Re: conventions for presenting Win and Mac keyboard shortcuts?

[Tony Chung <tonyc -at- tonychung -dot- ca>]

Hey Laurie,

Lots of great feedback here. Essentially, Iâve always used the shorter
syntax for Mac keys (notes as âorâ in the Apple human interface doc link
that Robert shared):

â Command (or Cmd) â

â Shift â

â Option (or Alt) â

â Control (or Ctrl) â

â Caps Lock â

â Fn

And if the user interface doesnât look that different between Windows and
Mac browsers, then a single doc would work fine.

For all keyboard shortcuts I would standardize:

To create a new line, press (Windows) Ctrl+Enter or (Mac) Shift+Cmd+Enter.

It might look cleaner separated:

To create a new line:
â Windows: Ctrl+Enter
â Mac: Shift+Cmd+Enter

And the keyboard fonts might be fun to play with.

However, if the UI operates differently between Windows and Mac, and your
authoring system creates multiple versions without an incredulous amount of
pain, then by all means separate the Mac/Windows docs and speak to each
audience differently.

-Tony



On Tue, Feb 2, 2021 at 11:25 <llittle -at- words-tw -dot- com> wrote:

> Now that my client's app is available on the web, they have their first Mac
> users. A very minute proportion of their users, in a Win-based industry,
> but
> we still have to embrace them and any who follow.
>
> There are a few places in the help where we refer to Windows keyboard
> shortcuts. What is a good way to address the Mac differences? Inline
> (making
> it more cluttered for the majority who are not on Mac)? Perhaps a stylistic
> difference? A separate reference topic?
>
> I toyed with using a glossary popup  on "Ctrl" = "Mac: Command key", but
> that is not always a straight swap as illustrated in the example that
> spawned this discussion:
>
> Ctrl+Enter to create a new line
>
> =
>
> Shift+Command+Enter
>
> All opinions and suggestions welcome.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Laurie
>
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