Hi folks, I'm exposing here a GSoC project idea not listed in the 2007 Ideas Pool and I would appreciate any comments/suggestion from you, GTK+/GNOME Developers, especially concerning the idea relevance to GTK+ project. Please let me know if this list is not the right place when asking for this kind of feedback.
The idea was motivated by my experience as user/developer and by the following GNOME HIG quote: "A well-designed keyboard user interface plays a key role when you are designing applications." Here we go.. IDEA: Improve the visual indication of keyboard shortcuts in UI. SHORTCUTS IN GTK: The shortcuts support in GTK+ is very well designed and powerful, although visual indications of available shortcuts are provided just by Labels and AccelLables. It allows software developers to design a very nice keyboard support to their applications and most of the users I know understand well access keys indicated on those Labels and AccelLabels. POSSIBLE IMPROVEMENTS: GTK+ might allow developers to expose the available mnemonics near to it's widgets even when there is no (Accel)Label related to it, e.g. a Canvas area. When user holds the first key of an accelerator key combination, e.g. CONTROL or ALT, then the available shortcuts with that key might pops-up near to it's widgets. It will allow users to easily identify and jump fast across application UI areas without having to press several TABs or SHIFT+TABs to get there (Have you ever wondered "where is the focus now?"). This approach should work very well even on 'keyboard centric' applications like Text Editors. On this applications users can't navigate properly using TABs. We might go even further allowing a second level of shortcuts to widget's children. Just to make it clear, the user could press ALT+T to activate the 'Toolbar' and then all active ToolItems might show it's mnemonic so user could press one and get it activated. There are some mock-ups to illustrate this idea applied to Nautilus [1], Gedit [2] and GtkFileChooser [3]. BENEFITS: * "Novice and advanced users alike will be able accomplish tasks quickly and easily" [GNOME HIG] * Helping users to identify available mnemonics in order to navigate easily across the user interface. * Improving the applications accessibility. * Software developers could improve it's applications keyboard support to fits even better into GNOME HIG. I'm looking forward to receiving your feedback. Best regards, Lucas [1] Nautilus: http://picasaweb.google.com/lmveloso/GnomeSoC2007Idea/photo#5040744879812560818 [2] Gedit: http://picasaweb.google.com/lmveloso/GnomeSoC2007Idea/photo#5040744879812560834 [3] GtkFileChooser: http://picasaweb.google.com/lmveloso/GnomeSoC2007Idea/photo#5040744879812560850 -- This email recommends Free and Open Source Software (R) _______________________________________________ gtk-devel-list mailing list gtk-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-devel-list