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

Shortcuts need to be memorable, which is why Ctrl + S (save) and Ctrl + N (new) work well, some programmers have taken it as far as changing the shortcuts in different languages. (Ctrl + B for bold was Ctrl + F for fett in old versions of MS Write.) Similarly, X resembles scissors and V an insertion mark, hence cut and paste.

On a more advanced level, prevent accidental effects that cannot be undone: more dangerous commands need more complex safety guards: something like Ctrl + Alt + Del is pretty difficult to type accidentally.

Also bear in mind that Alt is the menu access key.