----- Original Message -----
From: "Křištof Želechovski" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "'Andrew Fedoniouk'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "'Ian Hickson'"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "'WHAT WG List'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2007 9:37 AM
Subject: RE: [whatwg] Looking at menus in HTML5...
Mnemonics in menu items are indispensable for actions you have to repeat
many times. For example, Visa periodically opens a promotion where you
can
enter your credit card payments one by one. If you do it once a month,
you
usually have quite a few of them to enter. Using a mouse for the purpose
is
much slower, drearier and more strenuous. And it may happen as well that
your employee has to fill such forms on a regular basis.
I imagine keyboard mnemonics are especially important for people with
disabilities. Their advantage over keyboard shortcuts is that you can
read
them incrementally (you can inform the user about a composite shortcut
when
he activates the menu item but the menu item usually disappears before she
is able to read the hint). An extreme case of broken UI is displaying the
shortcut in the status line down there when the focus is on the menu up
there.
Best regards
Chris
"Mnemonics in menu items are indispensable for actions you have to repeat
many times." - exactly!
But as I said the problem is that web applications are occasionally used
ones.
Means that they should have an "Inductive UI" [1,2] - self explanatory,
easily
discoverable. Mnemonics makes sense significantly more in Productive UIs -
applications like your favorite editor that you use each day. So you can
remember those keyboard sequences and use them effectively.
"I imagine keyboard mnemonics are especially important for people with
disabilities." - I wouldn't say so. Ian propose to generate mnemonics
automatically as far as I understand. So to be able to use mnemonics someone
should read it first and find that mnemonic letter. By default and without
proper (ususally custom) styling this is extremely hard to do
for people of some groups.
And yet: how you would generate mnemonic for, say, "SELECT ALL"
(ru: "ВЫБРАТЬ ВСЁ", pl: "WYBRAĆ CAŁY" or so)
Andrew Fedoniouk.
http://terrainformatica.com
[1] http://wesnerm.blogs.com/net_undocumented/2003/09/inductive_uis_v.html
[2]
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnwui/html/iuiguidelines.asp
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andrew Fedoniouk
Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2007 9:01 PM
To: Ian Hickson
Cc: WHAT WG List
Subject: Re: [whatwg] Looking at menus in HTML5...
Mnemonics in menu items is a very old concept. I doubt that people
are using them for selecting menu items. They used to be actual for
UI scripting/automation when sending of keystrokes was the only
way to activate some function/command from the code.
Do you know anybody who is using mnemonics for menu item activations
these days? Especially in web apps that are primarily occasionally used
and highly dynamic things - you literally cannot remember all keystroke
sequences for particular functions in all sites you are visiting. In
contrast
rich menus with inline descriptions and proper organization will help
you significantly more to get what you need in application that you use
say at the end of the month to do your online banking or so.
Andrew Fedoniouk.
http://terrainformatica.com
