Hi Rob, The best practise regarding shortcut keys is to follow the standard of the OS on which your application operates, because that set of shortcuts will be what the user learns, whether or not it is localised.
Incidentally, while it may be convenient in English that certain of the major shortcuts have the same initial letter as their function names (Save, Print), this is neither necessary nor consistent: X for Cut, V for Paste, Z for Undo, etc. Having designed shortcut and mnemonic schemes for software many times, I can tell you that it is completely impossible to come up with a full set of shortcuts where even a majority of them use the first letter of their function name. Using the first letter certainly helps the user remember the key, but there are far too few available keys. The guidelines, in order of desirability, are: first letter of the function name, any letter in the first word (except i, f, l, or t for mnemonics), the first letter of the second word (if there is one), any letter in the second word (except i, f, l, or t for mnemonics), and finally, for shortcuts, any letter at all. There are more guidelines here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms971323.aspx For localisation purposes, using the "English" scheme may seem similar to forcing people to speak English, but the more important thing for the user is that the shortcuts are consistent between apps on the OS. The worst experience is when the user hits Ctrl+C in your app, then Ctrl+V in mine, but mine wants Ctrl+P for paste, and I've decided Ctrl+V will rearrange the workspace instead (Yuck! And I've seen it happen!). Our apps are localised into several languages, and our shortcuts do not change. I have never heard of this causing an issue for users. And who knows - maybe we'll luck out and Cut will start with an X in Swahili*. Cheers, Sylvania User Experience Designer Techsmith Corp. (* Apparently, Cut in Swahili is actually Kata, so no X there...) ________________________________________________________________ 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
