AW: AW: AW: AW: AW: AW: AW: making fallback access keys configurable

[Lubos Lunak]

On Thursday 02 March 2006 16:17, Tobias Anton wrote:
> > Yeah, switching one desktop environment is certainly
> > simpler than switching one shortcut.
>
> Unless you are willing to take the time browsing the millions of config
> options of KControl each time you updated KDE, the Windows CD might be
> nearer at hand than the official KDE's user interface design guide.
>
> Those changes that go into a few releases and are removed again later are
> especially unwelcome in corporate environments, where for example many
> people work with the same preinstalled configuration. Let a person-hour
> cost 50$, then a KDE update on an installtion for 100 people can quickly
> cost as much as 15.000$, if the people complain for one hour, dig KControl
> for another and finally get curious and start playing with screensaver
> settings for yet another hour, only because a default setting was changed
> without notice.
>
> If this happens two or three times, the company will perhaps decide to stop
> updating KDE or even switching to a more settled desktop environment, i.e.
> where the expected rate of backward-incompatible behavioural changes is
> lower. For example in Windows, most user interface concepts exist
> unmodified since 1995, and if one was changed, it was always done in a
> backward-compatible manner.

 Right. So let's stop fixing KDE, that'll actually help us twice to be a true 
competitor to Windows.

> > Since we've done this already several times in the past one
> > kinda has to wonder how come we still have users.
>
> Maybe we haven't been bold enough up to now. And, do you know how many
> users we actually did lose because of that?

 No. But I'd bet it was less then the number of people we lost because we left 
some things broken. Changing something that doesn't quite work to something 
that works better is called fixing. If something changes as a result of that 
then it's unfortunate but life sucks (life and especially backwards 
compatibility).

> > No other modifier. Modifiers are so often used keys that using them
> > for something else than just being modifiers is asking for trouble.
>
> Come on. I have made a specific proposal. Your argument, however, involves
> just a general rule of thumb that IMO is not even applicable here. Please
> be precise: What problems do you see if the implementation would allow to
> use the system as described? How would you do it and why would it be
> better?

 Reasons for sticking with Ctrl:
- some people are used to it
- easy to trigger
- easy to discover
- ... ?


 Reasons against sticking with Ctrl (and for using a normal shortcut):

- way too easy to trigger - it probably can be made to really react only to 
Ctrl-down, Ctrl-up , but people often do even that without intention - have 
you never pressed Ctrl because it was a "safe" key to press or simply because 
you accidentally did?

- way too easy to discover - follow your $15000 example, just use "I get these 
strange yellow things" as the complaint instead

- inconsistent with everything else - do we use something like this anywhere 
else? Even the shift+arrows scrolling feature that when activated uses shift 
alone is triggered by "normal" shortcuts shift+up/down

- needs additional code that has its own problems - e.g. #118740 - I have no 
idea how to fix that one with KHTML doing its own Ctrl handling


Reasons against using a normal shortcut:

- not as easy to discover - it seems to be kind of a poweruser feature anyway, 
and has anybody already complained about it being difficult in FF or IE?

- some people are used to Ctrl - I wonder how many such people actually are 
there, also move a bit up for the poweruser argument

- not as easy to trigger - not really

- companies will lose $15000

- ... ?

-- 
Lubos Lunak
KDE developer
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