Navigating the Main Application Menu using the keyboard does not work fully

[Mathias Dahl]

Binary package hint: gnome-panel

Hi,

I find keyboard navigation of the main application menu a bit
confusing. After opening it with Alt+F1 and typing `p' it is not the
Programming sub menu that opens, as I would have guessed. Instead it is
the Places top menu (on my system the one to the right of the
Applications menu). When the Places menu is opened focus is given to the
top menu item there and I can type other keys to activate sub menus. The
same goes for the System top menu.

I found this illogical. Shouldn't the focus be at the top item of the
Applications menu when I activate it? If not, why, and how am I
supposed to activate menu items under it without using the cursor keys?

I also tried using `a' to activate the Applications menu but that did not work,
nothing happens. This is not consistent with `p' and `s' working
for the Places and System menus. If `a' activated the Applications menu the
behavior would be okay I guess.

Look at the attached image. It is this I see when doing Alt + F1.

I am running Ubuntu 7.10.

Thanks!

/Mathias

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

I'm surprised any access keys works. Since there is not an underscore indicating that the menu item has an access key, I've never tried it. I use <ALT>F1, then arrow keys to select items. In general the menu is behaving like a list where the key press will select the first item that starts with that key.

I do not experience the described behaviour by the way in Ubuntu Gutsy. <Alt>F1 activates the Menu Bar. The keys 'p' and 's' do activates the Places and System menu respectively, and pressing a key will select any submenu that starts with that key. The Application menu is a problem. It is not activated by <Alt>F1, I cannot activate it with the 'a' key, even though I can see the menu items.

The GNOME Main Menu also has problems. I can activate it and access the menu items, but it does not behave like application menus. Selecting an item that has a submenu should make the submenu active so that I can use keys to select an item.

I think the GNOME Main Menu (and the Menu Bar used by Ubuntu) violate the HIG. Reading the guidelines at

    http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/stable/menus.html.en

I think the general problem is that both menus do not provide access keys. The Menus are special though, They are not verb/adjective based since they focus on things.

I filed this as GNOME bug #521227 and linked

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

thanks for sent this upstream.

[Joe_Linux (joelinux-earthlink)]

I'm unable to program the Ubuntu key on an HP notebook to open the main menu

[nwil (nwil)]

hi,

this bug bothers me since ever. (since i use ubuntu / debian with gnome)
there is nothing i would be hapier about than this bug beeing solved.