Kestrel's new shortcuts, why and what
Tuesday, 4. September 2007, 08:52:41
Yippee, Kestrel's finally out. As buggy alpha for now, remember! You are best of testing this in a seperate installation, installing in a new directory does that trick. If you decide to upgrade, you really want to have a backup of mail (and bookmarks, wand, cookies etc if these are important for you).
Among many else, this release aims to become more usable out of the box. That means no surprising non-obvious shortcuts where you need to read the documentation to figure out how to get your normal browser back after pressing the wrong key by accident. Yes, this did happen. Quite a lot. Our Elektrans testers made it very clear that power users will dearly miss some of the one-key shortcuts like 1/2 for tab switching and z/x for navigation. So we've also thought of a way to ship with those power shortcuts in a forward-compatible manner (shipping with an extra 'classic' keyboard setup will bring problems for us later). You can find the new switch to turn these shortcuts on under 'Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Shortcuts'.
Now, what changes did we make, and why? There's a complete official list of changes available (edit: updated the link to point to the beta 2 version). And here's a list of reasons:
- Several keyboard shortcuts have been changed or added for better cross-browser compatability.
- All single letter and single number keyboard shortcuts have been removed. These one-key shortcuts are powerful, but also caused serious problems for many users. For most of them alternatives are available. They can also be switched on separately in the Preferences.
- All Shift+letter and Shift+number keyboard shortcuts have been changed or removed for the same reasons.
- All Alt+letter keyboard shortcuts have been changed or removed. These keyboard shortcuts are not compatible with many Opera localizations, because Alt+letter is used to access the main menu. Exceptions: Alt+P and the new Alt+D, both available for historical reasons. Preferred alternatives are available for the actions they perform.
- All Ctrl+Alt+letter keyboard shortcuts have been changed or removed. Windows user interface guidelines reserve these shortcuts for system wide use and as alternative input method for some keyboards.
- Keyboard shortcuts for seldomly used features have been removed, including two series of shortcuts that didn't show in the normal user interface: Ctrl+Shift+number shortcuts for 'manage' pages and Site Navigation keyboard shortcuts (think
<link rel=home ...>) - Duplicated keyboard shortcuts that served no purpose anymore have been removed, those that were needed for compliance to operating systems guidelines have been made specific for those operating systems.
WIDGETIZE
« Previous 1 2
mispgl # 10. October 2007, 21:44
Why not:
a) by default, when upgrading, make a copy of the previously configured active setups available;
b) create options for setups for IE users, Mozilla users, and, I don't know, Enlightened users;
c) only enable the IE or Mozilla defaults (or whatever is deemed best for new users) in new installs?
One feature that would be great to add, though, is the ability to switch between sets of profiles.
Håvard Pedersen # 18. October 2007, 10:38
And what is this Command+{ for Mac you speak of? I couldn't find it. { is shift+alt+8 on my system. Adding the command key did, besides making me feel arthritic, nothing.
Rijk # 18. October 2007, 14:44
Command-{ is nice if you have an US keyboard, unfortunately it doesn't work on for example the Norwegian keyboard.
Rafal # 18. October 2007, 14:59
Rijk # 18. October 2007, 18:08
Håvard Pedersen # 25. October 2007, 10:00
Rijk # 25. October 2007, 12:00
wilk # 16. November 2007, 11:31
Rijk # 16. November 2007, 13:12
And note that you can enable the 'single-key' shortcuts in the preferences.
Kurazaybo # 16. November 2007, 16:46
Ayush # 17. November 2007, 12:42
Originally posted by Kurazaybo:
Preferences > Advanced > Tabs > Click on tab to minimize
Mathias Michel # 18. November 2007, 02:10
The MS assertion in your blog post is just a convention, not an obligation.
I am almost sure there are many shortcuts like that in the MSOffice suite, without any problem.
And thius combination represent the way windows handles the right altGr key; and that is very practical when you use keys on the right part of the keyboard, thus enabling a one-hand action.
Future advanced people will miss the presets of advanced features having keys, like toggle bars, page management, display modes, site navigation. First, they should discover the function, and then create a shortcut...
Using Opera at its best will be one step further, now :-/
janniklindquist # 20. November 2007, 20:28
Rijk # 21. November 2007, 00:49
FataL # 21. November 2007, 13:25
Schneemann # 21. November 2007, 23:08
I can remember I was one of those who liked to complain about single-key shortcuts hit by accident. (although I fail to find these old forum threads). So, in general I should be happy about this change...
Now something new:
Playing with the new version, I notice that most of the time I hit a shortcut I don't want is when typing in a textarea! Suddenly, I am on a new page, when I only wanted to do some text operations (type letters, copypaste, etc). Quite obvious conflict, if you think about it! (the rest of the time, I rarely touch the keyboard)
I don't know if this specialty has been given attention in the redesign of the shortcuts - so maybe it can be helpful if I throw it in.
A positive thing was that none of the unexpected events triggered by such a shortcut did some permanent damage. There was always a way to get back to the textarea. So, maybe this is already due to the changes in the new version.. (hmm, or it is just my own keyboard setup file... but single-key checkbox is disabled)
Rijk # 25. January 2008, 14:07
I don't really know what causes this problem for you. With or without 'single-key' enabled, letter and Shift+letter combinations don't trigger shortcut actions when a text area is focused. For obvious reasons. If you use your own setup, the single-key checkbox probably doesn't do anything, it relies on the shortcut setup file to tell Opera which shortcuts are 'single-key'.
So that leaves the various Ctrl+etc shortcuts, which we really can't remove or make inactive when an editable field is focused. You could remove most shortcuts from your custom setup... Though there is a bug in that you can't remove "all* shortcuts in a section, otherwise Opera will revert to use the defaults again
Schneemann # 25. January 2008, 14:47
Maybe it's also a question of mode visibility - the only clue you get that you are typing in a textarea is the blinking cursor..
Anyway. I found I can change the key bindings for textareas in the setup under Advanced > Edit widget. I'll play a bit with that - thank you so far!
Brandon # 26. January 2008, 16:54
See bug #284262.
Rijk # 26. January 2008, 22:44
Brandon # 25. February 2008, 02:00