Using ESC key to invoke Cancel button on GUI Windows?

[bkelling]

Microsoft Windows standards suggest the ESC key as the defined keyboard (mouseless) for the 'Cancel' function.  This seems to work for us only when there is no event tied to the Cancel button.  It works fine for 'Cancel - Close without Execution', but does not work for anything that has other logic such as an event.  And, the ESC key is not available as a 'hot key' or mnemonic character to use programatically intercept the keyboard input and force this button's action.  We would like our dialogs to work consistently.  ESC is MS WIndows standard keyboard input for Cancel and we hate to use up another key sequence that the user will have to remember or mnemonic character which on some dialogs are in short supply.

 

Anyone have a suggestion on how to get ESC keyboard input consistently?

[Anon Anon]

I think the problem may be that if you have an event associated with the button, it is not, by definition (note that the text for special action says 'Cancel - Close without Execution'), a Cancel button anymore.  The only time a button is a 'Cancel' button is if the special action for cancel is selected which is why the ESC key works.  For any button that you add event logic to, you shouldn't be calling that button 'Cancel' but instead should call it something else and use a different 'hot key' or mnemonic character for it.

[Chris_Stallone]

Anyone able to help out Becky?

 

Becky Kellinger wrote:

 

Microsoft Windows standards suggest the ESC key as the defined keyboard (mouseless) for the 'Cancel' function.  This seems to work for us only when there is no event tied to the Cancel button.  It works fine for 'Cancel - Close without Execution', but does not work for anything that has other logic such as an event.  And, the ESC key is not available as a 'hot key' or mnemonic character to use programatically intercept the keyboard input and force this button's action.  We would like our dialogs to work consistently.  ESC is MS WIndows standard keyboard input for Cancel and we hate to use up another key sequence that the user will have to remember or mnemonic character which on some dialogs are in short supply.

 

Anyone have a suggestion on how to get ESC keyboard input consistently?

[bkelling]

I have to disagree with you, John.  Just because there is work that the window must perform to 'clean up' (reset data or free GUI handles or whatever) after the Cancel button is pressed, from the user's perspective it is a Cancel action. The are stopping the activity that they started and closing the dialog box.   I think that the ESC key should be available to use as a shortcut key for buttons in navigation diagram as so many of the other keyword keys are.

[Anon Anon]

Like I said, the definition of 'Cancel' is to close w/o execution.  If you are executing an event handler, you are not, by definition, doing a 'Cancel' because you are executing code.  I agree that from the user perspective, it may look like a 'Cancel' but from the program perspective, it is not.

 

Hopefully, someone will come up with a way to use the ESC-key even though it is not a 'Cancel' so that the end-user can think of it as a 'Cancel'.  If not, you might consider opening an Idea and see if there are others interested in this so that CA would see if this could be changed.