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

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

Luis Villa wrote:
> 
> For some time, galeon and xchat have used alt+<num> to switch to tab
> <num>. The new gnome-terminal has the ability to add this as a
> keybinding, and otherwise I'm unaware of any uses of these shortcuts
> elsewhere. [Sawfish may use them, but I don't believe that is by
> default.] Can the HIG specify that this be the suggested default for
> tabbed/MD interfaces? 

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 :)

If it's an idea we're happy with then I'm sure we'd be agreeable to
adding something to the HIG about it, at least to warn off hackers from
using those keystrokes for anything else.  Equally, though, it strikes
me as a behaviour that really ought to be built into the toolkit itself,
rather than hoping people read the right part of the HIG when they're
designing their apps.

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 :)

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson ireland sun com    Desktop Engineering Group
http://www.sun.ie                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems