Renowned GNOME developer Allan Day talks in a recent blog post published on the GNOME website about the new keyboard shortcut approach for the upcoming GNOME 3.20 desktop environment.
When the GNOME developers dropped support for the GNOME 2 desktop environment, they also removed the keyboard shortcuts implementation, which helped many users better interact with their windows and various actions that were often repeated , thus being more productive.
According to Mr. Day, the keyboard shortcuts are greatly missed in the GNOME 3 desktop environment, so the team decided that starting with the upcoming GNOME 3.20 desktop environment, due for release on March 23, 2015, they will re-implement support for keyboard shortcuts for most GNOME apps.
“Keyboard shortcuts can be a powerful feature, particularly for actions that are repeated often and are consistently available,” said Allan Day. “In GNOME 2, shortcuts could be learned through menu bars, but we moved away from these with GNOME 3. […] For GNOME 3.20, we’ve set ourselves the target of adding shortcuts windows to as many key GNOME applications as possible, so they are consistently available.
Over 13 GNOME apps now have keyboard shortcuts
What will be awesome in GNOME 3.20 is that thanks to the availability of the GtkShortcutsWindow widget in the powerful GTK+ 3 GUI toolkit, it will be possible to display a keyboard shortcuts overlay for all the GNOME apps that will support keyboard shortcuts. They are called shortcuts windows, and will allow users to explore available keyboard shortcuts for the respective app.
Of course, the shortcuts windows will be accessible through a standard keyboard shortcut. Therefore, a few skilled GNOME developers are working around the clock these days to add keyboard shortcuts to key GNOME apps. At the moment of writing this article, over 13 applications have received keyboard shortcuts, but a lot more will get them in the coming weeks.
In conclusion, the upcoming GNOME 3.20 desktop environment promises to be a very good release for those who love manipulating windows using nothing but their keyboards. GNOME application developers who would like to add their own keyboard shortcuts to their apps, are invited to study the official guidelines.
Via Softpedia