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Some Excel users pop F1 off their keyboards (2012)

businessinsider.com

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Re: Some Excel users pop F1 off their keyboards (2012)

#141

Post by mfoy_ »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #91

Okay for those that do not get it. 1. It’s a bank. 2. Banks lock down their computers. 3. So you cannot install other software to fix this in software. 4. You do not have access to the system low enough to rename / remove the winhelp.exe crap. 5. No 3rd party hardware is allowed in the bank. So no bringing your own keyboard. All the time we get into this threads on HN where the techie goes well you could just...bla b…

The greater point is that if you put something really useful next to something really annoying it will exacerbate the issue.

F1 should not be so bad, and it should not be so close to F2. Even just leaving alone how bad, and utterly useless, the help dialogues in Windows are it's just terrible UX design.

It would be like having a "eject engine block" button next to the "start car" button. One day you're going to hit it instead of the one you meant... Annoying / dangerous UI controls should be kept out of the way of the more common features.

Re: Some Excel users pop F1 off their keyboards (2012)

#142

Post by mfoy_ »

WorldMaker wrote: post #106
jtraffic wrote: post #35

In my view, there are many insights like this to be had by physically studying product users a bit more. The startup community has built a strong habit of studying users before a new solution is adopted, but not as much after. The insights designers get from just watching someone use a product are always delightful. The idea is basically ethnography for design. ( https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the…

Keep in mind there's evolutionary momentum at work here, too. The standard uses of F1 and F2 especially that are at play in the discussion here date back to some of the earliest PC tools. Volkswriter supposedly used F1 for help as far back as 1982, and it was standardized in the 1987 IBM Common User Access guidelines (which also standardized things like F5 for Refresh before web browsers burnt that shortcut in all ou…

They could have acknowledged that F1 is "help" and really slow / annoying, so putting a much useful function onto F2 was probably a bad idea. They could have put what F2 did onto a different shortcut.

For instance, they could make F2 something that was infrequently useful and unintrusive, then made F3 do what F2 did. So if you mispress, you don't do the even worse F1 thing.

Re: Some Excel users pop F1 off their keyboards (2012)

#143

Post by amelius »

qorrect wrote: post #45
nayuki wrote: post #36

It suffices to use KeyTweak for Windows, not physically modify the keyboard. For example, I used it to disable the Back/Forward buttons on my ThinkPad.

Yeah mangling the keyboard should be a last option , I'm guessing they're not aware that all the keys can be remapped.

Mangling the keyboard is more gratifying >:)

Re: Some Excel users pop F1 off their keyboards (2012)

#144

Post by keeganpoppen »

grayrest wrote: post #130
ctrl-j wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All my MacBook keyboards get their caps lock keys remapped to control You must be an emacs heathen. Caps lock gets remapped to ESC.

> Caps lock gets remapped to ESC 15 year vimmer here. Caps -> Ctrl and use C-[ for going to normal mode.

i also remap caps -> ctrl, but have bindings for `fj` & `jf` in insert mode to exit back to normal mode, on the theory that you basically never have to type either of those letter combos (it has come up maybe twice in the five years i've had it set up). and even if you do have to type one of those letter combos, all you have to do is wait for ~half second between keystrokes and it works fine.

Re: Some Excel users pop F1 off their keyboards (2012)

#145

Post by eridius »

keeganpoppen wrote: post #144
grayrest wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Caps lock gets remapped to ESC 15 year vimmer here. Caps -> Ctrl and use C-[ for going to normal mode.

i also remap caps -> ctrl, but have bindings for `fj` & `jf` in insert mode to exit back to normal mode, on the theory that you basically never have to type either of those letter combos (it has come up maybe twice in the five years i've had it set up). and even if you do have to type one of those letter combos, all you have to do is wait for ~half second between keystrokes and it works fine.

Same, but I use `jk`, which only requires one hand.

Re: Some Excel users pop F1 off their keyboards (2012)

#146

Post by dogecoinbase »

eridius wrote: post #145
keeganpoppen wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i also remap caps -> ctrl, but have bindings for `fj` & `jf` in insert mode to exit back to normal mode, on the theory that you basically never have to type either of those letter combos (it has come up maybe twice in the five years i've had it set up). and even if you do have to type one of those letter combos, all you have to do is wait for ~half second between keystrokes and it works fine.

Same, but I use `jk`, which only requires one hand.

A similar binding once nearly drove me insane trying to copy/paste an api key.

Re: Some Excel users pop F1 off their keyboards (2012)

#147

Post by eridius »

dogecoinbase wrote: post #146
eridius wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same, but I use `jk`, which only requires one hand.

A similar binding once nearly drove me insane trying to copy/paste an api key.

Vim should disable all mappings during a paste. And if it's not, you should be able to hit F8 (or `:set paste`) to toggle paste mode.

Re: Some Excel users pop F1 off their keyboards (2012)

#148

Post by hexadecimated »

jasonkester wrote: post #60

Back in my Engineer days, where I'd spend much of my time writing technical reports, I'd always remove the Insert key from my keyboard. It's sitting there in that block of six keys that you use all the time when editing text (home, end, page up/down, delete), and it's a little timebomb. You would invariably hit it by accident at some point and change your editor into "overwrite all my stuff" mode. It would usually ta…

Before Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V to copy and paste, the usual method was Ctrl+Ins and Shift+Ins (and Shift+Del for cut), so this key did have a lot of use back in the day. These key combinations still work in most Windows software.

Re: Some Excel users pop F1 off their keyboards (2012)

#149

Post by IshKebab »

superasn wrote: post #18

Windows help and Windows troubeshooter are among the two most useless things in the OS (and lately it's Cortana). It far easier and more relevant to just do a Google search than waste time with these things. Same goes for answers.microsoft.com, whenever i see that link on top og Google results I'm pretty sure I'll just waste 10 minutes of my life and then search for the same thing on Stackexchange and pray to god som…

I remember Visual C++ 6 where F1 would instantly go to and offline reference to the current symbol, similar to Qt Creator now. It was great.

Of course now it searches done Windows live forum or something and is 100% useless.

Re: Some Excel users pop F1 off their keyboards (2012)

#150

Post by takk309 »

Maybe it is my poor skills with a key board or the design of my keyboard but I hit F12 on accident more often than F1. I hate F1 with a passion but F12, which does a save as, is useful.

I have never understood the hatred for caps lock. I use it all the time, probably press it 12 to 20 times a day. I also write a lot of reports with a pile of long acronyms that have to be all caps.

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