10

Background:

Many questions require the user to describe used keyboard shortcuts.

These can be formatted through <kbd></kbd>.

Suggestion:

I would like to suggest to add an icon to the composing editor to format keyboard shortcuts visually.

Mock-up

2 Answers 2

5

I suggest positioning the keyboard shortcut icon right after the Emphasis icon, also called the Italics icon, which looks like this: enter image description here

I think it would look a little bit ugly there, but I don't care about that. What I do care about is the user experience factor. The proposed keyboard shortcut icon would look a little bit mean there, which would give users a visual cue that it's OK to be mean on the website, which is not a good design from a community perspective.

Stack Overflow has both Graphic Design and User Experience Q&A websites, so I would expect that suggestions like this one would attract quite a bit of professional interest on the Stack Overflow network generally.

1
  • Thanks for the feedback! User terdon above suggests a client-side solution but I would like to see this being implemented server-side. Thus I am tending towards your best answer.
    – orschiro
    Sep 8, 2016 at 10:00
9

There's an app for that!

https://stackapps.com/q/3341/17253

KBD button userscript


And an extension, too:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kbd-button-for-stack-exch/ignlodfdkifdjomipiamkaaoiokkjlok

extension screnshot

And here's the extension's Git page:

https://github.com/oliversalzburg/se-kbd-button

One of those two should work for you.

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  • Great! Can we implement this server-side and not client-side?
    – orschiro
    Sep 8, 2016 at 9:58
  • @orschiro dunno, you'll have to ask the SE devs. I doubt it though. Since there's already a perfectly simple solution for those of us who want this and given that the <kbd> tags aren't really used all that often, I don't think SE will be willing to put much effort into this.
    – terdon
    Sep 8, 2016 at 10:00
  • Do SE developers read this question or should I contact them differently?
    – orschiro
    Sep 8, 2016 at 10:00
  • Yes, they should see the ones tagged with feature-request. Don't expect too much though. They have other things to do. Why don't you just install the extension or the userscript? It's very simple and light and does exactly what you want. I really don't see the benefit of having this server side.
    – terdon
    Sep 8, 2016 at 10:02
  • I already installed the extension. The benefit I see is that it could benefit other users, too and help make the kbd formatting more visible. From my experience, many users are not even aware of it.
    – orschiro
    Sep 8, 2016 at 10:08
  • 1
    @orschiro that's probably true, but it is only useful on a few sites. SE has dozens of sites these days, many of which are not about computers at all so the <kbd> is never used and is probably not even implemented. The edit box is the same for all sites though so only global features will be added to it.
    – terdon
    Sep 8, 2016 at 15:34
  • That's a valid point, too...Thank you!
    – orschiro
    Sep 8, 2016 at 17:07
  • Could someone else please give us feedback here? Thankfully, -Robert
    – orschiro
    Sep 13, 2016 at 18:10

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