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manlymuppet 9 hours ago

Well the two--building for power users vs for a general audience--often work against each other.

And trying to satisfy every audience at once is a good way to satisfy none. You don't want your app to be a Jack of all trades; focus is really valuable.

oneeyedpigeon 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Do you have an example of how supporting a keyboard shortcut for every action could be bad for a general audience?

Telaneo 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Devil's advocate: showing the relevant keyboard shortcuts in the UI can be overwhelming (or at least one of many parts that all together become overwhelming) to new users, while not having them shown at all makes them undiscoverable.

I think this is a bad reason. Even MS Office has made this work. But I've seen people act on this type of argument. If nothing else, it should be possible to have a settings menu where you can define your own. Even if no shortcuts are set by default and they aren't shown anywhere else in the UI, it will still be possible for a power user to make the best use of the program.

toast0 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> showing the relevant keyboard shortcuts in the UI can be overwhelming

Underlining the accelerator key is subtle and shouldn't be overwelming. Keyboard navigation unaware users probably won't even notice.

Telaneo 8 hours ago | parent [-]

This works poorly if you intend to localise your application. Great if you don't though.

jakzurr 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

(Speaking of menu/drop-downs with underlined characters for alt commands.)

> This works poorly if you intend to localise your application. Great if you don't though.

Sure that's true. But remember M$ allowed you to fairly easily edit those underlined-characters in, oh, for example Office 2002 and 2003. Even if you didn't have a lot of default underlines in your current language settings, it is still possible for someone to add their own underline-shortcuts.

Back in those days, the first thing I did on any personal new install of Outlook, was to disable the shortcut that marked all email as being read. (That's cause I hit that button by accident too many times.)

Telaneo 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> Sure that's true. But remember M$ allowed you to fairly easily edit those underlined-characters in, oh, for example Office 2002 and 2003. Even if you didn't have a lot of default underlines in your current language settings, it is still possible for someone to add their own underline-shortcuts.

That's a feature that was hidden from me at least, but honestly, this is a good-ish solution to that problem.

I remember Office having the underlines, but they were inconsistent between the original English and my localised version (and I used both depending on the machine), which made them useless. That wasn't that big of an issue when all the normal keyboard shortcuts are also written out, but it would have been even less of a problem if I knew how to edit them.

mixmastamyk 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Windows did both successfully.

Telaneo 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I can't remember an example that didn't also include the shortcut written in full, but I might just be drawing a blank here. Care to give an example?

mixmastamyk 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Wasn't easy to find!

https://www.augenbit.de/wiki/images/5/57/Arbeitsplatz.png

Telaneo 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Fair. I just remember them being inconsistent between the English and localised versions of Windows, and given I used both, that turned into a nothing-feature. Another comment mentioned you could edit the underlines in Office 2003, but I never knew that back in the day (or until today for that matter...).

toast0 5 hours ago | parent [-]

It's pretty hard for the shortcuts to be consistent and localized. Especially if you also use different keyboard layouts when you're using different languages...

Even for keys that aren't mnemonic, do you want undo to be ctrl + z or ctrl + the key closest to left shift?

Telaneo 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> It's pretty hard for the shortcuts to be consistent and localized. Especially if you also use different keyboard layouts when you're using different languages...

Hence my original comment. I haven't had a problem with different keyboard layouts, since most of the keys that change are on the outer edge, nowhere near where the most common shortcuts are located (then again, I rarely type using QWERTZ).

> Even for keys that aren't mnemonic, do you want undo to be ctrl + z or ctrl + the key closest to left shift?

CTRL+Z, since that's what it's been since time immemorial, even on ISO keyboards. Consistency is king.

jakzurr 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yup, pretty sure I've seen the same sorts of things using Asian characters.

wtallis 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It sounds like your complaint might be that it works poorly if you half-ass the localization process and assume that literal translation of strings is most or all of what localization means.

Telaneo 7 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm not sure how you read that from my comment.

To be fair to your point though, that's what most localisation of programs are these days.

marcosdumay 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> showing the relevant keyboard shortcuts in the UI can be overwhelming

Every application did it for decades after the first Xerox guidelines up until Microsoft and Apple decided to retire the concept of usability some time around 2010.

Telaneo 8 hours ago | parent [-]

something something smartphones

prmoustache 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Devil's advocate: showing the relevant keyboard shortcuts in the UI can be overwhelming

That is not a requirement, having access to menus, a master help shortcut ir fuzzy search actions shorcut are other options.

mixmastamyk 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Another person here is arguing for accessibility, which may have been overlooked.