2012 Little Things: Shortcuts

Introduced in 2011 keyboard shortcuts got a graphical UI and with it the ability to define shortcuts on the fly. The commands exposed to the feature were also expanded to include contextual commands, application menu and other areas.  In 2012 we came back and picked off a few more items on the punch list.

Single Shortcuts

In 2011 expert shortcut users noticed something they didn't like.  The shortcut feature displayed all matches and allowed the arrow keys and spacebar to make a selection as before yet single letter shortcuts used to always sort first in the order.  When there were multiple matches but in 2011 they appeared last in the sort order.  Clever to the end you discovered that by manually editing the XAML file and write protecting it the issue could be mitigated but I am happy to report in 2012 this workaround is no longer needed.  The pre 2011 sort behavior is restored.  You can now define a single shortcut like "Z" for zoom and it will appear first even if there are other matches like "ZA", or "ZF".  Type "Z" then spacebar and voila.

Duplicate Shortcut Warning

In 2011 if you define a shortcut that creates a duplicate we post a warning.  Duplicates are still allowed  and can be found by sorting the list by the "shortcuts" column header.

Note: For some time we have been making an effort to ensure that warnings are reworked to be more informative.  The dialog below could have said "Warning! Duplicate Shortcut Created".  We now try to provide more information to help you understand what was done, what will happen, and the names of related elements so you can make a better decision - in this case the offending shortcut letter and command it is assigned to.  The more a dialog communicates the less you have to remember - the system is less cognitively demanding. We also try to not to be too verbose, yell at you, or use a condescending tone.

Export all commands (including undefined)

This is one for those of you that want to define everything free of a friendly yet slower graphical interface.

In previous versions we allowed export but only of defined commands.  This allowed commands to be easily transferred but didn't help if the aim was to make the definitions in excel or a XAML editor.

While I don't expect the calls for a command line to completely stop we've come a long way from R2009.

; )

_erik

Comments

[Tim Waldock]

We like the improvements to shortcuts. That dialog box is a good example of really informative feedback to users - its a good thing. One of the problems we have is that users seldom read dialog boxes - this is partly bad habits learnt on CAD systems where messages are not imoportant; but it is also due to the cryptic nature of many Revit messages, and also some unecessary ones. Apart from fixing those issues, It might help us to have an importance level for each message graphically shown kinda like the VBA message hierarchy that has coloured symbols for information, warning, serious problem (yellow exclamation mark . . . . big red cross, if I remember rightly).

[Erik Egbertson]

Cool.  The dialogs do support icons and they should appear in specific cases.  If the warning is just informational typically there is a blue dot with white i but most dialogs are of this kind and so we omit it. The Yellow Exclamation Mark is used when there is a risk of data loss or significant time lost.  The red X would only be a more severe version of this.  In general if you see an icon it should get more attention and if you dont see an icon the risk is minor.  If you know of cases that dont conform to this certainly let us know.  We are always trying to make these more effective and easier to understand.  I did a whole post on task dialogs a while back.