unity-design team mailing list archive

[Jo-Erlend Schinstad <joerlend.schinstad@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hey.

I've been thinking a little about things that could make HUD even more 
powerful and user friendly. I have found one, I think! :)
See attached screenshots.

Currently, when you press Alt to display the HUD, you are only shown 
"Type your command". There's nothing else. When you do enter something, 
then you get a list of suggestions.
Now imagine that you select (just select, not activate) one of the 
suggestions, and then press an F-key. This F-key is now connected to 
that specific action in this program, but only when HUD is open. It 
doesn't interfere with the applications normal/static F-keys. We can 
differentiate that linguistically by referring to them as HUD-Locks, or 
something. If the F-key was previously connected to something else, then 
it's simply reassigned. If you press Del while having selected a 
HUD-locked item, it gets disconnected.
Whenever that action is displayed in the HUD, it shows the F-key to the 
left of the action label. Close the HUD and open it again. Is still 
displays "Type your command", but this time it also displays your 
connected actions. If you press the corresponding F-key, you launch that 
HUD-locked item. If you enter a character, then works just like it does 
now.
Consider, for instance, a situation where you're working with a few 
different font sizes, fonts and styles. Writing their names is much 
faster than using menus with the mouse, but using Alt and then tapping 
an F-key is much faster still. And since HUD will show the assignments 
by default, you don't need to remember what is connected to what. The 
point here is that you should be able to very quickly reassign the 
F-keys for temporary use as well as for permanent use.
For instance, in Thunderbird you can't select "Ubuntu Bold" in one go. 
So you'll first press Alt, enter "Ubuntu" and press enter. Then press 
Alt again, enter "bold" and press enter. You could imagine someone 
wanting to use F1-4 for font faces, F5-F8 for styles (underline, bold, 
etc) and F9-12 for sizes.
So, in order to switch to Ubuntu Bold XX-Large, you'd press Alt F1 
(Ubuntu) Enter. Alt F5 (Bold) Enter. Alt F12 (XX-Large). This would 
improve things by a fair amount. It's sort of the same advantage you 
have from locking entries to your Launcher instead of just relying on 
Dash > Home > Recent Applications.
Cool, huh?

--
Jo-Erlend Schinsta

Attachment: results.png
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Attachment: type-your-command-fkeys.png
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