Align and clarify application keyboard shortcuts

[tenthe]

Goal

Initial work on a more discoverable shortcut concept has already started in #4784. This discussion aims to review the current keyboard shortcuts and agree on a consistent, discoverable shortcut model across StreamPipes.

Description

The application currently provides several groups of shortcuts:

• Shift + H/P/D/C/X/A/T/S for module navigation
• Shift + ? to open the shortcut overview
• Ctrl/Cmd + B and Alt + B to toggle the sidebar
• Ctrl/Cmd + S to save in chart, dashboard, pipeline, and asset-link contexts
• E to enter edit mode in dashboard panels and pipeline details
• Delete/Backspace to remove pipeline elements
• Ctrl/Cmd + F for table filters and asset-link search
• Escape to close filters, dialogs, and overlays
• Q/E for image navigation

The current hotkeys are not fully consistent or always easy to discover. For example, entering edit mode through a shortcut can be unclear when there is no corresponding visible button.

Open question

• Should every shortcut correspond to a visible action or button, making shortcuts alternative and more discoverable ways to trigger existing actions?

Are there other ideas or preferences from the community about how shortcuts should behave?

[SvenO3]

I would agree that improving the visibility of shortcut would make them more useful. Especially shortcut like E to edit or Ctrl/Cmd + F to search are really hard to find.
But I'm also not really sure how to achieve this. Maybe menu panels that hide options of a shortcut (for example the edit buttons) could be shown when pressing Shift and then highlight the shortcut option

[tenthe]

Hi @SvenO3,

I really like the idea of showing options that don’t require a dedicated action button, for example, enabling edit functionality directly in view mode with Shift + E