Best practices for designing keyboard shortcuts

Question

I am a big fan of keyboard shortcuts. If some function or operation doesn\'t have shortcut I tend to write a little program and attach Ctrl + Alt + [key] s

Answer 1

One more thing that should not be forgotten: Ctrl+Alt+number/letterletter combinations are better avoided because for many keyboard layouts there is an AltGr keyboard modifier which is also triggered by Ctrl+Alt.

E.g. to type the @ character on a German keyboard, you would type AltGr+Q = Ctrl+Alt+Q

More info: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2004/03/29/101121.aspx