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GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

ckardaris.com

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Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#221

Post by goosejuice »

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…

Definitely not a substitute, and a bit slow, but GPT computer use is demonstrating an alternative path with live vision models. I'd be curious how this is fairing for those with vision impairments.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#222

Post by magicalhippo »

kerblang wrote: post #149
magicalhippo wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which, if you made say a regular Win32 application, was guaranteed. These newfangled frameworks dropped the ball, if anything.

Not guaranteed but easy, because Windows has mnemonics, where you can associate arbitrarily nested menus with actions, and each menu can have its own mnemonic key, so that you press ALT, then, say, "k", then, maybe "m" and so on, following along with the menus as they drop down. This way it becomes easy to memorize key sequences; start by navigating with arrow keys, then eventually speed up as you memorize each menu…

Even if you didn't have mnemonics, you could use tab, arrow keys and alt if needed, to navigate, and space to "click" buttons and such.

So even if the developer forgot to configure mnemonics, which was as easy as prefixing a letter with ampersand, you could navigate by keyboard. Sometimes tedious but beats not being able.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#224

Post by jakzurr »

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.

(Speaking of menu/drop-downs with underlined characters for alt commands.)

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

Sure that's true. But remember M$ allowed you to fairly easily edit those underlined-characters in, oh, for example Office 2002 and 2003. Even if you didn't have a lot of default underlines in your current language settings, it is still possible for someone to add their own underline-shortcuts.

Back in those days, the first thing I did on any personal new install of Outlook, was to disable the shortcut that marked all email as being read. (That's cause I hit that button by accident too many times.)

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#225

Post by oasisaimlessly »

prmoustache wrote: post #136
fny wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Power user experience is not the same across disciplines either. God forbid I should ever be forced to use Blender or Inkscape with only buttons.

Why do you introduce the concept of being forced to in the conversation?

Because most people do not get to choose what software they use for working?

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#226

Post by preg_match »

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #173
preg_match wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where this falls apart is commercial software. The issue is we use off-the-shelf frameworks and tools for commercial software. And then we don't train developers on how to write high-volume software. Commercial software is THE power user use case. Your users will be using your software 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for years. And still, the software is obtuse point-and-click garbage. Meanwhile commercial software fro…

I think you vaaastly overestimate how excel is used by most users if anything, excel exceeds in being MOUSE-driven - it's intuitive in what you press and what you drag and that's kinda my problem with the TFA - author is not representative of typical user. Mouse interaction is the king

Basically everyone in a white collar job who is NOT a developer is using Excel. I'm a developer, even I have to use Excel at work.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#227

Post by jakzurr »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #212
Telaneo wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't remember an example that didn't also include the shortcut written in full, but I might just be drawing a blank here. Care to give an example?

Wasn't easy to find! https://www.augenbit.de/wiki/images/5/57/Arbeitsplatz.png

Yup, pretty sure I've seen the same sorts of things using Asian characters.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#228

Post by charles_f »

Couldn't agree more, but I think it's majorly a "geek" thing. I'm using i3 on my personal linux and aerospace on my work mac ; vimium in the browser, Neru on the other apps (does something similar to Neru). I recently ended up finding a way to create user-scripts for electron app and since then I'm adding vimium-esque extensions (e.g. in Teams) wherever I go.

I wish this was a default, but also that there was more of a standard to navigate UIs. That's why I really like vimium and other similar extensions, it's following the vi logic across websites, rather than having to learn everyone's idea of how to navigate.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#229

Post by stillpointlab »

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 believe AI can be huge here. Things like ADA are often mechanical (adding the correct attributes to the most important page elements). It is the perfect work to audit and fix using agents.

It is a business opportunity as well. I worked at a company that paid for an audit before LLMs. There is tremendous cost savings possible here.

I also wonder if WebMCP will be the ultimate final incarnation of this.

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