Proposal: useful keyboard shortcuts

[hurradieweltgehtunter]

If someone needs to be convinced why keyboard shortcuts are important, read this first part ;) . The rest, skip to the list below.

5 Reasons Why You Should Be Using Keyboard Shortcuts

Here are some considerations why to replace or at least reduce mouse habits and start using shortcut keys extensively.

1. Efficiency

It is generally acknowledged by computer pro’s that you can increase your productivity and accomplish more tasks by using the keyboard instead of mouse. In other words, it’s easier and gets your job done faster:). Take for example the task of selecting all the text in a document. You can do that by simply pressing Ctrl+A while doing that with the mouse requires pressing the left mouse button and dragging it across the whole document. In time you will learn that keyboard shortcuts let you do more with less effort. A wide range of keyboard shortcuts speeds up everyday work immensely.

2. Multitasking

Derives from the first motive and basically means that when you use the keyboard you don’t have to follow a pointer to see what you are doing and you can do that thing semi-automatically thus freeing your mind for other tasks.

3. Complementarity

You can combine the advantages of using the keyboard with those of using the mouse. There are tasks that are much easier done with the mouse, take the example of browsing the web pages and clicking links but at the same time you can use the keyboard to navigate within the page or between tabs. And the beauty of it is that you can do both at the same time :).

4. Health issues

Extensive mouse usage is associated with R.S.I. (Repetitive Syndrome Injury) much often than the keyboard usage. By alternating mouse and keyboard usage you can reduce the risks of R.S.I. and reduce the fatigue your wrists and fingers.

5. Precision

When you have a job that requires precision it is advisable that you use the keyboard, for example if you do a lot of text editing, it is more accurate to handle it through shortcut keys.

Shortcuts

The following list is a collection of keyboard shortcuts which are commonly implemented in many applications and are a (de facto) standard.

Shortcut (Ctrl = Win / Cmd = Mac)	Function	Comment
Ctrl/Cmd + C	Copy	already implemented
Ctrl/Cmd + X	Cut	already implemented
Ctrl/Cmd + V	Paste	already implemented
Ctrl/Cmd + A	Select all items in current folder
Ctrl/Cmd + Z	undo last action	needs to be specified, which actions can be undone, for example creation, deletion, renaming, ...? Also, it must be specified how many actions can be undone
Ctrl/Cmd + Y	redo	Re-do last undone action
Ctrl/Cmd + F	focus the global search bar	shortcut should enable the user to directly start typing. in case the input field already contains text it should be marked to be replaced on typing; Additionally the search could be focused anytime a user starts typing in a non-typing context (for example while displaying the file list)
Ctrl/Cmd + G	repeat search	while this is widely implemented in other applications (check your browser) I cannot think of something useful in our context
Ctrl/Cmd + I	open right sidebar	related to Mac's finder: Cmd+I opens a pop up with detailed information of a file/folder
Page up, Spacebar, Page down	move one page down in file list	useful for folders with a lot of files
Ctrl/Cmd + N	Create new folder
arrow down, arrow up	navigate through file list item by item	implemented but it is required to select a file first with the mouse; If no file is selected it should just start with the first (arrow down) or last (arrow up) element
spacebar	mark file (set checkmark) permanently (until de-select) to be able to mark multiple files by keyboard	currently pressing the spacebar (de-)selects a file which is similar to arrow up/arrow down; Need to decide which function for spacebar is more suitable
spacebar	open file preview	also a very handy feature in Mac's finder to quickly see a files` content
backspace / del	delete item
Ctrl/Cmd + , (comma)	open settings	maybe not used much but it is kind of a standard shortcut
Enter / Cmd + O	open file
?	Rename file	Win uses F2, Mac uses Enter
Ctrl + L / Control + Cmd + L	Logout user	related to "lock screen" on MacOS & Win
Ctrl + [1-4] / Cmd + [1-4]	Switch file view OR switch items in left sidebar: Personal, Shares, Spaces, Trashbin (then extend to [1-9] - see #7563	no different file views implemented yet but marked for future
?	open app switcher	apps should then be selectable with arrow down/up and opened with enter
?	open share dialog / Share file	while being an important and presumably heavily used feature it could qualify for an own keyboard shortcut. Need to think about which share method would be best (Copy quicklink, Create Share, Create Link, ...

Feel free to extend this list.

[kulmann]

With ownCloud Web being a web application we need to be more careful with keyboard actions than a standalone application would - some of the keyboard shortcuts you mention are already occupied by the browser itself. In general I agree with you, the more keyboard shortcuts we're able to offer the better.

Some examples:

• ctrl/cmd + c/v are meant for copy/paste of text selection. If any text is selected in the browser we ignore the shortcut because we assume that the user wants to work with their text selection.
• ctrl/cmd + a might be used for selecting all text on the page. In this case I think it might be ok to catch that for file selection in the list...
• ctrl/cmd + n can't be used by us, it is used for new window in browsers
• undo/redo is generally hard to implement, especially because some actions in the ui are really hard to revert/reproduce. meeting user expectations is a challenge, because if some actions are revertible but others aren't it immediately feels broken.
• ctrl/cmd + i usually is the shortcut for converting text to italic - but I do like the idea of a shortcut for opening the right sidebar a lot!

[hurradieweltgehtunter]

Sure thing, most shortcuts are already used. Maybe we can alter it to use a different switch button (Mac: control instead of Cmd) and document it well. Also we need to think about if a default browser shortcut is suitable in our context. For example we capture the right click and prevent the default browser context menu, too, to use it in our sense. Ctrl +A for example might be more useful to be used to select all files instead of all text( can't imagine why someone would do that). I just had the urge to start a shortcut issue to start collecting ideas. Final solution might differ.

[hurradieweltgehtunter]

Added "Share file" as possible keyboard shortcut relevant feature