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GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

ckardaris.com

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Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#181

Post by EA-3167 »

manlymuppet wrote: post #56

Power user experience is not the same thing as user experience in general. If you want to make the argument that all developer tooling should be keyboard-driven, fine, be my guest. But most people aren't willing to deal with the learning curve of keyboard-driven GUIs, and that's okay. We shouldn't force it. HN's insistence on acting like all users are Arch Linux efficiency perfectionist hacker types is painfully corn…

No honestly some harshness is warranted, most of the people alive have internet access and a smartphone, this is a more ubiquitous activity than many others we require or expect accommodations from. This site has a lot of good to offer, but sometimes the bubble needs a reality check that their needs and concerns are even more niche than disabilities like Blindness.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#182

Post by advis »

I do agree to some extent, but were GUIs not made specifically to reduce so much reliance on the keyboard? And a few people here did mention that this "fully keyboard-driven" workflow would probably be used by power users primarily.

Like anything else in life, I think there's no single answer to this.

But for people interested in seeing the difference between mouse-driven vs keyboard-driven flows while web browsing, check out the Vimium extension. It made my sentiments very much favour keyboard-driven workflows

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#183

Post by chrisweekly »

jerf wrote: post #125
YmiYugy wrote: post #88

What does it mean though for a GUI to be keyboard-driven? The obvious way is that every action simply gets a shortcut assigned. My counter would be that that is not really keyboard-driven, but merely keyboard-compatible.There is the issue of discoverability. The best practice right now seems to display the shortcuts of buttons in tooltips, menu items, or when pressing a different shortcut. I’d content that buttons ar…

"What does it mean though for a GUI to be keyboard-driven?" For literally decades after they were state of the art, people who used old-school mainframe TUIs would still swear by them. I think the key difference is that they would buffer inputs. You could be on the "Receipt" screen, and know that if you needed to enter the code for some rebate receipt or something, you could hit F6 - F2 - down - down - down - {start…

I love this idea. I also just checked out your blog (jerf.org) which also has some gems.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#184

Post by IshKebab »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #174
rootedbox wrote: post #152

I work on ADA a lot for my company. Please put on some headphones, turn on the voice assistant of your OS, put on some blinders, and run your app or website… no mouse, just keyboard. 1. Democracy is about access; make sure everyone has access to your software. 2. The keyboard allows folks with disabilities and power users to fly through your website/app… that being said… the second a tab is off, the person with a dis…

What do you mean by "a tab is off?"

Normally you press tab to move between widgets. I guess he means if the tab order hasn't been set up properly.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#185

Post by mikepurvis »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #174
rootedbox wrote: post #152

I work on ADA a lot for my company. Please put on some headphones, turn on the voice assistant of your OS, put on some blinders, and run your app or website… no mouse, just keyboard. 1. Democracy is about access; make sure everyone has access to your software. 2. The keyboard allows folks with disabilities and power users to fly through your website/app… that being said… the second a tab is off, the person with a dis…

What do you mean by "a tab is off?"

Using tab to cycle between interactive elements in a window or page. As soon as you tab and it goes somewhere unexpected, you're cooked.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#186

Post by yndoendo »

neuroelectron wrote: post #69

A lot of comments on VIM here. Vim is a terrible example and a pretty bad design overall, objectively. Legends of great productivity with vim is highly legendary, i.e. fiction. Classic Notepad/Word and similar Guis that have been widely adopted in Linux windowing systems are clearly superior and that's why they're so widely and silently adopted. Not a lot of fanfare for hierarchical GUI menus with keyboard shortcuts.

Your making a subjective statement not an objective one about VIM.

Objective would be making the statement that not all GUIs need to be keyboard-driven manged or have accessibility built-in.

Example, GUIs in automation are primary touchscreen driven and have user requirements base on the environment they are in.

GUI standards are objective to who the users actually are or will be.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#188

Post by [deleted] »

gramie wrote: post #177
rootedbox wrote: post #152

I work on ADA a lot for my company. Please put on some headphones, turn on the voice assistant of your OS, put on some blinders, and run your app or website… no mouse, just keyboard. 1. Democracy is about access; make sure everyone has access to your software. 2. The keyboard allows folks with disabilities and power users to fly through your website/app… that being said… the second a tab is off, the person with a dis…

I had to keep accessibility in mind a lot in my previous job (web development for a university). The thing that I consistently found was that, the more accessible a website was, the better the experience for everyone , not just people with disabilities.

[deleted]

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#189

Post by orbital-decay »

redlewel wrote: post #158

Yeah I would rather just have a single interface(the terminal) for all of the tools that I use that are keyboard driven by default. There isn't anything I need from a GUI that the terminal doesn't give me. I also can't cleanly nest and stack GUI applications in tmux like I can with TUI programs. I think GUIs are for the most part tailored towards non-power users unless its something like video editing or 3d modeling…

>I also can't cleanly nest and stack GUI applications in tmux like I can with TUI programs.

Sounds like a window manager problem

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#190

Post by mixmastamyk »

Telaneo wrote: post #118
toast0 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> showing the relevant keyboard shortcuts in the UI can be overwhelming Underlining the accelerator key is subtle and shouldn't be overwelming. Keyboard navigation unaware users probably won't even notice.

This works poorly if you intend to localise your application. Great if you don't though.

Windows did both successfully.
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