There are currently 4 ways to open a menu item from the navigation sidebar.
- User opens a menu-item by CLICK or keyboard-select/ENTER. This opens the menu item in the current browser tab. This is correct behavior (no changes proposed).
- User opens a menu-item by ALT+CLICK or keyboard-select/ALT+ENTER. This opens the menu item as a new browser window. The following improvements are suggested:
- The new browser window misses parts of the browser topbar (it shows URL bar only). Improvement: open as a regular browser window.
- The navigation sidebar is missing in the new browser window. Improvement: open the browser window with the navigation sidebar visible
- ALT is not the universal browser convention to open links in a new browser window. Change this to SHIFT.
- User opens a menu-item by CTRL+ALT+CLICK or keyboard-select/CTRL+ALT+ENTER. This opens the menu item as a new browser tab. The following improvements are suggested:
- The navigation sidebar is missing in the new browser tab. Improvement: open the browser window with the navigation sidebar visible
- CTRL + ALT is not the universal browser convention to open links in a new browser tab. Change this to CTRL (also: scroll wheel click).
- User opens a menu-item by SHIFT+CLICK or keyboard-select/SHIFT+ENTER. This opens the menu item as a near-full screen focused pop-up. The following improvement is suggested:
- SHIFT should not be used for this as that is the universal browser convention to open links in a new browser window. Change this to CTRL +ALT (or another combination that does not interfere with standard browser conventions).
Note 1: all above is described from a generic Windows desktop user perspective. Thinkwise to align this to Apple and Android OS’es as needed.
Note 2: the browser context menu when right-clicking on a menu-item should also include default options such as ‘Open link in new tab’, ‘Open link in new window’, etc. It currently does not show that.
