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Navigating through menus adjustments for keyboard users

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  • Navigating through menus adjustments for keyboard users
• Navigating through menus adjustments for keyboard users

• Navigating through menus adjustments for keyboard users

  Popleft > 2023-08-18 06:15

  My QAP setup consists of as little as 3 menus / columns and it will consists of more somewhere in the future. But even currently when I operate from afar using only a wireless keyboard the whole experience is already annoying
  
  #1] When I know I need to go to the top entry of the middle menu or the top item in the last menu I also know I will be forced to first press the Down key instead of just Right. There is a reason why users choose some items over others and put them at the beginning of lists and in the first or second menu- and that reason is importance / convenience [and maybe also aesthetics]
  
  #2] The Left key also does nothing until user presses Down or Up. It would be logical to set focus / choice to the top most entry of the right most menu when Left is pressed as the first / initial key
  
  #3] Users can initially press Up in order to have their focus transported over to the last entry of the last menu- but pressing Left when being in the left most menu does not transfer users to the right most menu even when they already did some navigation with keyboard. If Pacman could teleport from left edge to right and vice versa so should users of QAP
  
  #4] Pressing repeatedly Up or Down cycles focus through all entries in all menus. I propose adding an option that would change that behavior into locking such cycling within a given menu / column [thus users would have to press Left / Right to switch to other menu]
  
  #5] In order to reveal content of a sub-menu users have to either press Enter or Right key - and when then Right is pressed or pressed again then the nested menu disappears and a user is transferred to the next one on the right. I would argue for addition of option that would treat pressing of Right key strictly as movement key thus leaving only Enter capable of showing nested menus
  
  #6] With more than 2 menus / columns it would be convenient for users to be able to choose which one would be the middle / main one - i.e. the one which would have focus when user executes the initial Down key. This way [and assuming also points #1 and #2 would be taken care of] users could have at their disposal three very quickly accessible entries [by pressing Left / Down / Right and then Enter]
  
  #7] It would be convenient for users to be able to choose which entry would be the middle one. This way after also pressing of Up user would be taken to an entry of choosing in the initial menu / column and could potentially cut in half the distance / pressing of keys when jumping though entries [like when user would choose 5th entry out of e.g. 10]
  
  #8] It would be time saving if users had focus already applied to the first entry [or middle one if point #7 gets implemented] so that they could just press Enter right away in order to choose it
  
  #9] It would be even more time saving if users had focus already applied to the first entry and be able to accept it choosing by pressing for the second time the keyboard shortcut that evokes QAP. In other words: make double execution of QAP shortcut equal to current single one + Down + Enter

• RE: Navigating through menus adjustments for keyboard users

  Jean Lalonde > 2023-09-08 11:01

  I'm sorry to give you such a short answer to your detailed suggestion but, unfortunately, because QAP is relying on the Windows standard menus engine, it has no control on the behaviour of the menu itself. QAP can create menu, set some properties but, once the menu is displayed, it can control the menu reaction to user input. QAP takes the control back only when a user select an item in the menu.
  
  I agree with you that there is room for improvement in Windows menus (especially with you have multiple columns). We could make these suggestions to Microsoft but with their current focus on interoperability and new platforms, I doubt they will work on these "legacy" menus.
  
  The alternative would be to completely rewrite the QAP menu (using the AHK platform and much advanced libraries) but this would be way too much work and would open the door to a whole new set of bugs and issues. Sorry but this is not on the QAP roadmap.
  
  See other examples of things that can't be done by QAP.
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