Alphabetic shortcuts for menu in Android

Question

Is it a good practice to define the alphabetic shortcuts (alphabeticShortcut) of the menu items?

I ask because I've never used them in any of the Android devices that I have owned, even those that have a physical keyboard. Is there any reason to define them? Maybe an accessibility use-case than I'm not seeing?

Answer 1

Is it a good practice to define the alphabetic shortcuts (alphabeticShortcut) of the menu items?

It doesn't hurt to have them, AFAIK. However, at present, I expect few users to use them:

• They are not discoverable, at least on option menus, so users won't know they are there or how to invoke them
• IMHO they are only really useful with a hardware keyboard, with the keyboard exposed, which limits their utility to a small percentage of Android device users

Now, I can see scenarios where Google TV might make greater use of them, but we won't know until Google TV hardware (and, particularly, input devices) start to ship. Also, you can define numeric shortcuts, which might be usable by more devices in the future, if we start seeing 12-key Android phones.

I'd lump menu shortcuts in with context menus -- nice to have, good for power users, but they should not be a critical piece of the user experience.