A recent project I worked on required extensive keyboard key support
while dealing with
a lot of data entry. In this case, it only made sense to support
shortcuts requiring a modifier
(alt+shift+<key>) in our case. This is obviously due to the fact that
a shortcut may be used
while focused on a text input area.
I personally wanted to only use one modifier (alt + <key>) but, the
DOS based interface
we are replacing uses alt+shift and users were used to this setup.
A developer on the team actually wanted me to support multi-key
shortcuts mainly because he thought
it would be cool to have shortcuts that were similar to ViM bindings.
Yuck!
I do like the use of single key shortcuts for navigation (google's
k,j,n, and p keys).
- John
On May 19, 2008, at 3:13 AM, Apar Maniar wrote:
Alok I would say it depends on the application, in a word processor
like MS
Word for example the keyboard keys are used for typing hence it would
definitely confuse a user to have the same key do two different
things,
although the same could apply to the very window in gmail where I am
typing
this as well, so not all web apps use single letter shortcuts I have
to use
CTRL + B if I want to type *this *word in bold.
On the other hand if you take an application like photoshop to
select or
change various parameters you have plenty of single letter keys
being used,
off the top of my head "M" is used to select the marquee tool and
repeated
pressing cycles between the available options, but the same key used
on a
Text layer would result just in the typing of the letter M on the
canvas.
Would love to see what others have to add
Apar
On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 6:37 AM, Alok Jain <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
Hi All,
The keyboard shortcuts ion desktop environment have generally been
defined
with the use of a supporting key - Control , Alt, Shift (or command
in case
of OSX). On other hand newer web apps like gmail use just alphabet
key -
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6594
I think it is easier to just a single alphabet key and not be
confused if
something was Cntrl + C or Alt + C etc.. But I also wonder if
using a
single alphabet as shortcut break user's mental model in any way..
Any thoughts, opinions, research on which approach is better?
Regards
Alok Jain
________________________________________________________________
Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)!
To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe
List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines
List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
--
The goal of the action is the action itself!
________________________________________________________________
Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)!
To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe
List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines
List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
________________________________________________________________
Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)!
To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe
List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines
List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
