Re: [Usability] Navigating the Main Application Menu using the keyboard

[Mathias Dahl <brakjoller gmail com>]

Kirk Bridger <kbridger shaw ca> writes:

> My guess is that this is simply a reflection of a common issue with
> keyboard accelerators: sometimes the menu has more than 1 word
> starting with the same letter.

Maybe, but while inside the menus this works by jumping between
different items starting with the same letter. So while in the
Applications menu, `o' jumps between Office and Other.

> In this case, if 'P' went to programming, how would someone get to the
> top-level "Places" without using the cursor keys?

Good point. What could be done then is to make `a' activate the
Applications menu in the same way `p' activates Places. Problems solved.

> The same thing happens with the 's' - it opens System rather than
> Sound...

Correct.

> The solution might be to indicate somehow what the accelerator key is
> in the menu, but the behavior makes sense to me in some ways.  I've
> just opened the menu and the accelerators take me to the top level
> menu items.

> It sounds like a design decision that made the best of a bad situation
> as the designer saw it.

Maybe, but I am not so sure about that. Doing as I have suggested above,
letting `a' activate Applications, would be a good solution, in my
opinion. My guess is that this is just something the designers
overlooked. I have filed a bug record about it.

/Mathias