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GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

ckardaris.com

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Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#281

Post by BobbyTables2 »

cpeterso wrote: post #262
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 worked on Microsoft’s Windows QA team long ago. My team used to have “No-mouse Tuesdays”: you were supposed to do all your normal work but only using the keyboard.

I assume MouseKeys was cheating ?

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#282

Post by iammattmurphy »

I recently had a revelation when I made an extended qwerty midi controller app that permanently shows the states and functions of all keys including when modifiers are held.

It occurred to me that this is a wonderful way to design software: you immediately know the keyboard shortcuts because you’re already looking at them. I’m working on taking what I’ve built for the qwerty midi keyboard controller (which is built on hammerspoon) and making it just a generic interface for any kind of app.

If the end goal is navigating and controlling the app via keyboard shortcuts, so why not bake that into the design of the GUI itself?

My project if you’re curious: https://github.com/mattdanielmurphy/qwerty-midi-hammerspoon

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#283

Post by thayne »

Relatedly, I think that GUI frameworks should make it easier to make your app fully keyboard driven. But my experience with making GUIs is that it seems harder than necessary to make an efficient keyboard-driven interface.

And it should also be easy to make the keyboard controls customizable.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#284

Post by nashashmi »

failbuffer wrote: post #239
pathartl wrote: post #15

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

My theory is that Mac was born with a mouse while Windows (and Windows apps) originally had to function on machines that might not have one. Thus, keyboard navigablity was prioritized, and that design sensibility stuck around longer.

You would be baffled to know that after the creation of the mouse, Steve Jobs wanted to remove the arrow keys so developers would be forced to create mouse only interfaces.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#285

Post by nashashmi »

pathartl wrote: post #15
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #12

Keyboard accessibility is one of those things that tends to get swept under the rug or forgotten about entirely alongside accessibility in general. The funny thing is that the former usually falls out of the latter. Part of the blame lands on the shoulders of popular UI frameworks (or in the case of those choosing to eschew use of such, the developers who made that choice). The older frameworks tend to make this fair…

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

> Windows components however, especially old ones, are incredibly accessible

Bing, Bing, Bing! I came here to vent how the new windows 10 and windows 11 interfaces (made by Mac enthusiasts, ughh) have omitted keyboard accessibility for a cleaner look. They also dropped drag and drop support (which I never knew about in windows 7) and I completely missed how useful it could be on Windows 10/11.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#286

Post by alpaca128 »

heikkilevanto wrote: post #220

Keyboard driven is fine, when you have a keyboard. But many users are now on phones or tablets, with a severely limited keyboard that takes a big part of the screen. But they have a variety of gestures that regular desktop machines don't have. A good UI should happily handle both of these extremes, and everything in between.

Smartphones and tablets support keyboards, and often even have official ones to buy.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#287

Post by madeofpalk »

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.

That's because at the end of the day:

- accessibility is just usability. all it is is making sure your product is as usable by as many people as possible.

- it's a myth that "people with disabilities" are some other that excludes you, and 'accessibility' or assistive technologies only benefits other people. Everyone is only temporarily 'abled'. You need to use prescription glasses to comfortable read a computer screen? You're a parent trying to watch some TV while getting your child to sleep? All benefit from assistive technologies.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#288

Post by high_priest »

cpeterso wrote: post #262
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 worked on Microsoft’s Windows QA team long ago. My team used to have “No-mouse Tuesdays”: you were supposed to do all your normal work but only using the keyboard.

I guess that team was dismantled some time ago, with no on carrying the flag anymore. Modern windows is impossible to work on using just keyboard. Some mods & extensions do help. But the native experience is abysmal.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#289

Post by abejora »

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…

This is something that we have been working on in our app, but to be honest: it is hard. At first we wanted to be completely keyboard centric, but we had to pivot away from it.

There is so much to learn in this space.

There are small things, like dropping a 'jump to main content anchor' before the navigation so you don't have to tab through the top navigation everytime.

But there are also certain pages en layouts which require a lot of thought on a good keyboard navigation flow. Combine that with the need for responsive layouts, our inexperience with accessibility tools, etc; and the required effort quickly adds up.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#290

Post by HappMacDonald »

Balooga wrote: post #131
chuckadams wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, why did Edge and possible chrome, remove support for Back via the backspace key? Because people were triggering it by accident all the time. Firefox and Safari don't navigate back on backspace either. Enter only auto-submits if there's a visible submit button or if there's just one input, and that behavior goes back as far as I can remember.

I'm surprised the person responsible for mapping to Back navigation didn't mandate that would be super awesome for Forward navigation.

Nono, that should close the window xD
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