Re: [Galeon-user] improving keyboard shortcuts

[Marco P. G. <ma...@it...>]

On 16 Aug 2001 12:19:08 -0700, Ben Escoto wrote:
> 
> Hi, I have a couple of feature requests to make Galeon easier to use
> for people without a mouse:
> 
> 1.  (Minor point) The navigation keyboard shortcuts are good, but
> sometimes they don't work when the focus is not in the dominant
> window.  For instance, even if there is only one page, after clicking
> in any text area (including one in the page), neither the Forward/Back
> Alt-arrow or Cntl-W work.  I guess they are bound to other commands at
> that point, but it would be nice to have consistent hotkeys
> throughout.

Alt-arrow are not valid gnome accellerators. So they cannot work when on
gnome part of the UI. People like them so we used them .. but I agree
it's an usability issue. Would you please post a bug report on
bugzilla.gnome.org ? it must be solved before 1.0

About ctrl+W, It's because it's used in the entry, all gnome apps behave
in this way (just tried with evolution).

> 2.  It is hard to select links in a page without a mouse.  Unless I am
> missing something, the only way to do this now is with Tab.  This
> means that if there are N links or selectable items on a page, on
> average the user will have to press tab N/2 or so.  Many pages have,
> say, over 40 links on them, and it becomes practically necessary to
> use a pointing device.
>     However, it is possible to improve this from O(n) to O(log(n)):
> Have a hotkey that divides the entire galeon area into 9 sections
> using a 3x3 grid.  Then the user can press one of the number keys to
> select one cell of the grid.  When such a cell is selected, pressing
> Tab would cycle through only the elements which intersect that region,
> and furthermore the region would be automatically regridded, so a
> smaller cell could be selected.  In theory, using this system a user
> could select a link on a page with 200 links in only 3-4 keystrokes,
> instead of 100+ with the previous system.  One option would be to grid
> also the non-webpage portion of the screen to make it easier to select
> toolbar regions, URL text widget, or different window tabs.
> 
>     Alternately, you could allow users to select a link by hitting a
> hotkey, and then typing in the first few letters of the text the link
> contains.  Galeon could search through the links just like in emacs'
> default search mode.  This would be more natural, and probably easier
> to implement, but would only work for text links, so I think I prefer
> the grid idea.

This is all up to mozilla.
Posting some bugs on bugzilla.mozilla.org could help ..
  
> Perhaps these are stupid ideas, but I do notice that galeon is the
> only application I use where I feel I have to use my mouse.  

Well this partially depend on the fact it's a web browser ... :)
But we want to improve it, where we can ...

Marco