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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)

#161

Post by revelation »

IshKebab wrote: post #149
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.

I haven't dared pressing F1 for a long time now but I remember Visual Studio versions where pressing F1 would completely stop your computer because it starts up the "Help Server", lots of 7200 spinning rust churn, more churn, an Electron-style app opens..

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

#162

Post by shoo »

teekert wrote: post #99

In all their wisdom Asus put the power button next to the delete button on my BX410 [0]. Too bad I can't pop that button. Setting it to do nothing is the first thing I do after installing Linux (which I do regularly). [0] https://dlcdnimgs.asus.com/websites/global/products/APfLG1Rk...

i remember a similar issue for desktop computers from ~15 years ago, and a keyboard with a helpful shutdown button. i think it was located a bit to the right of F12. from memory windows just started shutting down and there wasn't a way to interrupt it. pretty funny. not something you'd hit often, but possible to hammer accidentally if playing a full screen game that used a bunch of F1-F12 keys.

after hitting this a few times while playing games i levered all of those extra helpful keys out.

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

#163

Post by petepete »

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 use the one true keyboard and CTRL is already correctly-positioned. Once you ascend there's no going back.

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

#164

Post by Animats »

The real problem is slow help popup. Everybody wants to do help in a browser now, so pressing F1 probably means a slow browser launch. (Not sure about this; I use LibreOffice only.)

Just fix Excel so that a second press of F1 makes the help screen go away, even if the browser is still launching.

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

#165

Post by watmough »

IshKebab wrote: post #149
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.

Back in the days of Visual C++ 4.2, F1 would actually help.

Windows, Office, Visual C++ help are all God-awful now. As a few have said, much better just to Google search and lunge for Stack Overflow.

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

#166

Post by joejev »

LambdaComplex wrote: post #71
jabot wrote: post #2

This should really be solved in software... However, I remember trying to map capslock to control on windows a few years back. It involved becoming an administrator and entering an opaque hexadecimal key into the registry. Simply popping off the key is probably easier. Oh, on linux it boils down to "setxkbmap -option ctrl:nocaps", which doesn't require root...

My keyboard (Ducky Shine 3) actually has a dip switch on the back that swaps capslock and control. Not sure if any other companies do that though

Filco also has this.

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

#167

Post by romwell »

c3534l wrote: post #160
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…

When my dad was doing some UI work back in like the late 70s, maybe early 80s, for call-center workers no one knew how to do UI yet. But he quickly realised that if you put people in a room and asked them for their feedback after using it for 20 minutes, what they told you would become useless when you actually deployed the software. So he pushed to have the software implement recording features like how long a perso…

>So he pushed to have the software implement recording features like how long a person is on at which page and which page they went to next.

These days, we call this "telemetry".

>I'm surprised more people don't do that even today...

Because telemetry is seen as evil. Remember how WMS is praised for collecting this data in Windows 10 to make a better product? Yup, me neither.

The irony is, of course, that every web-based product has these stats built-in. Facebook is known to gather this exact data, for example.

As a side note, it always gets me when people whose PC usage is 99% on the web complain about "telemetry".

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

#168

Post by c3534l »

romwell wrote: post #167
c3534l wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When my dad was doing some UI work back in like the late 70s, maybe early 80s, for call-center workers no one knew how to do UI yet. But he quickly realised that if you put people in a room and asked them for their feedback after using it for 20 minutes, what they told you would become useless when you actually deployed the software. So he pushed to have the software implement recording features like how long a perso…

>So he pushed to have the software implement recording features like how long a person is on at which page and which page they went to next. These days, we call this "telemetry". >I'm surprised more people don't do that even today... Because telemetry is seen as evil. Remember how WMS is praised for collecting this data in Windows 10 to make a better product? Yup, me neither. The irony is, of course, that every web-b…

Well, I think it matters if you have the knowledge and consent of the participants, whether the data will be used to produce a proprietary profile on the person, whether that data is sold, and if participants are compensated for participating in a market research program.

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

#169

Post by Something1234 »

digi_owl wrote: post #74
1_2__4 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cynic in me says most startup types would witness this behavior, snort derisively and say "they're not our target market".

Or "you are doing/holding it wrong!!!". Damn it, i have had a prominent FOSS DE guy basically claim that users are idiots after studying the results of a usability test of their DE. For me, in the trenches, it is more that users find their own ways of doing things. And if it works for them it works for them, and we have no business correcting them.

Who was this and what DE was he working on?
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