Re: [Usability] Standard keyboard shortcut for opening a new tab?

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Tue, 25 Nov 2008, Mackenzie Morgan wrote:

> Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 03:09:01 -0500
> From: Mackenzie Morgan <macoafi gmail com>
> To: usability gnome org
> Subject: [Usability] Standard keyboard shortcut for opening a new tab?
>
> In Ubuntu, we recently had a bug filed about Gedit not using ctrl+t to
> open a new tab[1].

> [1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gedit/+bug/301942

A consistent approach would be good but lets be very clear what the
original report asks (it is short so I'll repeat it in full):

"When I am in gedit and press ctr-t a new tab does not open.
ctr-n works but it took me a long time to find and it is not what I am
used to after using firefox for so long.
Perhaps both could be mapped to opening a new tab. Or if some one uses
ctr-t a dialog could pop up showing to use ctr-n."

The user identified a problem of consistency and expectations that reduced
their fast and efficient use and required some adjustment (but good news
is an alternative was discoverable).  The proposed solution of popping up
a dialog was unfortunately wrong and user hostile: the message tells the
user the developers knew what they wanted but instead of just doing what
was asked tells the user to learn something different (see also the error
message you get if you try to eject by dragging a removable drive to the
drag to Recycle Bin/Trash).

Thankfully those commenting on the bug report politely ignored the
proposed solution and suggest other possibilities which tried to address
the root of the problem.  The suggestion to remap the
keybindings/shortcuts was good but unless there already exists a specific
underlying action for "new tab" seperate from the "new window" the user is
forced to choose one keybinding or the other and cannot have both.

If the gedit developers were willing to offer Ctrl+T for new tab in
addition to the default Ctrl+N for New Window, that would go some way to
meeting the users expectations and would be consistent with the behaviour
from Mozilla.  However this would be slightly out of step with the
behaviour of Gedit.

As I am not particularly a fan of Tabs I had hoped Gedit would evolve so
that it could be used as single window (SDI) application and the tabs
ignored by those who aren't interested, where Ctrl+N would get a new
window and Ctrl+T would create a new tab. Last I checked that wasn't the
behaviour and I'm unsure if the developers have any intentions of moving
in that direction.  (As I recall before the move to Gtk 2 gedit did work
more like I described, but it is understandable that developers want
to appeal to their most active users and emphasise features like
tabs.)

> After consulting the HIG, we see that this isn't one
> of the standard keyboard shortcuts.  Should it be?  Tabs are becoming
> increasingly common in applications (even Nautilus has them now), so
> maybe this is something that should be standardized in the next HIG
> revision.  Does standardizing ctrl+t for "new tab" sound like a good
> idea to anyone else?

I'm still reluctant to encourage the use of tabs. The group of users and
developers interested enough to comment in the issue of Tabs are self
selected and I believe those most likely to want to have many documents
(tabs or windows) open and have issues managing them.
I firmly believe the base case for ordinary users is working on only very
few documents at a time, and so while tabs should be possible they
shouldn't be in the way of a simple SDI layout for basic use.

Having said that  recommending Ctrl+T in the next Human interface
guidelines would seem like a good idea to encourage consistency
(even if there is a risk people will misunderstand it as encouragement to
add tabs everywhere as some jokers did during GUADEC*)


Sincerely

Alan Horkan

http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
http://www.linkedin.com/in/alanhorkan
http://alanhorkan.livejournal.com/

* Various mockups with Tabs everywhere were posted, and as is often the
case with good satire it was very difficult to know if they really were
joking.