Hi everybody, I would like to resume a discussion we had some time ago (more than one year ago) with respect to keyboard navigation.
Background: At GUADEC 2012 I briefly talked with Allan Day about the keyboard navigation at the Overview. He mentioned that using the Ctrl+Alt+Tab switcher was somewhat obscure, and probably it would be better to move between regions using TAB. I agreed, but mentioned that it would be good to not remove the switcher. This was included on the KeyboardShortcut whiteboard [1] and there is a bug tracking it [2]. Some time after that Matthias Clasen came to the same conclusion [3]. Since then, not a lot happened, probably because we are talking about improving something that is already working. Why I want to resume the discussion: since then, we have noticed more and more keynav inconsistencies between gnome-shell and the rest of the platform. In general the problem is that the keynav model in gnome-shell is not the same as gtk, and in fact, is more limited. The main example is that TAB is used in gtk to move between containers, but in gnome-shell this only happens if you are at the end of the list. This limits some of the interaction. One example is the calendar popdown [4], but I think that it is better explained with the dialog to select a wireless network. Just after 3.10 it was noticed that it was not possible to activate a network in the list [5], and at the same time, in order to navigate to the Accept button you needed to go to the end of the available wifis and then press TAB. And obviously, that only works if you want to select the last network. This was solved: The user can now select the wifi by activating the row, or canceling by pressing ESC. But if that dialog adds a new button, lets say "Wifi Settings" to configure selected wifi, that button would be inaccessible. I think it would be good to extend the already existing bugs, in order to homogenize the keyboard navigation of the platform. Right now that would mean making gnome-shell keynav navigation more similar to gtk, the first step being something like "Use TAB to move between containers". But probably there are other cases to solve. Thoughts? Best regards, [1] https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeOS/Design/Whiteboards/KeyboardShortcuts [2] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=681527 [3] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=692598 [4] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=706903 [5] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=710144 ---- Alejandro Piñeiro _______________________________________________ gnome-shell-list mailing list gnome-shell-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-shell-list