Common pattern of keyboard shortcuts on websites - keyboard-shortcuts

For instance what could activate a search field?
Sometimes it's S
othertimes F
or esc
in gmail it's /
Feels like it's a wild west out there in the keyboard shortcut universe. A standard would be something, just thinking...
Is it cause hotkeys are rather new thing in the interwebs? Or the fact that every site has so unique needs?
Do you have a pattern you use?

Related

VoiceOver left and right arrow keys are reserved for predefined behavior. How to override?

For VoiceOver, the left and right arrow keys seemed to be reserved for 2 things:
By default, the left and right arrow keys put focus on the letter of
whatever the focus is on.
EX:
If you turn on quick-nav (left and right arrow key), the left and
right arrow keys are used to go through the entire content of the
page, whether focusable or not.
So what is the consensus on whether specific keys should be overriden? In this example, the overriden feature does not work as expected because VoiceOver has a predefined behavior for the left and right arrow keys.
NOTE: This issue only occurs for VoiceOver + Safari. You can try it with this example of accessible tabs (which with VO and Safari is not accessible).https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-practices/examples/tabs/tabs-2/tabs.html
So what is the consensus on whether specific keys should be overriden?
I am providing general advice as I do not know your use-case (you show tabs but there could be other components you are working on).
It is perfectly acceptable to over-ride keys with custom functionality that improves your website / web app (in fact it is encouraged) with a big caveat!
There needs to be an easy way to both switch shortcut keys on and off and give the user the option to change the key bindings to what they want via an options menu or similar.
Old advice used to be that there are 'safe' shortcut keys you could use, but a lot of users change their key bindings to meet there needs (it isn't just screen readers but all assistive devices you need to consider) and new screen readers are introduced that use different sets of keys, making this advice obsolete and a bad practice.
Also consider adding some guidance (if your design allows) on the shortcut keys you have implemented to make it easier for people to use certain elements of your site as you cannot assume someone will automatically know what keys to use where.

An extension for Apple's Look Up

I am learning French. Every time I use the Force Click on my Mac on a word I don't know, I get a dictionary entry and a translation to English.
But when I want to translate a whole sentence, I have to open Google Translate to do so. (1. Open Google Translate. 2. Copy sentence 3. Paste Sentence) It is pretty annoying to do that 20-30 times a day.
So is there a way to expand the capabilities of Force Click in Safari (or in the best case, in every application which allows "Look Up")?
Let me worry about how I can translate the sentences.
I am open for any kind of creative solution.
Here is the standard pop-up when I force touch
I don't think there is a documented way to achieve this on a force click, but you may want to look at Services.
Basically, you can create an application that provides a service, select some text, and then choose your application's Service menu item from the Services submenu in your Application Name menu (the one in bold where "Hide" etc. are).
The service will then receive a copy of the selection (in an NSPasteboard) and can do whatever it wants with that, or even change it.

IntelliJ/PhpStorm only switches keyboard layout by half

I'm having a strange problem with IntelliJ IDEA 16.1.2 running in Ubuntu MATE 16.04: when I switch between keyboard layouts, then normal typing works as expected, but any control key combinations use the wrong layout. Confused? So am I.
For years I've been using MATE (Linux Mint MATE, Ubuntu MATE) and switching between layouts (Norwegian Dvorak and US English) via MATE's built-in keyboard layout switcher (using CAPS LOCK to switch globally), and this has been working without a single hitch. I love it.
But now I started using IntelliJ, and I find that when I switch layouts, a o e u becomes a s d f as it should, but CTRL-X / C / V and all the others remain on the Dvorak key positions (that is, on qwerty you'd have to type CTRL+B / I / > in order to hit the CTRL-X / C / V on the Dvorak layout. Ditto for all other CTRL-any key commands such as Find, Print, etc.
This is bonkers! And it's only happening in IntelliJ IDEA and PhpStorm. I've never seen this before, and right now those are the only two apps on my system that are affected.
My keyboards are native QWERTY, and I have used the OS to specify Dvorak as the primary layout, with QWERTY as an option and a hotkey to toggle between them.
I use Dvorak almost exclusively; the only reason to have the other layout is for "guests": coworkers during pair work, and my wife on the systems at home.
Dvorak is working 100%, but the querty is not: the querty works for non-ctrl characters, but ctrl stays mapped to Dvorak
This is for the other way around, but may help.
I have seen a setting, where you can switch to dvorak, but key control keys in querty position. I think it is in the keyboard layout system-settings.

NSTextField like control for entering key shortcuts - Objective-C/Cocoa

I've seen in some applications the control in these shots that is used to enter key shortcuts. I'd like to know if these are standard (available to everyone) or if these were built by the application's developer. I don't think it is the latter because I've seen this in many apps from different developers. Here are the images:
To give one example of an app try Bowtie, though I know there's more that use this.
If this control is standard, could you tell me how to use it (what class, etc)?
The first one appears to be Shortcut Recorder from Waffle Software.
Note that the use of a rounded text field for this, while somewhat established, the HIG reserves the rounded appearance for search fields.

Need a keyboard with specific keys

Okay, I've seen the webpage that shows you how to enter a decimal key on the number pad, but that's pretty complicated for one button, and the problem I have involves multiple buttons. See, I have a program that involves typing in functions like "x + 5". My problem right now is that the user has to go through three different keyboards just to enter that kind of function. I need to know if it's possible to set up a keyboard that will have specific keys in it. Is there a way to do this that's simpler than the decimal key method?
You'll have to create a custom keyboard if none of the apple keyboards toots your flute.
The easiest way to do this is to create a view and add lots of buttons with their own titles and background images and, most importantly, actions. You'll also need a delegate.
To be more official, there are numerous online tutorials (and lots of SO questions).