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IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields

devblogs.microsoft.com

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Re: IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields

#201

Post by pseudohadamard »

nomel wrote: post #188
CSSer wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, I'm confused. Was that supposed to be an insult?!

This is a very legitimate question: In the US, where is it not? Public buses aren't safe, clean, or timely. Where I am, it's 2.5 hours rather than a 26 minute commute by car. The only reason you ride one is usually if you are already in the proximity of your destination, especially if that destination is downtown. For all other cases, private or ride-share makes way more sense. We're talking buses here, not shuttles,…

I worked at IBM Research, totally unlike the rest of IBM in terms of how it was run, and being a non-US person it was quite natural for me to take the bus to work because either that or train is how you get to work. I never met any coworkers on there, although I did get to know the cafeteria staff, cleaners, and so on, who all caught the bus, quite well.

Re: IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields

#202

Post by pseudohadamard »

jiggawatts wrote: post #137
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interned at an IBM R&D site in Winchester (UK) for a year in 1988-89 and none of us interns wore suits, or even ties. I don't recall many of the f/t IBMers doing so either. It was pretty informal really. (Not disputing your story, just providing a different perspective.)

I work with a lot of government departments. The "policy" is not a thing that can enforce itself, and often barely exists at all. Rarely is it actually written down! Mostly these things boil down to a vetocracy where all managers in some hierarch must say 'yes', otherwise a single 'no' is a final 'no'. Hence, the trick is not to ask because the more people are involved the higher the chance that one of them will say…

> Hence, the trick is not to ask because the more people are involved the higher the chance that one of them will say 'no'.

So in my case at IBM the trick to being able to keep a hand-and-a-half sword in your office is to just have it appear there one day. My boss did a bit of a double-take the first time he saw it but that was the only reaction I got.

They did have a "no firearms in the building" policy but that didn't extend to medieval edged weapons, although there may have been a change made after I left.

Re: IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields

#203

Post by ptx »

bnjms wrote: post #152
srdjanr wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely is visible, OS login screens usually warn you if caps lock is on when typing password

Thanks for the correction. I understand it is seen but wonder if it was in keyboard only in the past.

I don't think that would work, as capslock should only affect the letter keys (not e.g. turn "1" into "!") and the keyboard doesn't know which those keys are, as it depends on the layout configured in the OS.

Re: IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields

#204

Post by brewmarche »

ptx wrote: post #203
bnjms wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the correction. I understand it is seen but wonder if it was in keyboard only in the past.

I don't think that would work, as capslock should only affect the letter keys (not e.g. turn "1" into "!") and the keyboard doesn't know which those keys are, as it depends on the layout configured in the OS.

Also, some layouts use shift lock (so actually turning 1 into !) instead of caps lock

Re: IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields

#205

Post by INTPenis »

bigibas123 wrote: post #47
INTPenis wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Brendan Eich was making a point about the tab key also being used to switch to different text fields and buttons. This makes it difficult to type in certain applications. A space doesn't have that issue. About your point of tab being represented different on different systems: It will always be ascii 9, how it's draw does differ between text editors but I consider that one of it's strengths for programming. Everyone…

I didn't even consider that, I just assumed we're talking about text editors.

But yeah I guess, that's another argument against getting accustomed to tabs for indentation.

Re: IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields

#206

Post by sam_lowry_ »

pseudalopex wrote: post #195
sam_lowry_ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTW, Douglas Crockford had an interesting argument in favour of spaces, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En8Ubs2k1O8

What of Crockford's argument interested you? The typewriter history was irrelevant. He said people argued how wide should a tab be. And this caused misery. But almost all tabs advocates said tabs should be any width you want in my experience. And spaces advocates argued how many spaces should indentation be. He said there was no value in the conflict. There is value in accessibility.[1][2] He said tabs could be elimi…

> What of Crockford's argument interested you?

That tabs can be eliminated but spaces not. The rest is incidental to this idea.

Re: IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields

#207

Post by canucker2016 »

yndoendo wrote: post #87
MoonWalk wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also conspicuously missing from the story is what key IBM DID want to use. I mean... that's the first question you'd ask! Lame.

It looks like it they wanted to use their existing special field management keys (field advance and field backspace) with tab being a different user experience. [0] Document does even use the word "Tab". "Field Backspace" seems to duplicate "Home" key usage under some conditions. To be fair, Microsoft & Bill Gates are bad at quality user experience. "Ctrl+F" differs through their applications. [0] https://archive.org…

Not sure the case that the parent refers to, but there's a good reason that CTRL-F in the Win95/Exchange Mail client and Outlook will invoke the Forward email message command.

It goes back to what is the common action that the user would perform in the app. Forwarding an email is more common that Finding text in an email - at least to Billg.

see https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20140715-00/?p=50...

Re: IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields

#208

Post by lopis »

donatj wrote: post #14

As 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…

I've ran into an elusive bug in VSCode where sometimes pressing tag moves focus to the next focusable instead of adding a tab/spaces. It's infuriating, and the only solution is restarting VSCode.

Re: IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields

#210

Post by rbanffy »

badsectoracula wrote: post #154
rbanffy wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft advanced the state of UI and UX more than anyone else in the '90s. There is no universe where that is true.

There is: this one. Win95's UI was so incredibly influential that stuff introduced by it are still around to this day.

I don't really remember many Windows 95 firsts. One I remember is the ability to switch users without logging off. MacOS famously copied that (with a 3D cube look).

I think they made something really revolutionary at the IE3 time. Their News and Mail app was an Explorer extension that placed an e-mail reader as the presentation of a folder full of folders of mailboxes and messages. You wouldn't see the extension, as the apps launched as applications, but that's what the implementation looked like from what I investigated back then.

Unfortunately, the idea was seemingly abandoned almost immediately. I would love to have such views on top of a user-space file system keeping messages, address books, and calendars in sync.

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