Re: [Usability] Minor wording change to the HIG

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On Sat, 2005-12-24 at 00:51 +0000, Alan Horkan wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Dec 2005, Corey Burger wrote:
> 
> > Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2005 13:58:38 -0800
> > From: Corey Burger <corey burger gmail com>
> > To: usability gnome org
> > Subject: [Usability] Minor wording change to the HIG
> >
> > In
> > http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/input-keyboard.html#standard-shortcuts
> >
> > It says:
> >
> > PageUp, Ctrl-PageUp, PageDown, Ctrl-PageDown	Scroll selected view by
> > one page up/left/down/right
> 
> Not very clear is it?  I think it could be clarified and be made a bit
> more specific, explaining the difference between how "Page Up" and
> "Ctrl+Page Up" behave.

Agreed, have just fixed this in the draft version (by splitting it into
two rows, one for up/down, one for left/right).

> > However it makes not mention of a common usage of Ctrl+PageUp|Down,
> > which is switching tabs.
> 
> Does that take priority over Ctrl+Tab?  If so then why?

AFAIK Ctrl-Tab doesn't work at all for switching tabs, in GNOME... it's
supposed to be reserved for moving focus out of a control that otherwise
uses Tab for its own devices.  (Which would only really be an entry
field that accepted tab characters).

Ctrl-PgUp/PgDn was originally adopted in GNOME because it was pretty
much a cross-platform standard.  However, various widgets also use
Ctrl-PgUp/PgDn for their own internal navigation, so if you try to
switch tabs while one of those is focused, you're screwed.

For that reason, Ctrl+Alt+PgUp/PgDn was added to GtkNotebook as an
alternative, and should work for all your tab switching needs.  If an
app doesn't support this one, file a bug.

> Also I didn't think we* particularly encouraged Tabbed interfaces (but of
> course accepted they could be useful in limited circumstances if
> implemented carefully).

You're right, this was probably the reason we originally opted not to
mention them in the HIG, as (the theory goes that) tabs shouldn't
normally be used anywhere that they might conflict with
application-level shortcuts.  If you'd like to see them added to the
HIG, please file a bug.

Cheeri,
Calum.

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

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems