Bug 129743

Summary:	keyboard shortcuts vary for similiar actions in different kontact components
Product:	[Applications] kontact	Reporter:	C. Dominik Bódi <kdebugs>
Component:	general	Assignee:	kdepim bugs <kdepim-bugs>
Status:	RESOLVED UNMAINTAINED
Severity:	normal	CC:	franke.daniel
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Debian testing
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description C. Dominik Bódi 2006-06-24 13:32:11 UTC

Version: (using KDE KDE 3.5.3)
Installed from: Debian testing/unstable Packages
OS: Linux

Keyboard shortcuts for similar user actions vary in several kontact components. This has a significant impact on usability and will particularly confuse new users.
For instance, the keyboard shortcuts for "Next unread item" vary wildly:
- "Next unread email" in kontact/mail is bound to the "Space Bar" key
- "Next unread article" in kontact/usenet is bound to "Alt+Shift+Space Bar"
- "Next unread discussion" in kontact/usenet is bound to "Shift+Space Bar"
- "Next unread article" in kontact/akkregator is bouhd to the "+" key.

This doesn't make sense at all. What's the point of using a "unify-into-one-ui" application like kontact if all the keyboard shortcuts are different and the user has to learn different shortcuts for different components anyway? You'd rather use the applications separately. However, from a usability point of view, even then it would not be intuitive to have different keyboard shortcuts for different user interface actions, either.

Throughout KDE, and in kontact in particular, semantically similiar user actions should be assigned the same keyboard shortcuts. This is easily achievable.

On a side note, I noticed that a number of these shortcuts I'm complaining about seem to have changed recently. That's not a good thing either. If a user has to re-learn keyboard shortcuts for every release of KDE he'll be quite unhappy about it, too.

I'm not filing this as a wishlist item because the described system behaviour has a significant negative impact on usability and experience from the user's point of view. Even ms windows does this better.

Regards,
Dominik

Comment 1 Daniel Franke 2006-07-14 14:15:35 UTC

I second this.
Another example is the placings of menu items, e.g.: "Mark all as read":
KMail: the first entry after a "headline"
Akregator: top entry without "headline"
KNode: third entry

While Akregator's "Mark all as read" works recursively in subdirectories, KMail's does not.

Comment 2 Pradnyesh Sawant 2008-02-26 11:37:41 UTC

I tried opening just kmail (without kontact); changed the keyboard shortcuts and then opened kmail from within kontact. the wrong keyboard shortcuts are still there. is kontact storing keyboard shortcuts within it's own configuration which are being overwritten by the original application? this seems to be the problem...

Comment 3 Denis Kurz 2016-09-24 19:28:52 UTC

This bug has only been reported for versions before 4.14, which have been unsupported for at least two years now. Can anyone tell if this bug still present?

If noone confirms this bug for a Framework-based version of kontact (version 5.0 or later, as part of KDE Applications 15.08 or later), it gets closed in about three months.

Comment 4 Denis Kurz 2017-01-07 21:28:07 UTC

Just as announced in my last comment, I close this bug. If you encounter it again in a recent version (at least 5.0 aka 15.08), please open a new one unless it already exists. Thank you for all your input.