When I’m using my laptop, I often like to click on other riders near me to offer them a Ride On. Sometimes in this process, I lose my own status in the right hand column, meaning I have no easy means to revert back to the view of my avatar.
While I realize there is the “back” arrow in the lower left corner, I am baffled that there is not a keyboard shortcut to return to my own avatar. Surely it is possible to implement a keyboard shortcut that provides the same function as the back arrow on-screen button.
I see another post from November, 2015 where this was referred to as a planned feature. Any idea when this very rational and useful feature will be implemented?
You use a mouse/trackpad to select the rider you are viewing, so it makes sense that you’d also use the mouse/trackpad to click the “Return to Avatar” button in the bottom left. I’m not a huge fan of how many shortcut keys we have now, and I’m less of a fan of us adding even more for things where there’s already a button on the screen for it.
Is it just that it takes too long to move the cursor down to the corner?
The reason I’m essentially okay with having to click on the rider list is that I can hover the mouse on that side of the screen and basically leave it on one place for the duration of my ride. Any adjustments to click on a particular rider are very small adjustments within the same x / y screen area.
Conversely, the back arrow is on the complete opposite side of the screen. It is not a matter of how long it takes to perform that operation; it’s how terribly inefficient that operation is, mechanically. Having an on-screen button appear where your mouse pointer has no other mid-ride function is, from a user interface perspectively, perhaps not the best choice.
Efficiency in cycling is one of the keys to top performance. The manner in which you perform an operation is typically the same action as its reverse operation. Imagine if you changed your rear deraileur to s small cog with the shifter on your hood, but changed to a larger cog with a shifter on the down tube. Sure, it would work, but it can’t be described as efficient.
Research has demonstrated beyond debate that keyboard shortcuts are a magnitude more efficient than mouse movements and clicks. If Zwift is about cycling, and cycling is about efficiency, then a request to make Zwift more efficient seems reasonable, particularly when the change would require so little code.