Re: Split/dual pane view again (but this time with code)

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On Wed, 2009-02-18 at 22:52 +0100, Holger Berndt wrote:

>  - How should active and inactive panes be visually distinguishable?
>    Right now, this is being done by greying out the location bar of the
>    inactive slot. Not a good solution.
>    The classic solution is to draw some thin border around the active
>    pane, and to use some kind of "inactive" color for the directory view
>    background.

The more 'standard' you could keep this, the better.  Changing the
background colour of the inactive pane could be problematic for
accessibility themes, for example, so you should always use standard
focus indication methods as far as possible.

>  - How far should the keyboard shortcuts from good old Norton Commander
>    (which are nowadays quasi-standards amongst split-view filebrowsers,
>    mainly F5: copy selection to other side, F6: move selection to other
>    side, TAB: make other pane active) be supported?

Personally, I wouldn't be in favour of using any of those.  The HIG says
about choosing application shortcut keys (emphasis mine):

        Do not use Ctrl+number *or numbered function keys* as shortcut
        keys, unless the number has some obvious relevance to the
        action. For example, Ctrl+2 and Ctrl+3 may be acceptable
        shortcut keys for View ? 2D View and View ? 3D View in a 3D
        modelling application.
        
And for moving focus between panes, GNOME/gtk already has a standard
shortcut (F6: next pane, Shift-F6: previous pane).  So inventing a new
one, not to mention over-riding the standard usage of Tab, wouldn't be
recommended.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            GNOME Desktop Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum             +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems