Master issue: 1.16 Keyboard Shortcuts follow-up

[codebykat]

Following user feedback from the 1.16 release, we have a number of follow-up issues to address:

1. Ctrl+Backspace for deleting a note is apparently still conflicting with the text editing shortcut on some platforms.

e.g. in 2942069-zen:

Hey, as of recently, Simplenote uses Ctrl+Delete to delete a note. Unfortunately, it's also a text editing shortcut that I use a lot! Can you revert the behavior and/or make it a setting?
I am on a PC, where Ctrl+Delete deletes the word / text chunk following the text editing cursor.

See also: https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/microsoft-office/two-useful-word-shortcuts-for-quickly-deleting-text/ . Apparently both Ctrl+Backspace and Ctrl+Delete are used for text editing.

Next steps:

• Remove this shortcut for now? It's pretty bad that it doesn't even have a confirmation step.
  ➡️ Remove delete note shortcut #2076

2. Tag sidebar toggle conflicts with re-open last closed tab

See: #2051 (comment)

Next steps:

• I think we should pick a different shortcut for toggling the tag list.
  ➡️ Update the hotkey to open the tag list #2079

3. Search (Ctrl+F / Ctrl+G)

Lots of complaints from users on this one.

Users are reporting that this is laggy, that it behaves differently from the browser search, and that they are used to the in-browser search, so us taking it over is unexpected.

See: 2944165-zen

I would have expected to automatically jump to the first result within the note when I press enter after entering the search term.

Next steps:

• Automatically focus first result on submit/enter
• Investigate search performance

4. Doesn't work with Dvorak layout

See 2937392-zen:

I'm on a PC running Windows 10. I'm using a Dvorak keyboard layout that I've set in the keyboard settings in the language options in Windows.
Unfortunately, when I press ctrl-z in order to undo some text edits (just using basic OS/browser-level text field functionality), the keyboard shortcuts info popup shows up, as if I had pressed ctrl-/. I believe this is because of the Dvorak keyboard mapping I'm using - the '/' key on my keyboard is mapped to z because of Dvorak.
My current workaround is to press the escape key to get rid of the popup after every time I do ctrl-z, which is not a great user experience.

Next steps:

• Should definitely figure out how to handle this

5. Russian character inserts a tag

This is not new, but probably worth fixing as part of keyboard shortcut clean-up. See: #2040

6. "Focus Mode" shortcut hint missing in menubar

Next steps:

• Let's see if we can restore this without having to let Electron handle the functionality.
  ➡️ Add hotkey to view menu for focus mode #2082

[codebykat]

User in 2944165-zen was kind enough to detail their former workflow and what isn't working about the new search shortcut:

My workflow used to be:
CTRL+F --> browser search opens
enter my search term --> browser highlights all occurrences and jumps to the next result (i.e. when I am already halfay down in the note and start a search, it will start the search from there and loop back to the start)
ENTER --> focus jumps to the next result
ENTER --> focus jumps to the next result

What it is now:
CTRL+F --> the search field gets focused after a noticeable delay of one or two seconds
enter my search term --> after some lag, the word appears in the search bar. If the first occurrence is in the note but further down so that it is off-screen, it won't scroll down yet
ENTER --> nothing happens
ENTER --> nothing happens. i realize I need to use CTRL+G as per your suggestion
CTRL+G --> The first result gets selected. I think this actually behaves the same as the browser regarding that it starts the search in the middle of the document if the cursor is down there.
CTRL+G --> focus jumps to the next result
CTRL+G --> focus jumps to the next result

So my main issues are:

• Your search is slower than the browser's and causes lag
• The first occurrence is not selected until I press CTRL+G
• CTRL+G requires more effort than ENTER
• I am used to using the browser's search and hence your site's behaviour is unexpected no matter how good it may be.

[codebykat]

Addendum: The new note shortcut conflicts with the shortcut for opening a private window in Chrome.

➡️ #2080

[codebykat]

2965582-zen:

Just wanted to say new keyboard shortcuts in Simplenote are really inconvenient, as they interfere with established shortcuts in Safari.
⌘ + F ➙ should start a Safari search, not Simplenote search. While Simplenote search is ok for finding the note that contains a keyword, it wouldn’t show the exact location of the keyword within the note. I have notes with thousands of words, so finding anything with Simplenote search is impossible. Safari search lets you scroll through every instance of the keyword, and now I have to manually pick that option from the menu bar.
⌘ + Shift + N ➙ should start a private window and instead starts a new note.

[codebykat]

2957214-zen has a lot of details, including reporting keyboard cannot be used to go back/forward in revision history.

The history slider can be moved with the direction keys with one exception: If the slider is at the very beginning (leftmost position) the direction key won't move it. Not on my system. Every other position on the slider can be manipulated with those keys except that beginning. This looks like a bug to me and it was a little disconcerting when I was trying to find where the jump reported above was being reviewed. I had to keep switching from the direction keys to the mouse to get those first two or three positions reviewed carefully.

Request for the ability to disable shortcuts:

I realize this is all pretty cryptic but the issue seems to reveal itself with regard to keystrokes of various combinations. If it were up to me, I would start by putting in the toggle to turn off all the app shortcuts and let the users, like me, run with it for a while and see if that seems to resolve the issue.

Comments on search

I think the built-in Chrome shortcuts are good for most folks if you simply allow searching all notes' content instead of simply the current note.

Likely you are aware of the issue where the user searches for a text string, finds and navigates to the string, deletes the string and the cursor jumps to a totally unrelated note.

If only one instance of the search string is found and the user deletes that instance, for some reason the cursor is placed elsewhere. I don't know exactly what happens but it's not graceful. It's a jarring experience leaving the user wondering what, if anything, just happened and even calling into question whether they did something wrong.

[codebykat]

2962651-zen reports accidentally deleting a note via keyboard, and now cannot find it in trash.

[codebykat]

2967062-zen:

... recently you have changed the keyboard shortcuts so that Ctrl+F now focuses your search bar instead of triggering standard browser "Find in page". This is REALLY annoying. Especially because your search is a bit inferior, it only finds the note with a given search term (and highlights it), but you cannot "browse" through the actual found lines. So I have to manually scroll through the note and find the highlighted terms visually.... not really useful.
Could you give the users the possibility to change or disable a particular shortcut? Or change this particular one to something different?

[codebykat]

2972132-zen:

Please make a search field, to find text only inside the note when note is open. In app and in web. [...] it is sad that on the site I can no longer search for text inside a note using the combination of ctrl+f, please return this opportunity without interrupting the functionality of the browser.

[codebykat]

2970862-zen:

I just wanted to ask if there is still a way to use the browser search feature when trying to find a word in a specific note
Currently on the mobile App when i search, it shows me which notes have that search term and when pressing on the note it takes me to where the note has the search term. Which is great
On the web version, while the search doesnt take you to the place in the note the search term appears, I was able to get around this using the Ctrl+F browser feature. Now that shortcut only takes my cursor to the simplenote search box. This has proved quite troublesome when trying to find where in a note the search term appears. I have quite long notes so just highlighting the search term isn't very helpful.
I believe this change was made very recently in the web app, is there a way to disable the CTRL+F shortcut going to the webapp search or a way to force the browser search?

[belcherj]

Closing as these have been addressed.

[codebykat]

Opened #2091 for the Dvorak issue.