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Instead they should be engineered in a way that allows users to bypass those developers in a (at least) framework-consistent way as there will never be a time when they collectively become "keyboard-wise".
Yes and no. The big advantage of a GUI is having interactive 2D coordinate input support (aka a pointer, or gestures.) While I think a keyboard can be a great control surface, that’s one thing it really lacks and only GUIs really offer. So to enforce that the whole GUI must be keyboard-drivable requires limiting the major advantage of the GUI. I’m a fan of the Emacs or Plan9 styles where the keyboard and pointer are…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny that you bring macOS, because for _decades_ I've struggled with navigating it without a keyboard. Windows components however, especially old ones, are incredibly accessible
As a system macOS definitely has some holes in keyboard navigation, as well as a couple corners which are KB-navigable but the way to focus them is not immediately obvious. On the app level, keyboard navigability depends on the developer. If they take the time to dot their I's and cross their T's it's between decent and great, but if they don't care it'll be bad.
There's no option to bring up a context menu with the keyboard. And there are no keyboard accelerators _AT_ _ALL_. Windows will underline the shortcut characters when you hold "alt".
Bitwarden used to be keyboard friendly, but recent updates have removed those functions for reasons I can’t understand.
I'm glad the fad of TUIs are dying, I don't get the hype of them. We just need better, efficient and faster GUIs to put these TUIs to an end. Take a look at gpgui and glaze leading on this. There should be no reason to use TUIs anymore. It is time to move on from using this arcane technology from the 60s-70s. https://gpui.rs/ https://glaze.app/
Well, yeah, it just that those GUIs failed to appear for at least 30 years.
> It is time to move on from using this arcane technology from the 60s-70s.
You mean the GUIs? They were being in development since the early 70s, you know, but they really have flourished in the 80s. So, it's already a 40-years-old paradigm that still haven't managed to displace another contemporary paradigm of TUIs. Well, who knows, maybe in 40 more years it'll make it.
The one UI invention many web UIs now add is the universal command search bar. I’m most familiar from it from Jetbrains IDEs where it’s been for over a decade and it is a remarkable upgrade on browsing menus. With the KeyPromoter extension on I even learned the keyboard shortcut over time. Good UI pattern and now this universal command search is everywhere: Cloudflare, Mercury, etc. Love it.
Similarly, under macOS in most apps ⌘⇧/ opens a full menubar search which can surface most app functionality from the keyboard. Not quite as good as a command palette but close, and devs don't need to do anything to opt in except populate the app's menus properly.
On the web, keyboard accessible web UIs are a WCAG 2.1.1 level A requirement - that's literally the most basic level of accessibility standard (unless you count 'failed' as a level). If your website / web app isn't achieving that then you haven't tried very hard.
I’ve made a web application at work able to be keyboard driven one time and exactly 0 users out of thousands made use of it. People just don’t want to pay the upfront cost. In the old TUI days it was the only way to use something so you had no choice.
To be completely keyboard inaccessible I’d argue that you almost have to try and achieve it.
So sure, add keyboard support to the GUIs. That's always a good thing. Just make sure they're also as responsive as in a TUI. Dialogs should appear instantly, etc.
The other headaches I've had with GUIs (in Linux) is the appearance can change if an underlying library changes. Even if I haven't upgraded the SW, if I upgrade one of the toolkits it relies on the app's appearance and behavior can change.
Somehow this is never an issue with TUIs.