A couple of good examples of keyboard optimized applications are MS Excel and Mozilla Firefox. In Excel, just about every program option and navigation method is accessible through a quick series of keystrokes (and when I say every, I mean every). They are particularly good at setting up their ALT + based shortcuts. This is pretty amazing considering how full featured Excel is. Firefox implemented find as you type which is pretty revolutionary as it actually makes mouse less website navigation possible (though not always practical, and yes, I know, FF wasn't the first find as you type web browser).
It's pretty clear that MM developers have put quite a bit of effort in implementing a good keyboard interface, and I really appreciate that. Given that, I would like to provide a little feedback based on my experience with keyboard only interfacing and the last 4 months of so of MM usage:
*tabbed dialog boxes - can't cycle through tabs with CTRL + PgUp/PgDn or CTRL + Tab
*tabbed dialog boxes - too many fields are inaccessible by shortcuts (I realize that there are so many fields this is difficult to optimize without causing conflicts - more on this next item)
*ALT + shortcuts - when there are many many items that can be addressed by this modifier (e.g. tabbed dialog boxes like track properties) more than one location in the dialog can share the same letter, with the exception of 'action' locations such as other Tabs or buttons. Here is an example of what I mean. It's okay for artist and album artist to both be keyed to 'a', since the user can hit ALT + a twice to get to album artist. Generally, one would want to avoid sharing key letters, but it's not a disaster when it happens. Also note that sharing key letters with tabs or buttons is not okay, because the option of hitting ALT + key more than once would not work (for example, the comment shortcut is not valid b/c it conflicts with the Ok shortcut).
*CTRL + ALT + letter shortcuts - these shouldn't be used as they are typically windows level keyboard shortcuts (that's just my own personal pet peeve, as I use CTRL + ALT + letter to launch my applications). Since these have been built into MM for so long it might not be possible to change them.
*window tab order - right now it is nodelist -> now playing -> track list -> search. It should probably not include search, as this is easily accessed through CTRL + F / F3 and having it in the tab order reduces the usefulness of the tab order. Note that 3 items in a tab order is ideal: when on any given item, hitting tab will take you to one of the other two, hitting shift + tab will take you to the other (everything is one key stroke away!). Unless there is a really good reason to include the search window in the tab order, it should be removed.
*window tab order - a visual cue for what window is being switched to and from would be excellent. A frame darkening for a second, or the background flashing (might be easier to implement the latter). Right now it's hard to tell where hitting tab is taking you.
*CTRL + F / F3 - Should not clear the track list unless a search is actually executed (i.e. if the user hits cancel he/she should be returned to the previous track listing).
*CTRL + left/right arrow - Should allow one to browse back and forth not just through past node clicks but also past searches and auto-playlists. Essentially, anything displayed in a track list should be recorded for recovery, the same way a web browser records every step you take (note this doesn't have to be the whole tracklist, just the commands that generated the track list in the first place).
*CTRL + left/right arrow - Should preserve cursor location as well, since it is common to end up with tracklisting with hundreds or thousands of tracks
These are just some thoughts, and keep in mind that they are intended to help out people who are willing to memorize the shortcuts without harming those who don't care about them too much.
S.
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