Re: Keyboard usage on some Gnome windows not working

[Matthew Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On Thu, 2005-10-20 at 09:47 -0500, Shaun McCance wrote: 
> On Thu, 2005-10-20 at 08:49 -0200, Matthew Thomas wrote:
> > On 19 Oct, 2005, at 2:49 PM, Bill Haneman wrote:
> > >
> > > Matthew said:
> > >>
> > >> In Windows 2000 and (I think) Windows XP, all access key underlines  
> > >> are hidden by default.  
> > >> <http://www.microsoft.com/enable/training/windowsxp/  
> > >> hideunderlines.aspx> This makes the interface less ugly, and possibly  
> > >> also somewhat faster for people who aren't disabled (as it  
> > >> discourages them from thinking that finding and typing the access key  
> > >> is faster than using Tab or the mouse).
> > >
> > > I am hoping there are missing <sarcasm> tags around that last comment  
> > > :-)
> > > ...
> > 
> > No, there aren't. <http://asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html>
> > 
> > I see there is some research showing that the keyboard is faster for  
> > common commands  
> > <http://ad-astra.ro/research/view_publication.php? 
> > publication_id=1508&lang=en>, but that wouldn't include access keys  
> > unless you were encountering particular dialogs or alerts very often.
> 
> The keyboard is clearly faster at many tasks.  For instance,
> I type anywhere from 130 to 150 wpm, depending on the day.
> If you tell me I could mouse that faster with GOK, I will
> laugh at you and ignore every post you make from now on.

This thread is about keyboard equivalents to menu/toolbar/title bar
commands. If you construct straw men like "the mouse is faster than
typing" when no-one suggested that, I will laugh at you but keep reading
your posts. I like laughing.

> If I'm typing something in a text editor, and I want to
> save my work, I hit Ctrl+S.  This is a very easy and very
> common shortcut, and it's ingrained in most people's muscle
> memory.

Actually, it's not. Lane, Napier, Peres, and Sándor (2005) found that
when saving in in Microsoft Word, people reported using the toolbar icon
about 50 percent of the time, and using the menu item about 35 percent
of the time. Ctrl+S was used only about 7 percent of the time.
<http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~peres/Rice/IJHC1802_Lane.pdf>
(Unfortunately that is a survey, rather than direct observation; but if
it's biased at all I would expect people to claim they use keyboard
shortcuts more, not less, than they actually do.)

> Furthermore, since I'm already typing something,
> my fingers are already located on the keyboard, very likely
> placed nicely along home row.  Context switches can be very
> disruptive.

Amusingly, you wrote that message in Evolution, in which Ctrl+S in the
composition window saves your message, but Ctrl+S does in the main
window exactly what Ctrl+F does in the composition window, and Ctrl+F in
the main window does something else again. Have you reported this
unnecessary disruption as a bug?

> Access keys are surely not as simple as shortcut keys, and
> it wouldn't surprise me if they're slower when you have to
> scan things while using them.  "I want File, that's Alt+F.
> And now Save As, that's A."  But once memorized, Alt+F A
> is fairly easy, even though the Alt key is typically in an
> awkward position on keyboards.

Again, in Evolution Alt+F A works in the composition window, but not in
the main window -- and this time there isn't even the excuse of Alt+F A
in the main window doing something else.

> If my hands are already on the keyboard, along home row,
> I can hit Alt+C (Cancel on a lot of dialogs) really, really
> fast.  Like, before-you-can-blink fast.

That's an unfortunate example, because having to swat away dialogs in
the first place is a symptom of a design bug elsewhere. (For example,
the Print Screen key is so close to the Backspace key on many keyboards
that the "Take Screenshot" keyboard equivalent should include a modifier
key.)

> When Tog says "The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is
> faster than keyboarding." I'm curious what he means.  I'd
> really like to see what tests were performed and what the
> actual results were, rather than a one-line synopsis.  As
> a mathematician, I'm suspicious of pretty much any one-line
> statistical synopsis.

Agreed, more detailed research would be nice. Lane et al. 2005 found
keyboard equivalents to be faster for Copy, Open, Paste, and Save, but
their experiment seems rather unrealistic -- people were given several
practice runs first, allowing them to keep the keyboard equivalent in
their short-term memory, when in real life it wouldn't be. (It's the
retrieval from long-term memory which is the big time-sucker, according
to Tognazzini.)

>   Imagine this test:
> 
> "A group of average users with varying keyboard skills were
> asked to do tasks related to managing files and folders in
> a graphical file manager.  They were first asked to perform
> these tasks using ONLY the keyboard, then ONLY the mouse."

Yes, that would be a more realistic experiment.

> ...
> People can use the keyboard when they think it's best and
> use the mouse when they think it's best.  And that's not
> necessarily tied completely to the task.  It could just
> be a matter of where their hands are.
> ...

What do you mean by "best"? If you mean "quickest", then that doesn't
seem to be true. Peres, Tamberello et al. (2004) found that on average,
people who currently don't use keyboard shortcuts *strongly disagreed*
with the statement "I would start using keyboard shortcuts if I thought
they would save me more time".
<http://chil.rice.edu/research/pdf/PeresEtal-HFES.pdf>

-- 
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/