Re: Menubar accelerator patch

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

Marc Mulcahy wrote:

> Currently, pressing f10 to activate the menubar opens the first menu on the
> menubar.  This seems broken-- it seems like pressing f10 should "focus" or
> in GtkMenu terms "select" the first menu on the menubar without opening it.  

The reasons we initially suggested F10 should post the menu-- but still
leave the focus on the menu title-- were more as a benefit to people who
just prefer using the keyboard, rather than those depending on ATs:

1.  It lets them scan the contents of the menus more easily-- they can
see the contenets of a particular menu just by navigating to its title,
rather than having to navigate to the menu they think they want, then
press another key to open it and see if they were right.

2. If you press F10 accidentally, and only the menu title were to
highlight, it can be very difficult to tell what's happened and why your
typing is suddenly being ignored-- you are unexpectedly in a mode (in
the UI sense of the word), and the only indication is a small highlight
change in an area of the screen you probably weren't looking at.  (I've
seen people do this many times on Windows, when they accidentally hit
the Alt key).  If a whole menu is posted when you press F10, the change
is much bigger and your attention is much more likely to be drawn to
what's happened.

I know you have a better insight into the needs of the AT user, though,
so if this behaviour is causing problems I guess we need to compromise 
:)

> when a menu has focus and the down arrow is pressed, the item which is
> activated is the "tear-off menu item", which doesn't really appear to do
> anything.  Wouldn't it make more sense to activate the first "real" item on
> the menu?  It requires one less keystroke...

I'd certainly agree with that.

Cheeri,
Calum.

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

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems