Page view shortcuts - double letters?
suef wrote on 12 Nov 2009 18:11
I think you have to be very careful if using (particularly lower case) double letter combinations to invoke some special commands, if there's a chance that there is a text entry box on the page being displayed. And this is a real possibility on any page with the comments module enabled. How could you stop someone from eagerly typing away in the text box and then finding that they've unwittingly invoked a special command?
For example, I have just used tt and mm in only the first sentence above, followed by ss, mm, tt and mm again. Of all the suggested combinations, only hh, jj and kk are likely to be safe in English.
Am I missing something here?
Comments: 11
page revision: 2, last edited: 13 Nov 2009 12:35
What about blackslash-letter combination as an alternative? Is "\" used anywhere yet?
So you'd get \t \s \m etc. Better? Worse?
Sue
I just spent two seconds looking at my keyboard trying to find that key! :)
Maybe something that people naturally know how to find… following the same thought process as Ctrl+E for editing.
Ctrl, Shift, Alt… the only problem is, I don't think Macs support all of those keys.
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Not natural? Haven't you ever used ms-windows? MS-DOS? C:\foldername\filename.dat Oh well, it must be a generation thing. :-)
Two whole seconds, eh? :-))
Sue
LOL :)
Windows is all I use, but having used Vista/7 from a purely consumer point of view (barely any development lately) I haven't had to type a back-slash in a looong time ;)
It did take me a bit longer to find the key than I expected it to (I can find most keys instantly). Perhaps not two whole seconds, but certainly more than one.
What is MS-DOS?
I'm kidding! I know what MS-DOS is/was :)
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I'm not sure all key combinations are accessible to JavaScript, and any we define have to be memorable and explainable to people who are not geeks. Even Ctrl+something is complex. "Press T twice to tag a page" is much better. I'd stay away from anything more exotic.
Portfolio
I agree with the logic, but can you easily avoid trapping those key combos when the cursor is inside a text entry box? That's the issue. I don't know JavaScript, so can't help.
Sue
Yes, no problem, this will work naturally.
Portfolio
Regarding the use of double letters, it's not a problem as far as I can see.
It's like the shortcut keys in gmail: try that, you'll see how it works. When your focus is in a text box, you type text. When the focus is on the page, double-letter combos take effect. If you need to, you can click outside the text box, and then press the shortcut.
Using slash+letter would not work differently, if there was indeed a problem with double letters. One could use Ctrl+ combinations for everything but that is tiring work (already Ctrl+E is painful because the Ctrl key is too often in a strange place on modern keyboards).
Portfolio
I remember a …. Caps off action. Which one of your 999 sites ?
WARNING: This is a total off topic (so don't read)
This is why you have two Ctrl keys. Good practice is to hit the left Ctrl with some letters on the right, and right Ctrl with letters on the left. The problem is with Alt keys, because the right and the left one have different meanings, one is for shortcuts, while the second one for entering local characters. This is why I would prefer to use CapsLock key as the primary Alt key, and then both of the original Alt keys as AltGr (for entering ą, ę, ś, ć, ł using the same pattern as when using Ctrl+letter — right-hand-letter-left-Alt, left-hand-letter-right-Alt).
Piotr Gabryjeluk
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If we can differentiate by the focus, as suggested, then that's great and I look forward to using "tt" for invoking the tags dialogue! :-)
Sue