Re: [HIG] DISCUSSION: Section 53: Keyboard Interaction Basics: Add bookmark shortcut



Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> > > but the bookmark editor doesn't have a keyboard shortcut since it's not
> > > a very commonly used feature.
> >
> > Maybe not in Nautilus, but rearranging bookmarks is a common action in
> > more specialized web browsers. It might not be as commonly used as
> > adding bookmarks, but once they become more than a handful, they tend to
> > become less useful if they are not arranged somehow. And rearranging and
> > deleting bookmarks is the primary use of a bookmarks editor.
> 
> But still, I think most users make bookmarks a lot more often than
> they use the bookmark editor. I bookmark things every other day or so
> and use the bookmark editor once every couple of months.

And I wasn't arguing with your claim that it is probably a less common
operation to edit bookmarks than adding them. In fact, I agreed. :)
But I don't think that it is a common scenario that adding bookmarks is
a daily operation, and on the same time rearranging them is a monthly
operation. Such a habit would probably make bookmarks useless for most
people. I think that among people that make heavy use of bookmarks,
using the bookmarks editor is probably more common than once a month.

Also, not all users of bookmarks add bookmarks the same way. I know it
is a common practice to first add the bookmark, then immediately after
that open the bookmarks editor to arrange it into a folder or sort it
differently. For users adding and sorting bookmarks this way, both are
equally common operations.


> > > That makes some sense, but I really think Control+B is much more
> > > obvious and it's weird to have it assigned to the less common "Edit
> > > Bookmarks..." operation rather than the extremely common "Add
> > > Bookmark" operation. Whoever decided that at Microsoft (I'm pretty
> > > sure this comes from IE originally) was on some big-time crack.
> >
> > I suspect that IE borrowed it from Netscape at some point. And so on...
> 
> Netscape 4.x has Ctrl+K for add bookmark.

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


> > Nevertheless, it hardly makes sense to break this because we think it's
> > slightly more logical some other way. It's only logical for English
> > anyway, many international users couldn't care less what the letters of
> > the shortcuts are, as long as they are the same between applications.
> 
> I can see how it's a tradeoff. On the other hand if you always do the
> same thing as other enviornment you never really innovate in terms of
> UI design.

I understand that. On the same time you have to judge the benefits of
revolution against the benefits of tradition and familiarity. In this
case, I think the benefits of the revolution are of much less
significance than the problems of breaking user expectations from many
more common web browser environments. I don't think that's worth it in
this case.


Christian



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