Comment by CalRobert
10 hours ago
We solved this with mnemonics (underlined letter is the shortcut) but then got rid of them for some reason
10 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?
Some keyboard apps will input those shortcut combos. Many work on phones. I found out when using a Bluetooth keyboard one day for some emergency doxument create when I got stuck with both a deadline and a dead laptop.