Identification page keyboard shortcuts turn wrong for multilingual users

Platform: Web Browser

App version number, if a mobile app issue: -

Browser, if a website issue: Chrome

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify

Screenshots of what you are seeing: -

Description of problem:

The keyboard shortcut is great and convenient but when users forget to swap language it turns wrong since the system mixes up two input types, Keystrokes and Characters.

For example: I browsed to an observation of a sunbeam snake (Xenopeltis unicolor), I hit the ‘I’ key to directly get to identification text input then hit ‘X’ key to start typing the genus name. But it turned out that I failed to give ID and even unintentionally marked that obs to Casual Grade instead.

How that happened: I forgot to swap system input language from Thai to English and the Identification page mixes up different methods of input detection. When I hit the ‘I’ key, it detected character ‘ร’ (Thai character on the same keyboard button) as an unknown command so the highlight didn’t go to ID text input. When I hit the ‘X’ key, it detected keystroke instead. Which means the system doesn’t recognize my command as ‘ป’ (Thai character on X button) but as the X-keystroke and marked that obs to Casual Grade as what it tends to work.

I’d like to suggest to clean all the detection methods up and turn them to Keystrokes instead.

1 Like

I’ve accidentally done this when identifying Xylocopa a few times, as well as favoriting observations unintentionally when adding sex annotations, but not because of keyboard mapping issues, merely because the Identify module didn’t register the first keystroke the way I intended. I don’t know if this might be what happened to you.

I wish the “captive/cultivated” shortcut were something less likely to be accidentally entered when typing a taxon name (e.g. maybe xx would be better than just a single x)

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I understand your point though I would have no issue marking an observation as captive/cultivated by hitting a single X-key if the focus (cursor) was properly moved to the ID text box when hitting the I-key in prior, regardless of the input language. :)