Jano, Jindra, opinions?

Compare these two bindings:

Ctrl+F4      Close Window
Crl+Shift+F4 Close All Documents

which reveals the inconsistency.

Also check any of the M*SOFT MDI applications like VS.NET or Eclipse.

Current situation in NB 5.0:
Ctrl+W is shown in main menu as shortcut for closing a window. In reality, both
Ctrl+F4 and Ctrl+W can close all windows (either documents or helper views).

Jano, Jindro, I need your opinion to solve this usability issue.
I would suggest to leave Ctrl+W to be able to close all windows and I would
restrict Ctrl+F4 to close only documents windows. Unfortunately that would need
another Window main menu item: "Close Document Ctrl+F4"

FWIW

Eclipse makes a distiction of editors (in NetBeans we call them Document 
windows) and views (in NetBeans non-document windows such as Projects window, 
Navigator window). In Eclipse there is a keybinding - Ctrl+F4 (as well as 
Ctrl+W) to close editor windows. The views can only be closed using a popup 
menu.

Re MDI: ours is actually not MDI, it's a docking framework

Re: In Eclipse "The views can only be closed using a popup menu." - bad usability

I think the current behavior in NB is correct.

Didn't NetBeans use to have a way to switch between MDI and SDI in the past. 
And what we have today is similar to the MDI mode. Correct?

About Eclipse...I agree that Eclipse not having a shortcut or a menuitem for 
closing view is a usability problem. But that was not the point I was making. 
Basically I wanted to point out that Eclipse treats document windows different 
that other windows (which they call View).

I'm not quite clear - what problem are we trying to solve here?  Is there harm done by Ctrl-F4 working 
for view windows as well as editor windows?  

The current behavior seems to me to be more consistent - so the user feels more in control - things 
work the same for any window.  What's the gain for the user by making closing view windows somehow 
different than closing editor windows?

I also see some usability problems with the current solution. We saw it a (very) few times during 
usability studies. A user was looking into the editor and hit Ctrl-F4 and project window disappeared. 
The user accidentally closed project window while he wanted to close the editor tab because the focus 
was in project window. Looks like a user error, but the user was probably used to this behavior from 
other products (Eclipse, Visual Studio?) - no matter which window has focus Ctrl-F4 closes the selected 
editor tab.

In NetBeans, Ctrl-F4 is also used for closing tabs inside output window and output window itself if 
there's no tabs. NetBeans quite often opens temporary windows (output, find usages, search results, 
junit test results, refactoring preview) the will close after using the window. So we would definitely need 
a shortcut for closing views if we decide to dedicate Ctrl-F4 to documents.

But now the question is whether we want to have distinct shortcuts for closing documents and views or 
not. I tend to say that the shortcuts should be distinct. (Don't know which shortcuts to use yet ;-)

---
Another typical error observed with closing editor tabs is when the user has a few editor tabs open and 
wants quickly close them by multiple Ctrl-F4. It happens quite often that the user closes also multiple 
views around editor because after closing the last editor tab the views around editor get focus. This can 
probably fixed by not switching focus into views after closing the last editor tab.

I can always change the keybinding :)

When I am closing document editors one by one sometimes I overrun and close 
other windows such as Project or Navigator. It is easy to recover editor 
windows using recently used menu but slightly harder to open each of Project 
and Navigator window.

I guess I will try one last time to make my case:

1. CTRL+Shift+F4 closes all document windows only, not all windows including 
Projects or Navigator or Properties. Thus the document windows are treated 
specially. So I expect that Ctr+F4 only affect the Document window.

2. It may be that NetBeans implementation does not make a distinction between 
windows that host document windows and other windows such as Projects or 
Navigator window. However they behave differently. Here I am trying to 
establish special nature of document windows.

3. Document windows are the save units. In other words if I attempt to close a 
window containing a modified document I am prompted to save or discard. Here I 
am trying to establish special nature of document windows.

4. CTRL+F4 seems to be a standard keystroke (on windows) for closing document 
windows. Try Visual Studio, Eclipse.

Has anyone from HIE looked at this? I do not any comments from HIE.

Reference:

Definition of MDI:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-
us/dnwue/html/ch10a.asp

Visual Studio:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-
us/csui/html/csdlgGlobalKeys.asp

Eclipse:

http://eclipse-tools.sourceforge.net/Keyboard_shortcuts_(3.0).pdf

IDEA:

http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/docs/4.5_ReferenceCard.pdf

We consulted with HIE guys, on nbusability and conclusion is:
Issue will be solved by shortcut's general rework, in future release.

Is there any chance to fix the following mentioned behavior in promo F at least?...It's really risky in my 
opinion:
---
When the user has a few editor tabs open and  wants quickly close them by multiple Ctrl-F4. It happens 
quite often that the user closes also multiple views around editor because after closing the last editor 
tab the views around editor get focus. This can probably fixed by not switching focus into views after 
closing the last editor tab.
---

No, I don't know how to fix this for promo F.

Passing this old usability issue to author of shortcuts change. It looks that issue is not resolved yet, as now
Ctrl+Shift+W closes all *documents* while Ctrl+W closes any selected window. Ctrl+F4 also closes any window, although
it's not visible in the menu.

could we somehow resolve this one?

closing - patches welcome