Global Shortcuts

[Thiago Macieira]

On Monday 17 March 2008 18:46:36 Michael Jansen wrote:
> Am Montag 17 März 2008 05:26:27 schrieb Aaron J. Seigo:
> > On Sunday 16 March 2008, Michael Jansen wrote:
> > > 4. I start a application. It happens that it has a global shortcut
> > > conflicting with that of another active application. Warn me. Give me
> > > the option to disable global shortcuts for one of the application
> > > temporarily, persistent or go to the global shortcut editor.
> >
> > this is the one part of the proposal that makes sense to me.
> >
> > the rest of it would mean the user ends up having to configure everything
> > and there are no default actions, which means a lot more work the user if
> > they even know it's possible.
>
> Yep. But if they don't know a application has the need or possibility for
> global shortcuts, do you think it's better to just activate them? How is
> the user supposed to notice that?

Either argument is missing the discoverability of shortcuts.

Normally, people discover shortcuts by looking at menus and seeing the 
combination next to the action. For instance, in this KMail Composer window, 
in the Message menu, there's "Send message    Ctrl+Enter".

Global shortcuts should be no different: they should show up in the menus. 
But, of course, only when they are enabled. So I'd say that enabling them by 
default -- *reasonable* defaults -- is the best way to discover them.

-- 
  Thiago Macieira  -  thiago (AT) macieira.info - thiago (AT) kde.org
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