Re: Low-hanging fruit

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From: Smylers
Subject: Re: Low-hanging fruit
Date: 13:14 on 20 Jul 2006
Phil Pennock writes:

> But if I right-click on a toolbar bookmark, guess what 'T' stands for?
> Well golly-gosh if it isn't cuT.

Isn't that the standard access key on 'Edit' menus (and right-click
menus which include editing features)?

> Never mind that Windows has a well-established XCV triplet of
> shortcuts for Cut/Copy/Paste.

But those are Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C, and Ctrl+V shortcut keys, not the
underlined access letters which are used for navigating menus with the
keyboard.  By definition the latter have to be characters which actually
appear in the menu entries.

> So I keep losing items from the bookmarks toolbar because there's no
> 'undo' for this.  :^(

Surely if you've inadvertently selected 'Cut' then the recently
disappeared item is in the clipboard; can't you right-click on a blank
bit of the bookmark toolbar and choose 'Paste'?

> It's only a _foolish_ consistency that's the hobgoblin of little
> minds.  Some UI consistency, even within the one application, would be
> nice.  I could adapt if it used something other than OS native
> defaults, if it were consistent.

So you're saying that because T is the standard access key for 'Cut'
that it should never be used for anything else, even on menus that don't
have a 'Cut' item and are nothing to do with editing?  At the top level
the main Firefox 'Tools' menu uses T as its access key (for example
press F10 then T), and within that menu 'Themes' again uses T.

If different menus didn't re-use access keys then there would only be 26
or so actions in the entire application with access keys.

Smylers

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