GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 148832
Nothing in Keyboard interaction section on the use of "esc" to dismiss transient windows
Last modified: 2020-12-04 18:19:09 UTC
Maybe this is somewhere else in the HIG but I can't find it. In other de environments, esc by consistently dismisses all transient windows. In gnome, this behavior is all over the place. Some apps do it, some don't. If it is desired, then the HIG should add this to the list of normal keybindings. If it is not desired it should be mentioned in that section and the policy against such a use of esc should be defined. Right now it is very inconsistent, probably because it is not clear in the hig.
Also, when browsing in spatial mode,shouldn't nautilus windows be considered "transient"?
The HIG recommends that pressing Esc should activate a dialog's Cancel button, and nothing else (including Close), which has consistency and accessibility benefits. This is also what the Windows and OS X guidelines recommended, or certainly did at the time. Unfortunately, the gtk maintainers saw this differently and have gradually patched every standard dialog such that Esc = either Close or Cancel depending on which button is present. I am one of the people who still believes this to be a serious usability and accessibility issue, as Close and Cancel are two virtually opposite operations (save+close vs. revert+close) that, in many cases, now have the same shortcut. And I'm still not happy about that :( Anyway, whichever side of that fence you sit on, I believe the HIG is clear enough on the use of Esc in situations where the toolkit doesn't decide for you. So I'm closing as NOTABUG.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 124902 ***