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A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

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Re: A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

#31

Post by addaon »

perdomon wrote: post #27
NBJack wrote: post #25

This is one of the things that pisses me off about MacOS. Every other majot OS out there at least offers a good failsafe keyboard navigation built in to each UI component. In a pinch, the keyboard is your friend, at least until your pointing device is back up. MacOS: lol, sorry, bluetooth settings require a pointing device to add a new one. Keyboard navigation? Sure. It worked up until this part, but we didn't bother…

The worst for me is being able to select the non-default option in an alert window. Sometimes CMD + 'the first letter of the word in the button' works, but that's like a 30% chance. How is there not a standard for that? I'd even accept the arrow keys + Enter at this point.

If the non-default option is a cancellation or negative action, cmd-period should usually work.

Re: A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

#32

Post by samatman »

perdomon wrote: post #27
NBJack wrote: post #25

This is one of the things that pisses me off about MacOS. Every other majot OS out there at least offers a good failsafe keyboard navigation built in to each UI component. In a pinch, the keyboard is your friend, at least until your pointing device is back up. MacOS: lol, sorry, bluetooth settings require a pointing device to add a new one. Keyboard navigation? Sure. It worked up until this part, but we didn't bother…

The worst for me is being able to select the non-default option in an alert window. Sometimes CMD + 'the first letter of the word in the button' works, but that's like a 30% chance. How is there not a standard for that? I'd even accept the arrow keys + Enter at this point.

System Settings / Accessibility / Keyboard / Full Keyboard Access

This is macOS we're talking about. You can move the pointer with your face if you want (or more likely, if you need to).

Re: A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

#33

Post by gigatexal »

perdomon wrote: post #26

Vimium is absolutely life-changing and I can't believe I've been forced to browse the internet like a caveman for my entire life.

100% agree. If you are a fan of vim movements and have the muscle memory it’s the only way to navigate.

Re: A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

#34

Post by gigatexal »

mtoohig wrote: post #9
geniium wrote: post #8

I love these papers. I have been on a similar path on macOS. Concerning Vimium, there is the Vimium C version that seems to be a bit faster. On macOS there is a similar software (don’t remember its name) to use a Vimium like feature on your whole desktop.

You may be thinking of [Homerow]( https://www.homerow.app/ ) for Macos. Its okay for popups that I used to need a mouse for. There's another app that does similar "Vimium for Desktop" but it wasn't as responsive and sometimes focus would get stuck, but I forgot that software's name.

Thanks for sharing will try this out.

Re: A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

#35

Post by PeeMcGee »

It's really humbling and everyone should do it every now and then. An old coworker coined "mouseless monday mornings" where we'd unplug our mice(?) until lunch to start each week. We all learned a lot about how to be more efficient in our IDE's, learned tons of useful OS and browser shortcuts, observed tons of accessibility flaws in our product, and all of that during the dullest hours of the week.

Re: A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

#36

Post by ccppurcell »

NBJack wrote: post #25

This is one of the things that pisses me off about MacOS. Every other majot OS out there at least offers a good failsafe keyboard navigation built in to each UI component. In a pinch, the keyboard is your friend, at least until your pointing device is back up. MacOS: lol, sorry, bluetooth settings require a pointing device to add a new one. Keyboard navigation? Sure. It worked up until this part, but we didn't bother…

Had to use a Mac at a job last year. It wasn't used much so the mouse wasn't charged. Why oh why is the mouse unusable when it's charging!?

Re: A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

#37

Post by Dalewyn »

NBJack wrote: post #25

This is one of the things that pisses me off about MacOS. Every other majot OS out there at least offers a good failsafe keyboard navigation built in to each UI component. In a pinch, the keyboard is your friend, at least until your pointing device is back up. MacOS: lol, sorry, bluetooth settings require a pointing device to add a new one. Keyboard navigation? Sure. It worked up until this part, but we didn't bother…

>Every other majot OS out there at least offers a good failsafe keyboard navigation built in to each UI component.

Windows abandoned that from Windows 10 onwards, and Windows 11 is even worse.

Re: A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

#38

Post by j16sdiz »

NBJack wrote: post #25

This is one of the things that pisses me off about MacOS. Every other majot OS out there at least offers a good failsafe keyboard navigation built in to each UI component. In a pinch, the keyboard is your friend, at least until your pointing device is back up. MacOS: lol, sorry, bluetooth settings require a pointing device to add a new one. Keyboard navigation? Sure. It worked up until this part, but we didn't bother…

Did you enable this setting? If yes, can you tell me more what's missing?

https://support.apple.com/en-us/guide/mac-help/mchlc06d1059/...

Re: A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

#39

Post by djfergus »

rendaw wrote: post #24
djfergus wrote: post #6

So many good options here. Vimium is the gateway drug to the fantastic qutebrowser (more integration and customisation, scripting, based on qtwebkit/engine).

I'm really interested in trying qutebrowser, but I've had so many issues with near-constant breakage in python projects. Are there no similar projects in statically typed languages, or maybe compiled? Also qutebrowser's less powerful adblock, and missing a few other plugins I rely heavily upon...

FWIW I use qutebrowser on macOS (homebrew), alpine(postmarketos), Arch and Ubuntu and have never had an issue - installs cleanly via os package manager and just works (including wayland and x11). It’s under active development and the main devs seem pretty responsive to issues. It uses qtwebengine(chromium) - so none of the browser heavy lifting is in python. Don’t write it off due to the language used.
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