Houston, we have a [hotkey] problem…

crunch

I’m accustomed to typing either:

Alt+F > X

-or-

Alt+F > C

…to close my Windows apps. In Classic skin mode, PA follows this standard, however, in Modern skin mode it doesn’t respond to the Alt+F hotkey input. I noticed that if you just tap the Alt key then you get some little helper popup keys displayed over the menus area, with ‘M’ displaying over the program menu circle in the upper left.

Now, 2 assumptions:

1. I’m assuming that ‘M’ was used instead of ‘F’ because ‘F’ was already used to map to the file menu when using the Classic skin mode.

2. I’m assuming that ‘M’ stands for “menu.”

These are both fine, however, by using the letter ‘M’ as the hotkey to expand the main (normally ‘File’) menu, it turns this hotkey combination into a 2-handed operation, which is bad. :(

Suggested solutions:

1. If it’s possible to do so, using ‘F’ to expand the main menu would be ideal.

2. If that’s not possible then could we at least choose a letter of the alphabet that’s on the left-hand side of the keyboard?

From my experience, I’d say the majority of pc users use the right-handed keyboard/mouse setup (with the mouse on the right-hand side of the keyboard). The current hotkey combination negates the efficiency of using hotkey combinations. ;)

spwolf

Alt+F4?

crunch

Hmm, Alt+F4 does indeed work- thanks for the tip as I wasn’t aware of that hotkey combination until now.

However, it is not very user-friendly ;) since it’s quite a stretch to activate and it also requires interrupting what I’m working on in order to look down at the keyboard to confirm finger placement. Alt-F > X allows a noticeably smoother workflow.

Also, I noticed a second but closely related quirk. In MS Word 2007, which also uses the new Office 2007 ribbons toolbar interface, the menu fires as soon as you type Alt+F. In PA you have to do:

Alt. M.

In other words, Alt+M does nothing, you need to press and release Alt and then hit ‘M’ for the hotkey combination to trigger. Hmm, I guess that would make it by definition…not a hotkey combination, perhaps more closely resembling a turn-based strategy game… Care to play? :)

spwolf

thats one of the parts we are definetly looking to improve for 10.2…

crunch

Great!