unity-design team mailing list archive

[Luke Morton <luke.morton@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 2010-05-15 at 15:37 -0700, Tyler Brainerd wrote:
> I'll try to be brief. Currently, alt tab moves between windows.
> Ctrl-Tab moves between tabs in some programs, not all. Special (Win
> Key) and tab does nothing.
> It would kinda make more sense if we did this: Ctrl-Tab moves between
> tabs, system wide. Special and tab moves between windows (the old
> standard alt-tab) and alt tab moves between workspaces. General to
> specific, vice versa.
> 
> I know it would suck to change up the alt-tab control, but we've got
> three keys which are (generally) in a row, and we use only two, and
> could make all three useful and make sense.
> 

We can't really rely on the super key (as others have mentioned).
However, since switching between desktops is already available through
to Ctrl + Alt + [Arrow], we could add Super + Tab as a  way to cycle
through desktops in the same way Alt + Tab cycles through windows.

As for Ctrl + Tab, the only app I know of that supports that is Firefox.
Also, Ctrl + Tab has other uses (see link below).

This does raise an interesting point though: we should probably aim for
consistency for handling tabs (and shortcut keys in general). My quick
test yields a few different approaches:

Terminal: 
Focus: Ctrl + PgUp and Ctrl + PgDown
Move: Ctrl + Shift + PgUp and Ctrl + Shift + PgDown
Create: Ctrl + Shift + T
Close: Ctrl + Shift + W
New window: Ctrl + Shift + N

Gedit: 
Focus: Ctrl + Alt + PgUp and Ctrl + Alt + PgDown
Move: (can't find a way to do this)
Create: Ctrl + N
Close: Ctrl + W
Close all: Ctrl + Shift + W
New window: (can't find a way to do this)
Close window: Ctrl + Q

Firefox: 
Focus: Ctrl + PgUp and Ctrl + PgDown or Ctrl + Tab and Ctrl + Shift +
Tab
Move: (can't find a way to do this)
Create: Ctrl + T
Close: Ctrl + W
New window: Ctrl + N
Close window: Ctrl + Shift + W
Close application: Ctrl + Q

It would be nice to standardise these (and other apps). There's already
a relevant section in the GNOME HIG:
http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/stable/input-keyboard.html.en
but it doesn't say anything about tabs (although it does mention
documents).