Minimizing mouse clicks

Just some observations and suggestions regarding keyboard shortcuts.

The keyboard shortcuts outlined in the keyboard tutorial such as Add Action (A), Add Blank subevent (B), and Add Condition (C) don't work unless a condition/event/action is first highlighted with the mouse. Unfortunately, you can't navigate within the event sheet using tab / arrow-keys, unless you have clicked and highlighted, this seems to defeat the purpose of a hotkey, since I have to use the mouse in the first place. And after every event/condition/action creation, the event sheet loses focus and I have to click inside of it again.

Another similar thing happens when you bring up the Add Events or Add action box, the cursor is automatically in the 'Search box' which is a very useful feature for quickly finding the right event / condition, unfortunately, let's say I type 'time' to only find the time actions under System, now I see four different options, but you can't use the arrow keys to navigate down there, you can't even tab down to it, so I have to type in the full beginning part of the name and narrow down the 'results' to 1 before I can hit the 'enter' key and proceed.

Small things like this, especially for a keyboard warrior like myself would really help to maximize our workflow. I know the idea of Construct is to try to get away from scripting, but I think keyboard navigation would be really useful for those of us with netbooks, etc when we don't have a proper mouse available, etc.

The first time I used Construct, it felt like I was playing Diablo, I had to click the mouse so many times. :) A while back I suffered from tendonitis primarily from excessive mouse usage, (I know I know play me the violins), but it would really be great if we could minimize the amount of mouse usage.

Thanks a lot!

-- cacotigon

I partially agree with you... I think that there should be separate modes in C2, like keyboard, and mouse. However, I am very sorry that you suffered from tendinitis, but how do you know that it was from the mouse and not the keyboard? Anyway, I think that you may be on to something... but personally, I don't really care what I use to get my work done, as long as it works :)

StephenC:

Well, the primary inflammation as reported by my doctor was located in my forefinger of my right hand (even to the point of incurring trigger finger where the tendon sheath itself is inflamed), one other thing that helped is that I own an microsoft ergonomic keyboard, whereas I had no equivalent for the mouse. I even had to give up playing RTS-style games for a while when it first happened <sob> :)

Oh, cacotigon, well that's never happened to me :D so I'm sorry about that! However, tendinitis or not, I do agree with you that construct2 should eventually get rid of some mouse clicks and add shortcuts to their interface (ex: ctrl+e to add event sheet. Is this what you mean? If so, I am all for it :)

The complete list of keyboard shortcuts implemented in C2 is already available in the manual.

The actual shortcut to add events is simply "E".

Tutorials are cool, manual is better.

Yeah, Scirra has been really cool about accommodating us "keyboard warriors". :)