Hi Phil, Phil Bull wrote: > Hi Lennart, > > On Tue, 2007-01-16 at 03:32 +0100, Lennart Borgman wrote: > [...] >> Antoher of my favorites when it comes to usability is my frustration >> about the continous wheel inventing. One time when I installed GNU/Linux >> everything went very, very fine -- until I should login and start using >> it. I had no mouse on that system. I tried Ctrl-Esc, the Window Keys, >> Ctrl-Alt-Del and everything else I learned from my MS Windows >> experience. Nothing of it worked. >> >> I never got to test GNU/Linux on that system because of that. Too much >> waste of time. Of mine and a lot of good developers that had worked hard >> to get the system to me. It all failed because of that reinvention of >> the wheel. Was it Alt+F2 that I should have hit? I am not sure, but I >> believed I heard that a month later. However I do not care, I do not >> want to learn that. Why should I? Instead I tried to get my point >> through to the developers and usability groups working with GNOME: Try >> to let the user use their experience. Even if they have experiences from >> the big EVIL MS. Do not bannish the users for their experience. That is >> just not the way forward! > > There are often good reasons why keyboard shortcuts are different to > those on Windows. In the case of the Windows key, I believe the reason > it's not used for the Applications menu (which you can access with Alt + > F1) is because some of the platforms which GNOME can run on don't > traditionally use keyboards with Windows keys. Not everyone is switching > to GNOME from Windows! Note that many of the keyboard shortcuts on Mac > OS are different too.
MS Windows has the key combination Ctrl+Esc to bring up the start menu just for that reason that the keyboard might not have those keys. This did not however work either. I see no reason why it should not work in GNOME. Yes, not everyone is switching from Windows, but the majority of PC users are using MS Windows and I think we should try to welcome them to GNU/Linux. > Apart from Alt + F1 and Alt + F2 (the Run dialog), I don't think that > there are very many other differences. I do agree that the changes can > be confusing, though. > > In GNOME, the recommended shortcuts are defined in the Human Interface > Guidelines [1]. If you do find problems navigating in GNOME with the > keyboard, please file a bug in the bugtracker [2]. Thanks for the pointers. I hope the guidelines will include Ctrl+Esc for the start menu too. That would have made it easier to start the system and maybe read the HIG ;-) > Thanks, > > Phil Thanks for your kind answer, L > [1] - > http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/input-keyboard.html > [2] - http://bugzilla.gnome.org/ > _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
