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GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

ckardaris.com

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Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#541

Post by Tallain »

DamnableNook wrote: post #512
Tallain wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case it's not a context menu, it's just a menu. User experience is degraded, see GP's case. There is an expectation and a common paradigm which is intentionally ignored because the OS developers thought they knew better than the users. This reminds me of frequent conversations with other developers when presented with a bug report. "That's not a bug, it's working as intended." The intention is wrong, then --…

Not working for your particular preferences isn’t a bug; your preferences are just wrong for the vast majority of users. The hubris of HN posters never fails to astound me. The most niche of workflows, then wonders why regular users don’t all learn esoteric keybindings and use TUIs.

I don't know if this is aimed at me or not. I don't use this workflow; in fact I'm pretty bog-standard in many of the ways I use my computers. In any case, I don't see how expecting to be able to bring up a context menu is in any way esoteric. We're in a thread about navigating GUIs using a keyboard. On many keyboards there's literally a key dedicated to opening a context menu, and on most OSs there's a pretty standard shortcut to do it as well, which is what GP was talking about and what sibling comments discuss being added more recently in MacOS. So, again, not very esoteric.

I also don't see how trying to emphasize empathy toward users translates to hubris. But sounds like you've got a bone to pick, so keep picking I guess.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#542

Post by bopou »

spankibalt wrote: post #373
robomartin wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Democracy is about access No, not really. I know what you are trying to say, and I fully agree. We need to stop using "democracy" or "democratizing". Democracy, in it's purest form, is about mob rule --majority rule, if you want to say it in a softer/kinder way. "Democratizing" means giving a mob control of the thing, it does not mean making it accessible to all at all.

> Democracy, in it's purest form, is about mob rule --majority rule, if you want to say it in a softer/kinder way. You're just parroting an old urban myth. The terminus technicus for mob rule is ochlocracy [1]; democracy, per se , includes minority protections (i. e. if it doesn't then it isn't a democracy to begin with). 1. [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mob_rule ]

"democracy, per se, includes minority protections (i. e. if it doesn't then it isn't a democracy to begin with)."

Does anyone believe this?

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#544

Post by account42 »

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #435
gramie wrote: 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.

This is true in other fields too. Wheel-chair ramps are used by people with baby strollers. Subtitles work for deaf people, those who can't understand the spoken language, or simple folks in situations where someone is sleeping next to them. Pretty much every accessibility-oriented feature ends up helping out people beyond the original audience.

While this is often true, sometimes accessibility features can be distracting to those who don't need them so should be implemented in a way that they are optional. For example, closed captions intended those who can't hear at all contain much more than spoken lines and are not appropriate for learning the (spoken) language and even less so when watching something in your native language with a good audio environment. Which is why subtitles are not on by default and you have different tracks for closed captions and regular subtitles.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#545

Post by account42 »

apothegm wrote: post #495
sdeframond wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Baby strollers are not accounted for enough ! One might wonder (wrongly) why everyone should care about the special and expensive needs of a few (or old) people when designing public spaces. But a majority will actually need to use these spaces with a baby stroller. Not a few. Baby strollers are a driving power of our society! Enable them!

Not to mention luggage. I find it hard to believe that it’s a coincidence that rolling luggage became common shortly after curb cuts and wheelchair ramps did.

Those are even worse because the tiny wheels do not take well to cobblestone or gravel surfaces that strollers handle just fine.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#546

Post by account42 »

Xirdus wrote: post #523
madeofpalk wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another is using smaller font size to make more info visible at once This doesn't sound very usable to me.

You might be the kind of person who does benefit from accessibility features such as larger font size. On the other hand, I'm not; I can read 10pt font on 100 DPI display just fine, without glasses. I'd rather have an extra column in table view visible without scrolling than larger letters, but for you the tradeoff might be different. That's why it's accessibility and not usability. Usability would be if the bigger f…

Yes and unfortunately font size is usually one of those things where everyone is subjected to the "improvement". Accessibility guidelines should not be specifying minimum font sizes but rather require websites to respect the browser settings.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#547

Post by jasonlotito »

Xirdus wrote: post #518
jasonlotito wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Riddle me this - why would you want to disable something that increases usability of an application? Why don't you run your apps/OS with every usability feature enabled? Share your reasons.

I think you are mistaken which side I am on in the "accessibility is just usability" debate. For the record, I am on the side that says not at all.

Nope! But that you can't answer my question says all I need to know about the type of person you are.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#548

Post by jnpnj »

gjvc wrote: post #524
jnpnj wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty cool video. I would love to know more about the internal design of the as400 platform and how people thought and designed user interfaces. I can't shake the feeling that these interfaces are so lean they're satisfying. Also, I feel that a lot of interfaces today are wasting resources.

watch the whole video from the beginning! :-)

oh i will, i let the second half run, but i'll make sure to see the first part too

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#549

Post by GreenWatermelon »

ckardaris wrote: post #101
jolmg wrote: post #59

> While it’s true that if you randomly pick a GUI and a TUI application, the latter is more probable to be fully keyboard-driven, this does not tip the scale in favor of developing TUIs over GUIs3. What it does is highlight the inadequacies of keyboard navigation in many GUI applications. Something to consider is a terminal that has keyboard navigation of its own. Through a terminal shortcut, I can move the cursor at…

Any text-centric action will have a great advantage when done inside a terminal. I would think the equivalent in GUIs would be first-class OCR support on the compositor level. I am not informed about any progress made in that region to be honest, so I cannot tell how close we are (or not) to this.

OCR now comes built in with Spectacle, the default screenshot utility for KDE Plasma and it can copy the result right away.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#550

Post by abejora »

izacus wrote: post #456
abejora wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 whi…

It's hard if you think of it as an afterthought. It's easy if you keep it in mind from the start and choose your stack and approach correctly from the start. That's usually the problem with startup software - most if startup engineers will rather burn 10 hours coding that 1 hour thinking and choosing the right things.

What are some examples of the right things to choose? Are you thinking in the direction of technical decisions (e.g. the right programming language), or more about product design decisions?
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