Action icons in menus

[David Jarvie]

On Tue, December 14, 2010 2:52 pm, Ingo Klöcker wrote:
> On Tuesday 14 December 2010, David Jarvie wrote:
>> On Monday 13 December 2010 20:32:30 Albert Astals Cid wrote:
>> > 5. There is no space to show the shortcut (i.e. Ctrl+C for Copy)
>>
>> IMO, this is a very important drawback. There would then be no easy
>> way for users who didn't know the keyboard shortcut for these
>> actions to discover it.
>
> Is this really a serious problem? Looking up a shortcut is really easy
> via Settings->Configure Shortcuts and it's not as if all of our
> shortcuts where "documented" in some menu anyway.

I doubt if many inexperienced users will know about Settings->Configure
Shortcuts. Personally, I rely on menus to provide me with the information
when I want to learn a new shortcut - I wouldn't normally go to the bother
of looking in Settings unless I felt very motivated. So yes, I think this
is a significant problem, since it raises the barrier to inexperienced
users learning shortcuts.

Note that this proposal addresses common actions only, so the fact that
some shortcuts are not documented in menus isn't really relevant.

> A third argument against is that people using the menu will most likely
> continue doing so. So for them the shortcut is totally irrelevant. In
> fact, it's superfluous information that clutters the menu. And for those
> that are really interested in the shortcut it's also superfluous
> information as soon as they have learned the shortcut.

As I mention above, I don't think they necessarily will ever learn the
shortcut if they first have to discover a Settings page, and then open it
up each time they want to find a new shortcut.

-- 
David Jarvie.
KDE developer.
KAlarm author - http://www.astrojar.org.uk/kalarm