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I'm not sure if you're aware that standard GUIs (common 90s-style GUIs based on IBM's CUA[1] design) already do this. Every control can be assigned an access ke

by ptx 7y ago

I'm not sure if you're aware that standard GUIs (common 90s-style GUIs based on IBM's CUA[1] design) already do this. Every control can be assigned an access key[2] that allows you to access it with alt + some letter, with the letter indicated using an underscore. The trend lately seems to be to hide the underscore until you hold down alt for a while, which makes the feature much more difficult to use when you don't know every shortcut by heart. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access [2] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/uxguide/inter-accessibility#access-keys https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/uxguide/inter...

feanaro 7y ago
I was aware of this as a thing that programs often did but wasn't aware that this was a standard. Thanks! That said, I find that even when programs support this for accessing menus, they often do not support clicking buttons and focusing text boxes using it, so it could be taken further.
- ptx 7y ago
  They can, and they often do (or used to). It works with both buttons and text boxes – the latter by connecting the text box to an adjacent label. Have a look at some older piece of UI in Windows and hold down alt for a while. All we need for this to be taken further is for the programmer to pay a bit of attention to the existing feature and make use of it. For a non-Windows example, I just looked at the XFCE appearance settings dialog. Hold down alt for a few seconds and you'll see that every single control has an access key: all the tabs, all the buttons, all the checkboxes, all the dropdowns.
  - feanaro 7y ago
    I'm on Linux and I quickly tried some of my most commonly used software, such as Firefox and Deluge, but they did not seem to be supporting this, unfortunately. Only the menus get their access keys highlighted.

by ptx 7y ago

feanaro 7y ago

I was aware of this as a thing that programs often did but wasn't aware that this was a standard. Thanks! That said, I find that even when programs support this for accessing menus, they often do not support clicking buttons and focusing text boxes using it, so it could be taken further.

ptx 7y ago
They can, and they often do (or used to). It works with both buttons and text boxes – the latter by connecting the text box to an adjacent label. Have a look at some older piece of UI in Windows and hold down alt for a while. All we need for this to be taken further is for the programmer to pay a bit of attention to the existing feature and make use of it. For a non-Windows example, I just looked at the XFCE appearance settings dialog. Hold down alt for a few seconds and you'll see that every single control has an access key: all the tabs, all the buttons, all the checkboxes, all the dropdowns.
- feanaro 7y ago
  I'm on Linux and I quickly tried some of my most commonly used software, such as Firefox and Deluge, but they did not seem to be supporting this, unfortunately. Only the menus get their access keys highlighted.