Live data from Hacker News

GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

ckardaris.com

291–300 of 513 posts

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#291

I'll go one step further: anything you can do in a GUI should also be possible to do through a CLI and yes, also with code libraries. If webapps have n-tier architectures, then so should GUI software. (we can lie and say that this is to support AI, in actuality it's to have proper programmatic automation and support for custom interfaces instead of GUI apps being black boxes)

I agree but how does this work with stateful apps

Pass data around. Run a local HTTP server or any other type of socket, like how Docker does.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#292

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.

right now, i cannot even enable Backspace = go back on Edge. I am forced to use Edge on my work computer and i hate that this feature is gone. Not disabled, just gone. About enter to auto submit, i've been running into this problem more often where some web frameworks just ignore the Enter key. There is a submit button, but i cannot trigger it via the enter key.

Is alt-left to go back a bad keyboard shortcut for you? It's what I use.

It's also far less likely to be accidentally typed while trying to fill in a form and fumbling the tab navigation.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#293
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

yep, the curb cut effect is a well-researched and documented phenomenon [0] across ADA development in all aspects of the world. accessibility work isn't just about making things possible for folks with disabilities, it's about making things better for everyone . [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curb_cut_effect

Another way to think of this is that everybody occasionally needs to do something unusual. But some people, due to their life circumstances, always need to do something unusual. And making things better for the always-odd folk is also a positive to the occasionally-odd folk.

Which like, we're all eventually gonna be odd folk! That's what age does to us. But we should understand these accommodations as being a net positive, not a cost, to society.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy is not about mob rule, it's about a dialog. Sure, sometimes it becomes heated argumentation and noise, but it's not so much about "ruling". Lincoln in his union address in 1860 said: "I so adopt it because it furnishes a precise and an agreed starting point for a discussion between Republicans and that wing of the Democracy headed by Senator Douglas." "Democratization" in a sense is about making things acce…

> Democracy is not about mob rule, it's about a dialog. No my friend, Democracy is majority rule, which easily turns into a ruling mob. It has nothing whatsoever to do with dialog. Also, your quote of Lincoln's address is taken completely out of context. He was talking about his opposition of the ideas of a faction of Democrats who were in favor of slavery and his support of the majority of Republicans who believed s…

Classics are still there, at least they were for me. Then again, i didnt have the pleasure of experiencing American public education.

As much as i do agree, overtime language does eventually change but it can happen over our dead bodies

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#297
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Some of the things we take for granted in UI/UX originated that way, like automatic hamburger menu hide/show (for very large zoom) and "scroll to content/top" buttons for screenreaders, which, if you've ever tried to read a recipe online are pretty critical. Captions on videos are also like that, although there you might share blame to them for enabling the poor sound mastering on things like, legendarily, Tenet, per…

What are the advantage of “scroll to content/top” buttons over for screen readers? I think that the use of those buttons is for when the CSS fails to load.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#298

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…

Having done exactly this for adding accessibility into a crypto wallet in the past, (yes crypto wanted even the disabled), it is plainly obvious why this is not standard.

It is an absolute train-wreck trying to get everything to work and for the overwhelming majority of products it isnt work the effort. It isnt like you put a wheelchair ramp up and are done. It is a constant battle with every change.

It is just another one of those things where the minuet minority suffers. Now if a company got some tax write off for it, that would change things.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#299
I quite literally cannot remember anything I've ever read as simple and correct, on the topic of UX/UI as this.

I tend to deride UX/UI as almost a joke because it nearly never understands that fashion and science are different things.

This one gets it.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not baffling at all. Wasn't he against the two-button mouse?
Post reply on HN