Comment by CalRobert
5 hours ago
We solved this with mnemonics (underlined letter is the shortcut) but then got rid of them for some reason
5 hours ago
We solved this with mnemonics (underlined letter is the shortcut) but then got rid of them for some reason
I love the system in Autodesk Animator (now: https://github.com/AnimatorPro). Every menu item or button currently on the screen always have a unique initial letter. There is no need to highlight or underline anything. Amazingly this was done without having to use any too obscure labels (but I doubt it would be fun to try to translate it to other languages). Almost every function is two or three single letter key-presses away, and after using the application for a while you will have memorized more and more of those.
Some frequently used functions have their own special single-key shortcuts as well, so instead of having to press C-P (to open the Clip menu and then select Paste) you can just press the ' key, saving the user a key-press every time they do that.
Oh yeah - AutoCAD by Autodesk was also like this. Once you memorized the keystrokes, you could fly through your line drawing.
I recently rediscovered that I can do GUI menu things on the keyboard in apps like VLC. Feels like a magic trick -- the best of both worlds. Was it the move to phones that did it? Or did most people not use alt shortcuts?