Re: [Usability] A bunch of UI issues

[lukekendall optushome com au]

On  5 Feb, Calum Benson wrote:
>  Seth Nickell wrote:
>  
> > I think no mnemonics is better. Actually, I think we agreed on this for
> > the HIG a long time ago, but my memory of that is faint and I don't see
> > it in the actual written document.
>  
>  http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/draft_hig/keyboard.html
>  
>  It's the very first thing that's mentioned under "Choosing Access Keys",
>  although it should probably be a bulleted guideline somewhere as well
>  (assuming we wanted to stick with it).

Lots of studies have shown that mnemonics work well.  They don't have
to be entirely *plausible*, they just have to be memorable!  And given
that you're not creating a UI in a vacuum any more - we have almost 20
years of history now, where people expect certain mnemonics - you'd be
asking for grief in departing too far from the few shortcuts that
people have come to expect a particular meaning.

For example, having 2 different shortcuts for cut, copy and paste
depending on whether you're in a text field or not seems likely to
cause confusion.  Though maybe I've completely misunderstood the section
on "Additional Widget Navigation Shortcut Keys"?  Perhaps that's just a
mode that Emacs fans can choose to turn on, and which are off by
default?


One final point about accessibility.  Won't some users find *any*
multi-key shortcut impossible to type?  Like any Ctrl-X combo at all?
If you only have one hand, or one finger ...

If so, is there a way to modify the input model so that Ctrl (etc.) can
be pressed and released, and still modify the following key?

luke