couple of possibilities:
* Teachers or trainers should take the blame. I have seen people copying
and pasting data using the context menus or, at worst, the main menu. This
reduces productivity enormously if all you do is manage a spreadsheet by
moving elements around and cannot drag-and-drop. In X11, you need only
highlight and use button2, so no need for the keyboard at all.
* (gross generalisation) People using Word and Excel have littler curiosi-
ty. They are less willing to *explore* a program, which refers to your
point above.
Also, I personally find using Alt quite unnatural, when compared to Ctrl.
Habit and the (un-)learning curve that comes as a result arguably are one of
the reasons. More importantly however, the Alt key is not as conveniently
located on the keyboard: Ctrl+X, Ctrl+S and Ctrl+Z all get pinky hits; their
Alt+ counterparts do not. Alt+Shift combos do not either.
I agree with you on that, but ALT (jointly with the mouse buttons) can be
used very heavily to control window position and scale. It has few reasons
to be left untouched. CTRL+SHIFT combinations are becoming common. I have
collisions with these (Thunderbird and XMMS). AmaroK goes as far as using
the Windows logo button.
_____/ On Thu 10 Nov 2005 23:55:02 GMT, [Mike Little] wrote : \_____
Denis,
You and others are missing the REAL point of access keys. They are for
people who are using assistive technologies. For example, people who
have shaky hands and cannot use a mouse very precisely. It is a big
help to them if the tab order works correctly and they can use access
keys to move around the various controls or just sections of the page.
It is also important for people who cannot see the screen to be able
to move around the page in a logical and convenient way. They cannot
scan the page and click on the item they want to deal with. They need
to be able to jump around with the keyboard and tab from control to
control.
These are also helpful when the mouse or motherboard go faulty. Many years
back I was forced to tab my way around and realised that certain interac-
tions were not designed properly. For example, to get to the Windows
taskbar, a user needs to press the Windows logo, hit ESC, then TAB twice.
_____/ On Thu 10 Nov 2005 20:10:44 GMT, [Owen Winkler] wrote : \_____
Andy Skelton wrote:
* Disable the accesskeys while the editor is blurred. Actually not
that hard to do.
It's both the least difficult and the option I like best. Fancy that.
I thought about it before, but it requires JavaScript. Then again, TinyMCE
has JavaScript as a fundamental pre-requisite.
_____/ On Thu 10 Nov 2005 19:12:43 GMT, [Andy Skelton] wrote : \_____
Forgive me for not quoting everyone. The gist is this: I hate mousing
the toolbar and I think you do, too. Hotkeys of one kind or another
are just necessary. Accesskey is the easiest and lightest way to go
but we must keep an eye out for key collision and user annoyance.
You can never satisfy everyone. Choose keys that lead to 0 collisions and
users will whine that they need to use two hands (e.g. CTRL+P) while bet-
ter shortcuts are available on their platform/browser. Choose keys that
are a decent compromise and signals will get devoured. Minutes can be
spent trying to figure out why a certain function does not work. Finally,
it turns out that it is overridden by something obscure that has never
been used before and isn't conspicuous either.
> The browser needs some way of "capturing" special keystrokes when a
> textarea is selected, the users eyes are looking at the textarea, or
> some other magic way of knowing what the user wanted to do! heh.
> Donncha.
This can be done by adding our own key-related event handlers to the
ones already implemented in TinyMCE. It's several times harder to code
but it's the most flexible method.
It would be far easier to enable the existing accesskeys on editor
focus and disable them on blur.
How about a user-configurable set of shortcuts?
Roy
No. We do it right or not at all, IMO.
I suppose you are right. Yet another set of options leads to confusion.
I think the best accesskeys are the ones already in TinyMCE core.
There are only three and they simply focus on the three parts of the
editor box. Our accesskeys do sometimes collide with browser shortcut
keys. I am to blame for not knowing my own browser's shortcut keys!
Also, I learned that Alt+p was already assigned to our Publish button.
How about that? :-)
Now, let's collect some solutions in one place:
* Disable the accesskeys while the editor is blurred. Actually not
that hard to do.
* Use only upper-case accesskeys. Takes ten seconds to patch. Are
there any collisions with Alt+Shift+<letter>?
Rarely. None that I am aware of, but if WayV was configured in certain
ways, things could go awry. If you chose that combination, you probably
could not go right of the 'R', 'F' and 'V' on QWERTY.
* Revert accesskeys and write JS to capture Ctrl+<letter> only within
the editor. By far the most work to implement. Would there still be
any important key collisions?
* Develop a "safe" set of accesskeys with zero or very few important
collisions.
* Code support and UI for custom accesskeys or JS-captured keys.
Everyone concerned, please weigh in.
_____/ On Thu 10 Nov 2005 20:02:14 GMT, [Jason Bainbridge] wrote : \_____
My vote would go for a combination of the first two options, disable
the accesskeys when the editor is blurred and make them upper-case,
I'm not aware of any existing ALT+SHIFT+<letter> shortcuts and a quick
google didn't reveal any although interestingly it brought up Nestle's
website (www.nestle.com) that uses ALT+SHIFT+<number> for menu
navigation so it could already be some sort of defact standard to
avoid collisions.
Nestle always have to be different. They actually patented coffee beer re-
cently. *smile*
Roy
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