Comment by manlymuppet
13 hours ago
Well the two--building for power users vs for a general audience--often work against each other.
And trying to satisfy every audience at once is a good way to satisfy none. You don't want your app to be a Jack of all trades; focus is really valuable.
Do you have an example of how supporting a keyboard shortcut for every action could be bad for a general audience?
Devil's advocate: showing the relevant keyboard shortcuts in the UI can be overwhelming (or at least one of many parts that all together become overwhelming) to new users, while not having them shown at all makes them undiscoverable.
I think this is a bad reason. Even MS Office has made this work. But I've seen people act on this type of argument. If nothing else, it should be possible to have a settings menu where you can define your own. Even if no shortcuts are set by default and they aren't shown anywhere else in the UI, it will still be possible for a power user to make the best use of the program.
> showing the relevant keyboard shortcuts in the UI can be overwhelming
Underlining the accelerator key is subtle and shouldn't be overwelming. Keyboard navigation unaware users probably won't even notice.
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> showing the relevant keyboard shortcuts in the UI can be overwhelming
Every application did it for decades after the first Xerox guidelines up until Microsoft and Apple decided to retire the concept of usability some time around 2010.
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> Devil's advocate: showing the relevant keyboard shortcuts in the UI can be overwhelming
That is not a requirement, having access to menus, a master help shortcut ir fuzzy search actions shorcut are other options.
Another person here is arguing for accessibility, which may have been overlooked.