Accelerator keys

Accelerator keys are keyboard shortcuts assigned to common application actions, particularly menu items. Thus far, we've added no accelerator keys, which is bad for keyboard-only users.

In Tkinter, accelerator keys can be assigned to a widget using the bind() method, which we learned about in Chapter 4, Reducing User Error with Validation and Automation. We can also use the bind_all() method, which can be called on any widget and effectively binds an event globally. Our menu items also take an accelerator argument, which can be used to specify a string that will be shown in the menu as an accelerator key hint.

The UI guidelines on each platform define standard accelerator keys for common actions, most of which are the same ...

Get Python GUI Programming with Tkinter now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.