Re: [Usability] keyboard shortcut for Find Previous

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Fri, 25 Nov 2005, Calum Benson wrote:

> Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 12:24:21 +0000
> From: Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>
> To: Joachim Noreiko <jnoreiko yahoo com>
> Cc: Gnome usability <usability gnome org>
> Subject: Re: [Usability] keyboard shortcut for Find Previous
>
>
> On 24 Nov 2005, at 12:44, Joachim Noreiko wrote:
> >
> > Adding SHIFT to reverse the order of cycling through
> > items is already used for ALT-TAB window switching --
> > so how about  CTRL-SHIFT-G for 'Find Previous'?
>
> Makes sense to me... not sure why it's not there already.  Can you
> file a HIG bug about it so we don't forget?

I fear this approaches too many keybindings territory and will cause
problems when other programs want to use Ctrl+G for things like group.

It might better if there was some kind of caveat included to make it clear
that Ctrl+F should be the primary way to get at Find (Search) and all
others are optional extras which applications have the descretion to drop
in favour of more important functionality.

Mozilla Composer for example uses only one menu item with the shortcut
Ctrl+F and then the rest is taken care of in the Find and Replace dialog.
Given a busy interface it seems like a good idea to have only the one
dialog for both Find and Replace, whereas an application like Gedit can
better afford to have various menu items for search.

- Alan