Underline under accelerator characters in buttons and menu bar should only show when Alt is pressed

It seems that Microsoft made this very change with the release of Windows 2000. Here is the justification given by a Microsoft user interface designer (http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/10/05/792913.aspx):

    To support our goal of greater simplicity, we plan to suppress keyboard navigation indicators by default. Don't be frightened...

    The idea is to reduce visual noise in Windows, namely focus indicators and access key underlines in menus and windows. Aesthetically, these things are distracting and intimidating. Functionally, they're only useful when you're navigating by keyboard. They don't add significant value when you're just using the mouse. In fact, they're often redundant.

    Why now? Every good thing must start somewhere. Windows will look cleaner and simpler.

    What's so bad about the way things are? Access key underlines are largely underutilized and are often redundant with Ctrl+ shortcuts within the same menu. There's no indication that you have to type the Alt key to use these shortcuts. Plus, it's just odd to see characters underlined within text all over your display. Focus rectangles lack graphic integrity, and they're often redundant with the highlight on selected items or the default button.

    Of course, the keyboard indicators will come back when there is any demonstration of keyboard navigation by the user. The indicators will appear and disappear appropriately. Finally, if you don't like the behavior at all, you can disable it from the Display control panel.

    For what it's worth, this is one of the things I [the interface designer] came to Microsoft to fix.

I can see the appeal of the streamlined interface, and how new users might be confused by the indicators.

However, I would be reluctant to conceal them. I only found out about accelerator keys after wondering what all the underlined characters were for and have been using them daily since. Concealing them behind an ALT key press will only mean that new users remain unaware that they exist. We run the risk of dumbing down the interface too much.

I would however support the addition of an option to show/hide them in System>Preferences>Appearance options, but leaving them shown as a default.

David , do we still intend to fix this ?

There's been some work on this in the Gnome bug tracker:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=588554

Great idea, can't wait to see this in action.

While we're at it.. why not hide the Control+Commands on drop down menus in the same way? That would reduce a hell of a lot of visual noise for something that - let's be honest here - is very, very rarely used.

Example:

Before (boo, noisy!):
http://imgur.com/wpAR4l.png

After (a breath of fresh air!):
http://imgur.com/cOy1nl.jpg

@Rich Jones:
Actually your mockups are not accurate .. ;)
If the Ctrl+key is removed , then the width of the menu will also reduce and not have the empty space on the right.
Check out how the menu of the indicator-session is. It would look similar to that.

But anyways , what you suggest would be a separate bug.

Seems to me like upstream is working on this but won't make a gtk+ release that can make Lucid. Do we want to carry a patch for this or should slip to 10.10?

Patchpatchpatch!

Has anybody tried this one:
http://bugzilla-attachments.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=150137

If one papercut should be fixed this round, it should be this one!!

paaattttcchhh

@Rich Jones: Kindly stop spamming!
You do that very often in a lot of papercuts bugs.
Everytime you add a redundant comment like that you are spamming 100s of members.
Launchpad bug report is not a forum thread for random comments/bumps. [That too at short intervals]

If there is no new information to provide kindly refrain from adding such comments.

Vish, Rich is just very enthusiastic!

Thank you, David! :)

I like to think of it as gentle poking.. there are more than 4 MILLION bug reports now, and if somebody doesn't give them some nudging, they often fall by the wayside. This is a bug I'd really like to see fixed, so I'm probably going to stay on top of it until somebody applies a patch (or at least gives me a convincing answer about why they won't.)

Rich, a more effective way to move this forward is to blog some of
your mockups and other research to get users interested.

David , Dont encourage him ;p

Rich , [hrm , correction its 500,000 not million :p]
I'v already mentioned in another bug report several ways , how you can help.
Poking , prodding here doesnt get a bug pushed. You are _not_ really helping this way :(
I do appreciate your enthusiasm . Just hope , it is more fruitful. ;-)
[you can mail me too , if you are really interested in finding out more ways to really help]

I'm very optimistic about the future of this bug, but it's not a paper cut.

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=155774

There is a patch - somebody apply it!

@Rich Jones:
It has already been applied and is working in Lucid.
Don't worry ;-)

Each theme has to set the option to use it , it works for the default theme.

This bug has been fixed in gtk and the option is available for the themes to use.

The default light themes use this option and the accel keys are hidden, and shown only when alt is pressed.

Marking papercut as fixed too.

is there/will there be an option to configure/disable the new behavior (besides changing themes)?
if not there will be some very sad people (including me).
(id like to always show them in focused windows or get the old behavior back).
should i file a new bug report/enhancement request?

AmenophisIII
The option in the theme is: gtk-auto-mnemonics = 1
Just change that to 0 or remove the line.
You could file a feature request in gtk, but i highly doubt it will get immediate attention

Has this been reverted for Unity? Because the accelerators here look _hideous_: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Screenshot-7.png

Truly awful, how visually jarring. Please fix again!

Kindly Do *not* open new tasks on a bug which has been fixed nearly 1 year ago..

Btw, Instead of depending on screenshots from someone else and jumping to conclusions, it is better to actually test it and file a bug.