What’s up with the keyboard shortcuts?

April 20, 2009 by Brad.

Do you use different video players? Have you noticed there seems to be no consistency in the use of (or even the existence of) keyboard shortcuts?

For example, what’s the keyboard shortcut for “Pause” on your player? In some cases, it’s “spacebar”, in other cases it is “p” and in yet other cases (Apple QuickTime), clicking in the window will pause the player. In the case of Microsoft Windows Media Player, it is “Ctrl-S”.

Would it be possible for the player developers to establish a standard for the most common functions, such as pause/resume, fast forward, next chapter, etc? Wouldn’t we all appreciate this?

Personally, I like the approach taken in WinDVD in which letter keys are assigned functions related to the letter, e.g.

F - fast forward / stop fast forward, resume playback    

R - fast reverse (rewind) / stop rewind, resume playback

and function keys are assigned related functions, e.g. 

PgUp - previous chapterPgDn - next chapter  

Spacebar - pause / resume playback    

I particularly like “Spacebar” for pause / resume playback because it is perhaps the mostly frequently used function and the spacebar is the largest key on the typical keyboard.

What’s with the multi-key combinations in Microsoft Windows Media Player, e.g. Ctrl-S and Ctrl-Shift-F? Most keyboards have about 100 keys, so it hardly seems necessary to use multi-key combinations. Why not just assign each key a dedicated function? It should be feasible to map just about every conceiveable function to its own key. Tsk, tsk.

If you think about how these players are used, you can see why single keys are important. In my case, I use a laptop in the TV room to playback recorded TV programs on a large screen TV. I don’t want to be fumbling with multi-key combinations when skipping commercials.

So developers, could we please have a standard on this? Thanks.

What are your thoughts? 

Posted in General | Print | No Comments »