New binding editor dialog

[nickcoutsos]

Nobody just browses the discussions on this repo so if you're here you've probably seen the new dialog for key bindings

What?

I'm experimenting with a new interface for changing the various parameters that go into a key (or combo or macro or whatever) binding. Instead of clicking on the behavior part of a key, then getting zero or more parameter slots to click on and fill individually, clicking on a key will open a dialog where you can focus in on that key and its parameters.

So far this is only affecting layer bindings -- regular keymap stuff. When I'm satisfied that it's working well and that it isn't bad enough to destroy the userbase I can start applying it to other parts of the app that need to edit bindings, such as combos, tap dances, mod morphs, etc. I have to see how badly this might impact macros where there's also a click+drag interaction.

Why

I've been thinking about implementing this for some time, and while some of the reasons may be lost here are some that stick out:

Accessibility

This app has a ton of accessibility problems, but for now I'll focus on keyboard usability. Right now the main view has an insane amount of clickable elements (every key in your layout has at least one for the behavior, usually one more for &kp, and more for &lt/mt etc) that are basically inaccessible via keyboard navigation. They're also necessarily very small clickable elements which is worse.

Moving those interactions to the dialog means each key is a single friendly clickable box, and when that dialog opens you get a smaller collection of clickable elements with bigger visual targets, bigger fonts, and more information. Tabbing between these elements would be a possibility, as well as keyboard shortcuts to accelerate your workflow.

Clarity

I don't have the means to perform usability tests or collect usage statistics but I suspect a lot of new users are confused about this. In fairness the visual cue of highlighting the entire key on hover could mislead people into thinking it's clickable, and that's on top of the confusion of newcomers to ZMK concepts.

Atomicity

I could not tell you how many times I've seen people create a combo or switch &trans binding to &kp and just never bothered to set the remaining parameters. I suppose I could (and maybe should) prevent this disabling the save button if incomplete bindings are detected, but this dialog is a step towards avoiding the problem by forcing you to change a key's binding as a whole. If the binding requires more parameters that you haven't filled out, the dialog simply won't let you save those changes back to the keymap.

Next Steps

Eventually (not any time soon) this could become something like the "user friendly" approach in other keymap editors where a user is just presented with options for different scenarios like tap versus hold versus double-tap and so on, as opposed to selecting and composing behaviors manually. To be clear, this feature is not attempting to implement that user experience right now, and that remains a very low priority for me.

I hope you will share your experience, positive or negative, with me here.

[MikiVanousek]

I like it, good job : )

[pnhearer]

hate it. I want a window to pop-up with advanced options but the default behavior is that I press key or key combo and the state is maintained for the key-press until the accept button is pushed. That'll make the default layer go so much more smoothly when assigning. Which is the least thought part of the process.

[nickcoutsos]

I've kind of always imagined that people coming into the editor would have the bulk of the default layer (the letters, anyway) already in place but if you need to set a lot of &kp behaviors you might want to try the Quick &kp assignment option in the three-dot menu next to the layer name. That will present a dialog that will progress through each key in the layer and assign values based on key presses.

(I still need to add an in-app prompt for this, maybe when creating a new layer or activating a layer with some minimum threshold of &trans bindings?)

I want a window to pop-up with advanced options but the default behavior is that I press key or key combo and the state is maintained for the key-press until the accept button is pushed.

I'm not sure I'm completely following, but this sounds a little like what I'm describing above. If I've misunderstood maybe you could clarify what's missing.