[Bf-taskforce25] Keyboard Shortcuts Proposal

[JimmyVolatile]

On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 2:28 AM, David Silverman
<silvermindyarr at gmail.com>wrote:

> One of the biggest barriers to new users is the fact that there isn't a
> menu bar like in most graphic
> programs where the user can browse through all the available
> actions/commands.


*Agreed:* It is the normal, slow way to start learning about the application
commands but as you use a particular command more and more, you make note of
the shortcut for it and start using that instead. Educationwise, this is
also known as "integrated help" and is one of the most inexpensive ways to
make most applcations easier to use.
*This carries multiple benefits:*
* For newbies, all hotkeys are listed next to the commands in the menus. As
well as tooltips that gives some info about the action.
* Menus can give visual feedback on what commands are available for a given
selection, as they do now.
* A properly nested menu hierarchy that contains all commands also available
through shortcuts and other interactions, makes learning the application a
lot easier also for the users who know a little bit about what they're
doing. Application discoverability improves tremendously with little
investment.
* *
*Example*: From my own experience with learning Blender, I can understand
how many might give up when seemingly little things get in the way.
In the IPO Curve Editor, basically know that there are a lot of curves
describing the object motion and other properties as they change over time.

Now, I managed to figure out how to change an existing curve quite easily.
It's based around the same principles as editing objects, which is an
excellent reuse of interactions.
However, none of the other actions I tried were equally reusable:
* Moved my object, tried selecting "LocX" and then hit I-key to insert a
key. Nothing happened.
* Looked in the menus. Menu option *Key --> Insert keyframe... *looks like
the best option. Nothing happened.
* There is no tooltip in the menus or anywhere else to guide me, however,
the user manual states exactly what to do so after a little reading, the
issue was solved.

Luckily, a simple tooltip anywhere on the curve area stating "*Ctrl+LMB to
insert key for selected curve*" is all that's required to solve this issue
completely.

/Jimmy Volatile


> _______________________________________________
> Bf-taskforce25 mailing list
> Bf-taskforce25 at blender.org
> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-taskforce25
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-taskforce25/attachments/20090624/4436a223/attachment.htm