Re: [Usability] Using Control-Esc and Windows keys to access the start menu

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On Wed, 2006-08-30 at 16:48 +0200, Lennart Borgman wrote:

> Thanks for your answer Calum. Since you say that GNOME's 2.x keyboard 
> was redesigned with the various desktops in mind and since Windows is by 
> far the biggest competitor (and the one we really want to take users 
> from) why was such things as I mentioned, and that are so important and 
> familiar to many MS Windows users, why are those left out?

Largely because, at the time, we saw no reason to annoy our existing
user base by changing existing shortcuts (such as alt+f1) that weren't
actually conflicting with or inconsistent with anything else in GNOME. 

Also, GNOME has/had a concept of keyboard 'themes', which at the time we
had higher hopes for making work better and more universally, and which
would have made switching over to a desktop-wide, Windows, Mac, or
anything-else keyboard scheme very easy for the user.  Instead, the only
thing we ever got was the slightly-crummy emacs theme, which only
applied to text fields, and was dumped from the UI altogether after a
while.

> Can you please explain the reasoning? Since there was a redesign I can 
> not understand the arguments about internal consistency.

The redesign was done primarily at the accessibility team's behest, and
they made it clear that internal consistency was paramount, as (for
example) it makes it much easier for blind users to memorise their way
around, and places less memory load on users with cognitive
difficulties.

> > Please file bugs (with the keynav keyword) about any inconsistencies  
> > or holes you find in GNOME's keyboard navigability.  (Note that "not  
> > the way Windows does it" doesn't necessarily mean it's inconsistent;  
> > internal consistency is generally more important here, especially  
> > from an accessibility viewpoint.)
> >   
> Exactly what do you want me to do?

Depends exactly what you want fixed, and how. You could lobby for the
keyboard themeing idea to be revived and improved; or you could file
bugs against your favourite distro to add the additional Windows
shortcuts now that the keyboard shortcuts capplet supports it; or you
could file bugs against GNOME to have the Windows shortcuts be the
default.  (But be aware that the latter was basically the original
subject of http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=164831, and it
ended up being resolved by adding the support for multiple
shortcuts-per-function.)

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            Java Desktop System Group
http://ie.sun.com                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems