Several of the Practices patterns recommend Windows-specific keyboard shortcuts

[cookiecrook]

Several of the Practices patterns recommend Windows-specific keyboard shortcut, or at least Windows-centric patterns.

For example, Shift+F10 to open a menu, and Control+Space to select all cells. Even if Window lay user knows this shortcut (do they?), no VoiceOver user would intuit this recommendation.

The document also uses the unmodified Spacebar in a few places, which may conflict with macOS conventions since Spacebar is the default activation key on macOS (as Enter is the default activation key on Windows)

[mcking65]

@cookiecrook commented:

Several of the Practices patterns recommend Windows-specific keyboard shortcut, or at least Windows-centric patterns.

For keyboard design, APG generally uses the intersection of macOS, Linux, and Windows. However, if a convention does not exist on all 3 platforms, and an assignment is needed, we will make an exception.

In some cases, APG recommends windows/linux conventions that are different from macOS, and a macOS convention does exist. Common examples are home/end, which would usually be opt-up/down or cmd-left/right, depending on the widget. Similar issues with selection exist. These are called out in a few places but not consistently. It's been a few years since we discussed this. So, it is probably time to discuss a thorough approach.

For example, Shift+F10 to open a menu

We've never found a macOS equivalent for context menus. The only way I know to open context menus is ctrl-opt-shift-m when VO is running. Please let us know if macOS has a convention for this. Since it seemed there is a gap here, we filled it with the Windows/Linux convention.

and Control+Space to select all cells.

I'm not aware of where we have used this. shift+space selects a row in a grid. Is that the one you are meaning?

The document also uses the unmodified Spacebar in a few places, which may conflict with macOS conventions since Spacebar is the default activation key on macOS (as Enter is the default activation key on Windows)

Unsure what this means. Example please?

[carmacleod]

@cookiecrook said:

For example, Shift+F10 to open a menu

@mcking65 answered:

We've never found a macOS equivalent for context menus.

There isn't one (other than in VO). Users of cross-platform apps tend to demand that the app support context menus, and so apps that respect keyboard users need to add a shortcut to open the context menu on Mac. We had to do that in Eclipse all those years ago, and of course we chose Shift+F10 for consistency with Windows and Linux. We would have vastly preferred to use a macOS equivalent, but that wasn't an option. We understood that the Mac Guidelines said that all commands need to be in the menubar menus, and they were. And we added as many shortcut keys as we could. But context menus can be used to make users more efficient, plus they offer multiple ways to discover commands. Mac lets mouse users have context menus with ctrl+click, but not keyboard users.

Eclipse users are developers. Experienced developers gravitate towards keyboard for the productivity advantages it affords. They all know what a context menu is, and most know the Shift+F10 shortcut.

You can tell that this has been a pain point for me for nearly 2 decades. ;)
If you look back in the ancient radars, I'm sure you'll find my name on at least one of the ones requesting a keyboard shortcut for context menu. :)

[carmacleod]

Need to review all instances of the text "Control+" (there are a zillion of them - see TreeView for example) and decide whether the correct shortcut on Mac uses "Command+" (usually does) or "Control+" (really rare). For example "Control+A" to select all on Windows is "Command+A" on Mac.