Re: [orca-list] keys in conflict with XUL application keys

[Willie Walker <William Walker Sun COM>]

Hi All:

My apologies for the formatting of this message.  I'm wrestling with Thunderbird's composition settings.  It 
tries to be too smart and doesn't seem to let me write e-mail with simple plain text.  I hate software that 
is stupid in the process of trying to be smart.


> Ah, gotcha.  I was under the impression that the alphanumeric keys would 
> not be bound to UI elements without being combined with some other 
> modifier.  For instance, I assumed the possibility of Alt+B or Control+B 
> but not just B (or for that matter Shift+B).  Although I guess 
> Thunderbird does stuff like that -- and each time I accidentally do 
> something to trigger it, I find it disturbing/bad design. ;-)
I agree that it is bad design and content providers should not do this.

> Personally I think the best user experience is to keep the users in 
> charge of their settings rather than switching them on their behalf. 
>   
I agree with this as well.  No matter how smart you try to be, automatic guessing will most likely get it 
wrong at some point.  So, keeping it simple and under user control might be the less error prone of things to 
do.  But, we should hear what more users have to say.

Will