Re: [Usability] Keyboard navigation- outstanding issues

[George <jirka 5z com>]

On Sat, Sep 22, 2001 at 02:16:29AM +1000, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> Enter *can* be dangerous, so a level of indirection might be useful in those
> cases. I think the biggest issue with this is your last point - single
> dialogues get ugly.

Actually not really.  Imagine Enter activates the focused widget if it is a
button.  Then in simple dialogs it will just work just like now.

I still think that trying to be consistent AND usable with both Enter and Tab
is not going to work.  I mean why not make Enter and Tab do the most likely
action that the user would want to do, and have Ctrl-Tab and Ctrl-Enter do
the "consistent" action.  As in Ctrl-Enter always presses the default button.
On simple dialogs with just buttons or a single entry, Enter would work as 
now, on more complex it would perhaps work as a Tab.  Or not use Enter on
more complex dialogs.

I think the Tab always inserting a tab character even in fields where it
makes no sense is going to be VERY annoying because many many users know tab
as the thing to navigate among entry boxes.

Anyway even with the proposed consistency, you still get inconsistency, and
you get annoying behaviour for current users, so I don't think it's really a
step in the right direction.

I think we really need to work such that people who switch between different
environments can keyboard navigate our dialogs normally.  Because

  1) Most people will work in heterogenous environments (likely windows)
  2) Not all applications are gnome applications
  3) Any "standard" which enough app authors will find "annoying" won't
     be followed as widely as it should be.  (Which would mean getting the
     annoying bits out of the keyboard navigation)

George

-- 
George <jirka 5z com>
   It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
                       -- Albert Einstein