[IxDA Discuss] Revealing keyboard shortcuts

[Mark Richman]

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions.

Donna - great point about hover help not necessarily being available
to keyboard users.

Based on a suggestion from Esteban Barahona, I took a good look at
ITunes and saw that it featured a 'Controls' menu which listed its
shortcuts. It seems to me that if that is prominently placed, people
unfamiliar with ITunes may be curious to see what that menu is about,
and those familiar with ITunes may know what to find there. I think
this offers a good alternative to constant visibility of shortcuts, at
least on the desktop. I also plan to offer an option by which the user
can reveal shortcuts, and until I get a better idea, will be using the
old 'underline' method.

It seems to me that keyboard shortcuts are also very important to
users with poor eyesigh. Perhaps a 'hot key' convention (Alt+CTRL+'K'
on PCs)? could be adopted?

Mark Richman

> We've been working on something clever for a big (internal)
> browser-based app. We use a particular shortcut key combination to
> target discrete and visually defined parts of the page, then only show
> underlining when that part of the page is targeted. Keeps the underlines
> out of the way in the majority of cases and reduces visual clutter, but
> reveals them as needed. The only trick is knowing the initial magic
> shortcut key, but this is a heavily-used enterprise app and that part
> will be included in training, tip sheets, help etc.

> Will hover help work for you anyway? Depending how it is implemented
> Ithink hover help is particular to the mouse, not the keyboard focus.
> I'm, as far as possible, a keyboard user and reaching for the mouse to
> find out the keyboard shortcut is not great. I'd only invest that effort
> in something I use very frequently - otherwise I'd just tab to it...