Re: [platform-ui-dev] Question about use of Ctrl+Enter in UI

[Nick_Edgar@xxxxxxx]

This seems like a reasonable convention to follow.

In my version of Outlook Express, the new message window has no OK button, 
just Send etc. in the toolbar (which incidentally has Alt+S as an 
accelerator as well).
It looks like a secondary window rather than a dialog.

If you're in an actual dialog with an OK button marked as the default, 
using Shell.setDefaultButton(Button), it's unclear whether the default 
button or the multiline text control will get the Enter key.
The "Windows User Experience" book seems to suggest that the default 
button gets it (p. 213).
They recommend either not setting the OK button as the default in this 
case, or temporarily unsetting it while the text has focus.
There is no mention of using Ctrl+Enter.

However, using Ctrl+Enter to activate the default button of a dialog would 
be consistent with using Ctrl+Tab for traversal when the control takes 
Tab.
Perhaps this is something SWT should support directly (I'm cc'ing the SWT 
list).

You would have a conflict if anybody defined an accelerator for a menu 
item using Ctrl+Enter.
The menu item would get it before you did.
But nobody currently does this in the SDK, and this would not be a 
recommended accelerator.

(Also, note that Alt+Enter is commonly used for getting properties for an 
element, and I'll be pushing to use this in more places.)

Nick





"James Moody/OTT/OTI" <James_Moody@xxxxxxx>
Sent by: platform-ui-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx
12/05/01 09:57 AM
Please respond to platform-ui-dev

 
        To:     platform-ui-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
        cc: 
        Subject:        [platform-ui-dev] Question about use of Ctrl+Enter in UI

Many applications present a form of multi-line text input window (be it 
modal or non-modal). Because "Enter" causes a carriage return in the text 
widget (if the text widget has focus), setting the "OK" button to be the 
default button is not sufficient. In these cases, there are a number of 
applications that use Ctrl+Enter as a shortcut to accept the input and 
close the window. For example, Outlook Express does this when composing a 
mail or newsgroup message. ICQ does this to dismiss the "new message" 
dialog and send the message. I can find other examples as well. In our 
case, we will be changing the "Please Enter Release Comment" dialog to 
handle multi-line comments, which is common usage. We would like to use 
Ctrl+Enter for the shortcut for OK.

My question is, does the UI team have a policy or suggestion regarding the 

use of this accelerator? Does it conform to (or violate) any formal UI 
guidelines that you are aware of?

Thanks for any input,

james (on behalf of the VCM team)

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