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Command palettes: how typing commands became the norm again

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Re: Command palettes: how typing commands became the norm again

#151

Post by aidenn0 »

tambourine_man wrote: post #43

Something I've been noticing lately is the disappearance of the “power user”. Someone who's not a programer, but has learned lots of smart and efficient ways to getting their computer work done over the years. Shortcuts (keyboard or otherwise), click-hold-cmd-tab-drop or similar patterns, tags/labels for deep file organization, etc. It seems like there's now a much wider gap between the smartphone tap-only user and…

I think that the fraction of users who are power users has gone down as the people who own a computing device has gone from "those willing to shell out the price of a used car" to "everybody"

Re: Command palettes: how typing commands became the norm again

#152

Post by thom »

jiehong wrote: post #45

Emacs always has an embryonic version of that with M-x, but with a simple autocomplete. That’s is, until Helm arrived in 2011: it made everything that is a list something to be dynamically filtered (commands, shortcuts, buffers, files, etc). IntelliJ has a command palette too (Ctrl-Shift-a), but it’s horribly slow and has many items with the same name doing different things (try looking for “settings” for example). B…

Worth pointing out that Helm was a fork of anything.el, and I’m pretty sure stuff like Icicles predates even that by as much as a decade, so 2011 is underselling Emacs a bit here.

Re: Command palettes: how typing commands became the norm again

#153

Post by p2t2p »

worldsayshi wrote: post #67
underwater wrote: post #12

The article paints command palettes as a return to terminal inputs. However there are two massive differences. Firstly, the use of fuzzy search and natural language makes the commands discoverable. Secondly, there is a feedback mechanism that shows what the command will do before it's run. Together, these massively lower the learning curve.

Is love to see a command palette terminal fusion. Thought about this many times.

I use fzf as command autocomplete tool in my zsh. It is still not a command palette but gets pretty close.

Re: Command palettes: how typing commands became the norm again

#154

Post by Cerium »

imgabe wrote: post #100
tambourine_man wrote: post #43

Something I've been noticing lately is the disappearance of the “power user”. Someone who's not a programer, but has learned lots of smart and efficient ways to getting their computer work done over the years. Shortcuts (keyboard or otherwise), click-hold-cmd-tab-drop or similar patterns, tags/labels for deep file organization, etc. It seems like there's now a much wider gap between the smartphone tap-only user and…

I can't speak to every field but in Architecture/Engineering the software became a lot less power user friendly with the switch from AutoCAD to Revit. AutoCAD had a command line. You could pick commands from the menu, or type them directly. You could make shortcuts for the commands. From there it was a short jump to stringing together several typed commands into a short script. There was a built-in scripting language…

I used to know an AutoCAD pro and watching him work was magic. He hardly ever touched the mouse and could type house plans about as fast as I could follow along. It seemed that a great knowledge of the commands combined with some mental math and an uncanny memory for multiples of 12 and 16 worked wonders.

Re: Command palettes: how typing commands became the norm again

#155

Post by JimDabell »

tambourine_man wrote: post #43

Something I've been noticing lately is the disappearance of the “power user”. Someone who's not a programer, but has learned lots of smart and efficient ways to getting their computer work done over the years. Shortcuts (keyboard or otherwise), click-hold-cmd-tab-drop or similar patterns, tags/labels for deep file organization, etc. It seems like there's now a much wider gap between the smartphone tap-only user and…

I don’t think that’s true at all – consider the surge in popularity of no-code tools these days. What would you call somebody using Zapier to hook two completely different systems up to talk to one another, if not a power user?

Re: Command palettes: how typing commands became the norm again

#156

Post by p2t2p »

thrower123 wrote: post #2

I hate this trend. Give me back menus and toolbars. I avoid using VS Code for this reason.

That is an interesting perspective. May I ask you what is you professional use of a computer and if it is programming - what kind of programming? I’m asking because I’m curious if environment drives habits/preferences.

Re: Command palettes: how typing commands became the norm again

#157

Post by xmprt »

codr7 wrote: post #117
imgabe wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak to every field but in Architecture/Engineering the software became a lot less power user friendly with the switch from AutoCAD to Revit. AutoCAD had a command line. You could pick commands from the menu, or type them directly. You could make shortcuts for the commands. From there it was a short jump to stringing together several typed commands into a short script. There was a built-in scripting language…

Serious apps should come with event logs and command lines, period.

I feel like from a design and architecture point of view, building an application with the command line as a first class citizen will ensure that the application is well designed.

Re: Command palettes: how typing commands became the norm again

#158

Post by ok_dad »

kymaz wrote: post #99
ok_dad wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole screen was mounted on a big button, so touching it was hovering and you'd press the screen with a satisfying click to execute something. It wasn't the most reliable if you weren't careful, but why not do that with a pressure sensor nowdays?

Also known as force touch on an iPhone.

I've not used an iPhone for a while, but according to Google search:

> The iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro will ditch 3D Touch in favor of "Haptic Touch," according to Apple's website. ... The new iPhones' Haptic Touch will be responsive to how long users hold down, but not the force of the tap.

I would love that feature, but I think it has to be very integrated into the software and the APIs of the phone OS or no one will actually use it.

Re: Command palettes: how typing commands became the norm again

#159

Post by kordlessagain »

kordless@gmail.com~> The History of Command Palettes: How Typing Commands Became The Norm Again | Capiche description The most popular new interface element in business software lets you tell apps exactly what you want to do. created 2020-12-22T21:03:43Z AI is in a conversation about an interesting article, on a popular website. Be nice. explanation The command palette allows you to quickly enter keyboard commands for common software actions and functions.For casual use, command palettes greatly improve on file menus: the list of available operations is easily searchable and you don't have to remember which menu each operation appear. For more skilled users

Re: Command palettes: how typing commands became the norm again

#160

Post by stult »

xmprt wrote: post #157
codr7 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious apps should come with event logs and command lines, period.

I feel like from a design and architecture point of view, building an application with the command line as a first class citizen will ensure that the application is well designed.

It ensures separation of concerns is at least minimally applied in order to support two separate presentation layers (GUI & CLI). CLIs are also much more testable in general, so usually it’s easier to write e2e tests if a CLI is present. It might not cover 100% of the code because it doesn’t test the GUI, but does often get you something substantial like 90% of the way there.
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