RE: [Usability] Mac-Finder-like keyboard-navigation: Ctrl="and cl ose the current one"

[Murray Cumming Comneon com]

> > It's not such a great hardship to use the panel workspace 
> switcher to 
> > switch to another workspace.
> > 
> > Please see below before jumping in with "this other 
> keybinding would 
> > be better". We've considered the alternatives.
> 
> 	Personally, this keybinding is probably the one 
> keybinding I use most ... but obviously you don't want to 
> make decisions based on a single person's preference.
> 
> 	I think its fair to guess that most users who learn to 
> use workspaces use them as a way of organizing their windows 
> so that they find it easy to quickly jump to a specific 
> window instead of trying to find the window they want amongst 
> the jumble of windows you typically have without using workspaces.

> 
> 	Given that, and the fact that Alt-Tab is a very widely 
> used key binding on Windows, my guess is that a significant 
> number of users do use the keybinding.

There is no equivalent of the workspace switcher panel applet on Windows,
but we do have that in GNOME.

> But sure, real data 
> would be nice.
> 
> 	I guess it boils down to which group's "finger memory" 
> do we want to maintain? The current GNOME users who have 
> learned to use the keybinding for workspace switching or OSX 
> converts who are used to using it regularly in the file 
> manager? I can't see how why we would think the former group 
> is larger/more important ..

It's not just Mac (not really MacOS X) users I'm thinking of. I'm thinking
of the future users (who we can't really ask yet), and the users who are
going to do a lot of complaining when they start using spatial nautilus
(which is otherwise wonderful). And I don't want to stop anyone from using
workspaces - I just want them to not use this particular keybinding to do
it.

> 	Using Shift-Alt-Down for Nautilus sounds good to me :-)

See my latest reply to that bugzilla thread, which is going the way of all
bugzilla threads that deal with anything remotely complicated. I'll try to
keep it on track.

Murray Cumming
www.murrayc.com
murrayc usa net