GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 142378
conflicting Alt-shortcuts, differences with Ctrl-keybindings
Last modified: 2006-10-27 13:38:57 UTC
Alt+S is the assigned shortcut for both "Search" and "Shuffle", causing the selections to toggle between the two. Not a biggie, but then consider... ...Alt+R = "Repeat" in the main display, whereas the menu item uses Alt+T. The latter is consistent with its keybinding (Ctrl+T). It would be more consistent to have the main "Repeat" also be triggered by Alt+T. And then, wouldn't it make sense that the "Shuffle" Ctrl-keybinding match a (changed) Alt shortcut? I'd like to propose "U" for both the Alt shortcut and the Ctrl-keybinding (Alt+H being already used by the Help menu). Besides, since Ctrl+S normally means "Save", it seems a little iffy in an application that already uses Ctrl+O for "Open". Alt+U would also avoid any confusion resulting from blindly pressing Alt+S then typing in the current interface. If the user hasn't pressed the combo the "right" number of times, nothing will be entered into his search filter.
From bug 150152 also: "C" 1. "_Control" in the main menu. 2. "Tra_ck" in the library headings. "M" 1. "_Music" in the main menu. 2. "Ti_me" in the library headings.
*** Bug 150152 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
This is a bigger problem then originally reported. Here is a (hopefully) complete list of the mnemonic/hotkeys/shortcuts used in Rhythmbox's main window. The purpose is to highlight the 18 functions/objects of the main window which have a mnemonic used more than once. Although GTK generally handles this smoothly by alternating between the objects that share the mnemonics, in the case of Rhythmbox it's creating results which are inconsistant, confusing, or disturbing to the user. Each mnemonics that is used twice is labelled with a number to the left, to help identify other occurances. Mnemonics which are used more than twice are identified by an asteriks. Following the list of mnemonics used in the main window, I've included a few other cases of mnemonics used more than once in the same menu. MAIN WINDOW [Main Menu] Music (1) ALT + M Edit ALT + E View ALT + V Control (2) ALT + C Help ALT + H Shuffle CTRL + S (Toggle) (3)* ALT + S (Focus) Repeat CTRL + T (Toggle) (4)* ALT + R (Focus) [Library Sort By] Track (2) ALT + C Title (5) ALT + T Genre (6) ALT + N Artist ALT + I Album ALT + L Time (1) ALT + M Rating (4)* ALT + R Play Count (7) ALT + P Last Played (8) ALT + A [Radio Sort by] Title (5) ALT + T Genre (6) ALT + N Rating (4)* ALT + R Play Count (7) ALT + P Last Played (8) ALT + A Show/Hide Browser ALT + B CTRL + B Search (3)* ALT + S Source (3)* ALT + S EDIT | PREFERENCES | GENERAL "Album" and "Last played" both use ALT + L. MUSIC | PROPERTIES | BASIC "Artist" and "Album" both use ALT + A. "Title" and "Track number" both use ALT + T. MUSIC | PROPERTIES | DETAILS Using ALT + R for Rating doesn't seem to do anything.
Taking a look at the chart above, it becomes obvious that the track list sorting mnemonics are the biggest conflict problem. Here are two proposals for replacing these mnemonics that take into consideration that we must maintain simple keyboard navagation. 1. A "Sort by" sub-menu in the "View" menu, with an entry for all current options. 2. A single mnemonic which focuses on the sort row of the list in the same manner as tabbing to it, which allows the user to select a column with the arrow keys, and hit space to select it. My suggestion is using both, listing the single mnemonic as the short cut for "Sort by" in the "View menu", while still having the "Sort by" sub menu. (Does anyone know any usability rules forbidding that offhand? Otherwise I'll check.) The other option, coming up with unique mnemonics for every possible column to sort by, doesn't seem to be an option: It would require 14 unique mnemonics, and there are already 10 other focusable widgets that need unique mnemonics, plus possible new features. There are only 26 letters in the alphabet.
While I think that Andrew does a thorough job addressing mnemonic uniqueness in comment 3 and comment 4, that wasn't my intent in opening this bug. Remember, localisation efforts will have a difficult time also coming up with meaningful, unique mnemonics. I think that the best we can hope for is finding unique letters for the main features, and accepting duplicates elsewhere. What I think *is* critical, however, is consistently assigning mnemonics. This was my original bug report: the keys assigned in Ctrl+ combinations didn't (and still don't) match their Alt+ equivalents.
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I am wondering whether anything has been done as yet to resolve this bug? It greatly interests me from an accessibility point of view, for blind/vision impaired users. I would suggest you read the section in the GNOME user interface guidelines about access keys, and some recommendations regarding them. I can certainly confirm that the access keys that are currently being used are tricky, especially with S toggeling between 3 interface elements.
I've got a couple of suggestions, what do you guys think of them? Changing Sort by Track to be Alt-K would fix (2). Do the shuffle and repeat checkboxes need to have mnemonics? they are already controlled by the ones for the menu items. Part of the suggestions in bug 312368 is to name the Music menu to File, which could use Alt-F stopping the conflict with Sort by Time (1), but that would depend on that part of the menu reorganisation happending. Shuffle has already been changed to Ctrl-U, so that leaves Alt-S as switching between the search box and source list. Not sure what to do here. 4-8 aren't actually conflicts, because the library and radio cannot be active at the same time. I'm also not sure why Genre isn't Alt-G. Also, we it seems to make more sense to swap sort by Album and Last Played to be Alt-A and Alt-L respectively (they are the other way around at the moment).
Created attachment 59554 [details] [review] change Music menu to File This renames the Music menu to File, and changes the key for the Time column from Alt-E to Alt-M - fixing the last of the conflicts.
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All the keybinding conflicts are gone (as far as I know), so closing the bug.