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sberic
sberic
Legend
May 5, 2017
Answered

Focus Panel with Keyboard?

  • May 5, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 3365 views

Is it possible to set up Premiere Pro to be able to switch to a target Panel or Extension? There are two interactions we have in mind for this:

  1. [Registerable?] Keyboard Command to open or focus a panel/extension.
  2. OS keyboard commands to switch to floating window.

It's really annoying to keep having to use the mouse to switch to a specific extension panel.

What's more, with respect to #2 (on macOS, at least), it seems that it's possible to use the built-in window-switching keyboard shortcut [⌘`] (command tick) to switch from a floating panel to the main application, but not back to the floating panel! Once the main app has context, it appears to swallow the command entirely...

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Correct answer Bruce Bullis

There's nothing of the sort, in either case.

Keyboard shortcuts are at a premium (I think there are fewer than 5 combos left), and we selfishly hoard them for Adobe functionality. Also, in the shared UI framework all our video apps use, there's no 'next panel'.

What're you trying to do; force your panel to the front?

1 reply

Bruce Bullis
Bruce BullisCorrect answer
Legend
May 7, 2017

There's nothing of the sort, in either case.

Keyboard shortcuts are at a premium (I think there are fewer than 5 combos left), and we selfishly hoard them for Adobe functionality. Also, in the shared UI framework all our video apps use, there's no 'next panel'.

What're you trying to do; force your panel to the front?

sberic
sbericAuthor
Legend
May 8, 2017

Bruce Bullis wrote

There's nothing of the sort, in either case.

Wow. That's really surprising. Two workflow questions:

  1. Why do you allow users to undock their windows if they can't switch between them?
  2. How do you suggest users quickly switch between panels?

Perhaps understanding better User Interactions as prescribed by "The Adobe Way™" will help us better navigate feature implementation.

With respect to #1 above, I just did a quick test by undocking the Metadata window and adding it to my second screen. It has no shortcut from what I can see. In order to interact with it I had to move my mouse to the second monitor and click on it. Once I did that I could move my hands back to the keyboard, hit the [TAB] key to get to the search field and begin interacting with it as usual. It would be very, very appreciated if I could use something like [ALT+TAB] in Windows or [⌘+`] in macOS to switch between the various windows/contexts.

Bruce Bullis wrote

What're you trying to do; force your panel to the front?

Yes. Or any floating panel, for that matter. You guys present the UI as a tabbed interface. How there is no way to switch between the various tabs as there is in just about any other application available, regardless of platform, is what is so surprising. Not all applications agree on the hotkeys but one example that Safari/Chrome/VSCode (and many others) use is [⌘+SHIFT+bracket] (bracket = "[" or "]") to change tabs.

I just checked the Keyboard Shortcuts settings (really nice work there, by the way! It's probably the best interface for that I've seen, personally!). As you said, I could not find an option for switching between the different panels setup in the UI. This seems really odd, given that you can have panel-specific Keyboard Shortcuts...

At the very least, would it be possible to allow Extension Panels to hook into that system? I imagine that you could configure a list of commands in a config file somewhere that the system registers. Then panels could hook into it using the CSInterface event stuff when they start up...

Bruce Bullis
Bruce Bullis
Legend
May 8, 2017

1. So they can arrange them however they like.

2. Clicking on the panel they'd like to target.

I'm a keyboard-first user, and I understand why you'd want a 'move between open tabs' key command.

> This seems really odd, given that you can have panel-specific Keyboard Shortcuts...


To which panel-specific keyboard shortcuts, are you referring?

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