Interesting to think how Microsoft is today's Ibm having adopted that beurocratic culture and deep hierarchical org.
IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields
21–30 of 250 posts
Re: IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields
#22The latest in a long line of articles where "Raymond Chen" is my first thought before even opening it, just based on the title
Great read
Re: IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would be 'submit' then?
Enter/return on the 'Submit' button, I suppose. The rationale may have been "Start at the beginning of the form, keep hitting Enter after filling in each field, and it will submit itself when you're done."
Some terminal software would use a function key that would be labelled "Execute". You'd usually have a template to put over the function keys to tell you what does what.
Re: IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields
#24As someone who prefers tabs (I'm not looking to argue), I once asked Brendan Eich on Twitter why he prefers spaces. His answer was more thoughtful than I'd expected. The tab key itself is hijacked by modern OS/UI behavior. It makes it complicated to actually type literal tab characters in certain contexts, particularly in the browser. I still prefer tabs (and I'm a Go developer), but he is absolutely correct about th…
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Re: IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields
#25As someone who prefers tabs (I'm not looking to argue), I once asked Brendan Eich on Twitter why he prefers spaces. His answer was more thoughtful than I'd expected. The tab key itself is hijacked by modern OS/UI behavior. It makes it complicated to actually type literal tab characters in certain contexts, particularly in the browser. I still prefer tabs (and I'm a Go developer), but he is absolutely correct about th…
Non english speaker trying to wrap my head around what Brendan said to you. I was once told that the tab key can be represented in different ways on different systems, and that's why spaces are safer because they're always represented the same. Is that what Brendan was trying to say?
Literally try entering a "tab" character in a Hacker News reply. For me in Safari, it changes the focus to the "reply" button.
It's literally difficult to enter a "tab" character into many text entry fields and dialogs and applications, because it's used so often as a navigation key.
Re: IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields
#26As someone who prefers tabs (I'm not looking to argue), I once asked Brendan Eich on Twitter why he prefers spaces. His answer was more thoughtful than I'd expected. The tab key itself is hijacked by modern OS/UI behavior. It makes it complicated to actually type literal tab characters in certain contexts, particularly in the browser. I still prefer tabs (and I'm a Go developer), but he is absolutely correct about th…
Non english speaker trying to wrap my head around what Brendan said to you. I was once told that the tab key can be represented in different ways on different systems, and that's why spaces are safer because they're always represented the same. Is that what Brendan was trying to say?
No, it's that it's extremely challenging to insert a literal tab character into anything resembling a web form.
You can configure your editor so that pressing the tab key inserts a tab character. Good luck with a web browser, or a UI where tab moves focus to the next control. The space bar basically always inserts a space character.
Re: IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields
#27As someone who prefers tabs (I'm not looking to argue), I once asked Brendan Eich on Twitter why he prefers spaces. His answer was more thoughtful than I'd expected. The tab key itself is hijacked by modern OS/UI behavior. It makes it complicated to actually type literal tab characters in certain contexts, particularly in the browser. I still prefer tabs (and I'm a Go developer), but he is absolutely correct about th…
Non english speaker trying to wrap my head around what Brendan said to you. I was once told that the tab key can be represented in different ways on different systems, and that's why spaces are safer because they're always represented the same. Is that what Brendan was trying to say?
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Re: IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields
#28As someone who prefers tabs (I'm not looking to argue), I once asked Brendan Eich on Twitter why he prefers spaces. His answer was more thoughtful than I'd expected. The tab key itself is hijacked by modern OS/UI behavior. It makes it complicated to actually type literal tab characters in certain contexts, particularly in the browser. I still prefer tabs (and I'm a Go developer), but he is absolutely correct about th…
Non english speaker trying to wrap my head around what Brendan said to you. I was once told that the tab key can be represented in different ways on different systems, and that's why spaces are safer because they're always represented the same. Is that what Brendan was trying to say?
No, the point was that pressing the Tab key often does something else than inserts the tab character. Moves focus to the next input field, for example.
Re: IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields
#29As someone who prefers tabs (I'm not looking to argue), I once asked Brendan Eich on Twitter why he prefers spaces. His answer was more thoughtful than I'd expected. The tab key itself is hijacked by modern OS/UI behavior. It makes it complicated to actually type literal tab characters in certain contexts, particularly in the browser. I still prefer tabs (and I'm a Go developer), but he is absolutely correct about th…
Non english speaker trying to wrap my head around what Brendan said to you. I was once told that the tab key can be represented in different ways on different systems, and that's why spaces are safer because they're always represented the same. Is that what Brendan was trying to say?
BTW, Douglas Crockford had an interesting argument in favour of spaces, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En8Ubs2k1O8
Re: IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Enter/return commonly used elsewhere.
I'd never really thought about it before, but Enter to advance to the next field field and Ctrl + Enter to submit the whole form (which is the typical keyboard shortcut for submitting the form while a multi-line text input control has focus) does have a certain appeal to it.
The overloading of return to either send a message or add a newline has become really annoying since chat apps (and then now AI) have become popular.
You have to keep a mental context of whether you need to hold shift before you press return. See also: every message I've ever sent that ended with I' because I fat-fingered the ' key while typing a contraction.