[Usability]Re: HIG suggestion- alt+<num> shortcuts for tabbed/MD interfaces

[Michael Toomim <toomim uclink4 berkeley edu>]

Calum Benson wrote:
> Hmm... I'd be happier with this if those apps actually put a number on
> each tab so you knew which keybinding you had to press to bring them to
> the front-- any time I've tried it in xchat I've spent longer counting
> the tabs than I would have done just picking up the mouse and clicking
> on the damn thing in the first place :)

...

> In the meantime, the gtk-2.0 notebook widget does implement
> Ctrl+PgUp/PgDn for flipping between tabs, so applications that are using
> that but breaking those keybindings need to sort themselves out :)

I agree, I think that tab-forward and tab-backward are better than tab-# 
commands.

A) Most apps don't number their tabs.  Furthermore, tabs move positions 
all the time.  It is therefore hard for the user to figure out which 
number corresponds to a tab.

B) tab-forward and tab-backward take up only two keybindings, rather than N.

C) What do you do when you get more than 10 tabs?  With the tab-# 
commands, you suddenly can't navigate tabs using the keyboard anymore. 
This is especially the case when you have so many tabs open that the 
tab-bar has to have a scroll-arrow.  How do you choose the Nth tab when 
the first one is off the screen?