It's not without precedent; In Windows, tapping the Alt key moves keyboard focus to the menu-bar (at least, it did in older version of Windows that had standard menu bars).
To be fair, I've nobbled that particular behaviour of GNOME 3.0 because it prevents using the Super key for any other keyboard shortcuts. If I read bugzilla rightly, that should be fixed in 3.2, though.
You can actually make the Super-Key usable again. Goto Region and Language -> Keyboard Layout Options and tick "Hyper is mapped to Win-keys" [1]. After that, you can use the super key again for shortcuts. I moved the activity window to Super-A but actually never use it.
Just checking that I've got this correct: you set the 'Hyper is mapped to Win keys' option in the keyboard config, you set GNOME 3 to use 'Super' to activate the overlay, then re-configure your other shortcuts to use 'Hyper' instead of 'Super' (or 'Mod4')?
Hyper, Super ... I'm talking about mod4 (on most keyboards the win-key right to L-CTRL). The overlay is normally activated by pressing mod4. With the stated option ticked, triggering the overlay with mod4 doesn't work anymore (when I remember correctly) - but every other shortcut using mod4 + anykey works again.
To get to the overlay using a shortcut, I set it to mod4 + a.
Ah, right. That's probably a nicer way of doing it since you don't have to mess with gconf-editor.
Personally, I cleared /apps/mutter/general/overlay_key (which prevents the overlay from being triggered by any modifier, which got my mod4 bindings working again. I set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/panel_main_menu to "<Mod4>Escape", which on GNOME 2.x activates the Applications menu, but on GNOME 3.x activates the overlay.
To be fair, I've nobbled that particular behaviour of GNOME 3.0 because it prevents using the Super key for any other keyboard shortcuts.
Is this really the case on your system? I've always had a shortcut to gnome-terminal on Mod4+T and I can't remember having any problems since I upgraded to Fedora 15.
"any" is a generalisation; more specifically, gnome-shell breaks per-window keyboard shortcuts. My Mod4+N for 'new terminal' and Mod4+R for 'run command' shortcuts worked fine, but Mod4+W for 'close window' and Mod4+X for 'toggle maximize' were broken.
To be fair, I've nobbled that particular behaviour of GNOME 3.0 because it prevents using the Super key for any other keyboard shortcuts. If I read bugzilla rightly, that should be fixed in 3.2, though.