Windows standard for mnemonics

Question

Are there any mnemonic standards for Windows?

For example -- the menu bar, actions on the menu bar (e.g. Alt+f to file menu but ctrl+s to do the save under the file menu), and controls.

I'm asking because we have a search screen with many controls and we're trying to decide shortcut keys to get to fields and such described above.

Is there anything official at Microsoft or some RFC document that we could read and present in a meeting to figure out how to properly handle this.

The only thing I've found so far is this -- which helps some, but doesn't go in to great detail.

Further, is there maybe a book I can get to help me with designing such things?

How does the community feel about double mnemonics? (e.g. ctrl a, w)

Thanks!

Answer 1

You want to look at the User Experience Interaction Guidelines.

Particularly, the Access Keys part.

Answer 2

Regarding double mnemonics:

I would consider these only if your users are going to have a high level of expertise. If they use your product day in day out and become very proficient with it, then double mnemonics may pay their way. But for many users they are likely to be hard to discover, remember and use. (I use Visual Studio most of every day, and I only remember and use a very few of the double mnemonics available -- just the ones for commands that I use very frequently.) In which case they would not be worth the effort required to implement them.

If you think your users may have this level of expertise I would still recommend simple usability testing, because this is not a common idiom; though "expert" level features are hard to evaluate in hallway-style usability tests. Nevertheless, as programmers we are notoriously unable to judge usability, so definitely test and measure somehow with real users before putting significant effort into this!