Re: [HIG] Update, resolution of initial policy questions

[Gregory Merchan <merchan phys lsu edu>]

On Thu, Nov 01, 2001 at 12:32:05PM +0000, Calum Benson wrote:
> Talking of shortcut keys, did we reach consensus on whether "Add
> Bookmark" should be "Ctrl+B" or "Ctrl+D"?  I kind of lost track  :o)

Grepping through my mbox, I find:

I said OK on Ctrl+D for adding, Ctrl+B for editing

Matthew Thomas (mpt):
> Given that more than 95 % of Web users use browsers where the
> shortcut for `Add Bookmark' is Control+D or Command+D, not to
> mention the thousands of Web pages which exhort you to bookmark them
> by typing Control+D, the choice of Control+B for this function is
> ... interesting.

Christian Rose (menthos) vs. Maciej Stachowiak (mjs):

menthos> We investigated this when we had the same discussion for Galeon
menthos> (http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57838). It turned out most
menthos> popular and modern browsers use Control+B to open the bookmarks editor,
menthos> and Control+D to add a bookmark. Nautilus simply has no bookmarks
menthos> editor, so that might be the reason why Control+B became "Add bookmark".

mjs> Nautilus does have a bookmark editor, but the bookmark editor doesn't
mjs> have a keyboard shortcut since it's not a very commonly used feature.
  . . .
mjs> That makes some sense, but I really think Control+B is much more
mjs> obvious and it's weird to have it assigned to the less common "Edit
mjs> Bookmarks..." operation rather than the extremely common "Add
mjs> Bookmark" operation. Whoever decided that at Microsoft (I'm pretty
mjs> sure this comes from IE originally) was on some big-time crack.

menthos> Maybe not in Nautilus, but rearranging bookmarks is a common action in
menthos> more specialized web browsers. It might not be as commonly used as
menthos> adding bookmarks, but once they become more than a handful, they tend to
menthos> become less useful if they are not arranged somehow. And rearranging and
menthos> deleting bookmarks is the primary use of a bookmarks editor.
  . . .
menthos> I suspect that IE borrowed it from Netscape at some point. And so on...
menthos> Nevertheless, it hardly makes sense to break this because we think it's
menthos> slightly more logical some other way. It's only logical for English
menthos> anyway, many international users couldn't care less what the letters of
menthos> the shortcuts are, as long as they are the same between applications.

mjs> But still, I think most users make bookmarks a lot more often than
mjs> they use the bookmark editor. I bookmark things every other day or so
mjs> and use the bookmark editor once every couple of months.
  . . .
mjs> Netscape 4.x has Ctrl+K for add bookmark.

menthos> ...and Ctrl+B (Alt+B on Unix versions) for Bookmarks Editor.


Hope that helps! Sorry about the number of columns.

Cheers,
Greg Merchán