Your idea
Using the Tab key should move the user's focus/cursor around the visible elements of the UI in a simpler and more universal manner, as in a web browsers and in most modern apps. Some functions that are currently assigned to the arrow keys should be reassigned to Tab.
Problem to be solved
Musescore 4 has an awkward/unintuitive flow for keyboard tabbing. If I click a number box in the Properties window to change the X dimension of an element, I expect that pressing the Tab key will move the cursor to the neighboring number box, for the Y dimension. Instead, tabbing rotates you through the major sections of the entire window; on to the score itself, to the upper and lower menus, etc.
Even worse, there is a lot of confusion between how navigating with Tab and arrow keys functions. For example, if I have Tabbed around so that a sub-section of the Properties menu is highlighted, I can then click [↓] to move down through the individual elements within this section. However, when I reach a number box, the same key immediately does something different: it changes the number itself instead of navigating. Clicking [→] while the numbers in a box are highlighted allows the cursor to around the numbers as text, but if the number is not highlighted (i.e. after clicking through a few times on the up/down arrows to change a number), the side arrows will now move you between number boxes. This creates a very crazy-making situation in which you cannot use the side arrows to move one direction and then the other in sequence!
I know this is probably a big thing to change, and perhaps Musescore chose this design on purpose, but in my mind there is no question that it should behave more like browsers and other apps almost universally do, with Tab and Shift+Tab moving you around the exposed elements of the UI in a left-to-right/top-to-bottom order. And, apologies if this has been discussed elsewhere, I can't find it bc search yields a lot of results for Tableture but not 'the tab key'!
Prior art
No response
Additional context
No response
Checklist
Your idea
Using the Tab key should move the user's focus/cursor around the visible elements of the UI in a simpler and more universal manner, as in a web browsers and in most modern apps. Some functions that are currently assigned to the arrow keys should be reassigned to Tab.
Problem to be solved
Musescore 4 has an awkward/unintuitive flow for keyboard tabbing. If I click a number box in the Properties window to change the X dimension of an element, I expect that pressing the Tab key will move the cursor to the neighboring number box, for the Y dimension. Instead, tabbing rotates you through the major sections of the entire window; on to the score itself, to the upper and lower menus, etc.
Even worse, there is a lot of confusion between how navigating with Tab and arrow keys functions. For example, if I have Tabbed around so that a sub-section of the Properties menu is highlighted, I can then click [↓] to move down through the individual elements within this section. However, when I reach a number box, the same key immediately does something different: it changes the number itself instead of navigating. Clicking [→] while the numbers in a box are highlighted allows the cursor to around the numbers as text, but if the number is not highlighted (i.e. after clicking through a few times on the up/down arrows to change a number), the side arrows will now move you between number boxes. This creates a very crazy-making situation in which you cannot use the side arrows to move one direction and then the other in sequence!
I know this is probably a big thing to change, and perhaps Musescore chose this design on purpose, but in my mind there is no question that it should behave more like browsers and other apps almost universally do, with Tab and Shift+Tab moving you around the exposed elements of the UI in a left-to-right/top-to-bottom order. And, apologies if this has been discussed elsewhere, I can't find it bc search yields a lot of results for Tableture but not 'the tab key'!
Prior art
No response
Additional context
No response
Checklist