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

[Luis Villa <louie ximian com>]

On Wed, 2002-05-22 at 13:36, Calum Benson wrote:
> 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 :)

Hrm. I guess maybe that is a 'just something I'm used to' factor :/

> 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.

Agreed.

> 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 :)

AFAICT, this only works when the tab widget is focused, which means (at
minimum) a whole bunch of keystrokes[1] and/or a mouseclick before these
are usable, as compared to ctl+<num>, which has (in the past) worked
without focus and hence with only one keycombo press. _much_ more
efficient.

Luis

[1]I still can't figure out how to do this without the mouse, FWIW.