Comments on: Dialog Button Keyboard Shortcuts

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 08 Jul 2004 19:45:58 +0000

This is actually one thing I can’t stand about Macs… lack of keyboard shortcuts. Windows is chock-full of them. Although I am now using LaunchBar, which helps greatly.

For this example, I never knew you could use keyboard shortcuts on some dialog boxes. Another thing you can’t do is simply TAB between options in dialog boxes. Unless you know how?? If there can’t be a keyboard shortcut, there should at least be an option to TAB. I hate reaching for the mouse every time I see a dialog box.

By: Eli Sarver

Eli Sarver — Sat, 26 Jun 2004 23:22:36 +0000

Unfortunately, one probably couldn’t do the “Don’t Save FnD” on the button like in the menus. I just think a change in font weight is more important than one in font colour or saturation.

By: Daniel J. Wilson

Daniel J. Wilson — Fri, 25 Jun 2004 20:00:21 +0000

My thinking was that desaturating all but the actual shortcut letter would be consistent with how command shortcuts are displayed in the menus. I thought about underlining the shortcut letter, but a mockup showed it to be pretty damn ugly. I’ll try out your ideas for alternative implementations and hopefully post something soon.

By: Eli Sarver

Eli Sarver — Fri, 25 Jun 2004 15:14:50 +0000

The flower is a nice addition, but a bit distracting. Since the ‘flowered’ button is commonly the first letter in an good dialog box, I would put a de-sat’d flower in front of the first letter instead. Or I’d not desat the rest of the text (too distracting), but rather bold the first part (probably more correct)

OR, failing that, A light flower, with a bolder first letter would also do. I’m just not a big fan of changing the tone of text to represent change.