This is awesome. I would love to see the concept of a website command line interface explored a bit further, hopefully Github implement something like Vim keybindings and a few other useful commands. The future is bright, man.
Introducing the Command Bar
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Re: Introducing the Command Bar
#42Playing with this for a few minutes: * I wish it had vim keybindings (ie, hit esc, then use hjkl to navigate) * It gives me the option to follow myself. (Bug?) * I like how I can learn commands via the autocomplete bar (issue, branch, graph, etc) * I like how the autocomplete bar refreshes after I have control-tabbed away and back. Too many autocompletes lose this behavior * Searching in a repository username/repo do…
In multiple places on github, as a vim user, I occasionally instinctively hit escape. Github sometimes closes a comment box and I lose all the stuff I had been typing. It's an unfortunate UI issue for me (and probably others).
Re: Introducing the Command Bar
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not leaving the keyboard is one big thing. I ditched webkit for Firefox in order to be able to use Pentadactyl, but it's worth it to not have to leave the home row. Learning a few commands is not hard, and there is always the ol' mouse to fall back upon if you don't want to remember all those commands.
With vimium[1] you get most of the keyboard-functionality in Chrome that Pentadactyl offers for Firefox. [1]: http://vimium.github.com/
Or use vrome[1].
[1]:https://github.com/jinzhu/vrome
Re: Introducing the Command Bar
#44Playing with this for a few minutes: * I wish it had vim keybindings (ie, hit esc, then use hjkl to navigate) * It gives me the option to follow myself. (Bug?) * I like how I can learn commands via the autocomplete bar (issue, branch, graph, etc) * I like how the autocomplete bar refreshes after I have control-tabbed away and back. Too many autocompletes lose this behavior * Searching in a repository username/repo do…
In multiple places on github, as a vim user, I occasionally instinctively hit escape. Github sometimes closes a comment box and I lose all the stuff I had been typing. It's an unfortunate UI issue for me (and probably others).
One of the several reasons that I use Ctrl-[ or Ctrl-C. ;)
Re: Introducing the Command Bar
#45Playing with this for a few minutes: * I wish it had vim keybindings (ie, hit esc, then use hjkl to navigate) * It gives me the option to follow myself. (Bug?) * I like how I can learn commands via the autocomplete bar (issue, branch, graph, etc) * I like how the autocomplete bar refreshes after I have control-tabbed away and back. Too many autocompletes lose this behavior * Searching in a repository username/repo do…
One could make a measure of velocity for hacker news posts about terminals/CLIs by measuring how fast it takes someone to gripe that it a)doesn't have vim bindings OR b) has vim bindings that feel unnatural ;)
Or that its vim bindings are TOO natural and thus call undue attention to the inevitable incompleteness of its vim "implementation"
Re: Introducing the Command Bar
#46Wow, a command-line interface to a website is something I never thought I'd see. My first reaction was that it's a step backwards because the usual benefits of a command line aren't present here (you're usually already using your mouse, commands can't be piped, no shell scripts to run things in sequence)... But I'm intigued -- maybe it's a possible step forwards? The implementation is very well done. I suppose maybe…
I know for one of the games I work on, the chat-commands/command-line interface is one of the most popular user interface features for power users. And the main reason is what you suggest about navigating and clicking. Admittedly, in a game you might "/equip meat helmet" or "/use mmj" a lot more frequently than you will friend someone on github, but it's a similar concept.
Re: Introducing the Command Bar
#47This seems like a step in the right direction, because GitHub's search remains awful.
For example, I can now type in "/ #123" to go to an issue, but if I am already on the Issues page for that repo and I type "#123" in the box labelled "Search: Issues & Milestones..." it still comes up with nothing. And that's not even challenging.
I'm desperately hoping that this feature is an indication that they've noticed that finding anything on the site requires either 8 million mouse clicks or manually editing URLs.
Re: Introducing the Command Bar
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
hitting 's' anywhere on the page activates the command bar. I will use this a lot.
oh, that makes it much better. I only have a handful of repos and a few collaborators, so I don't really spend tons of time on GH. I imagine you spend more time than me to be excited by it -- what are you doing on there?
I'm a developer at Shopify, and all of our development happens on Github. I also spend a fair bit of time working with issues on open source projects.
Re: Introducing the Command Bar
#49Playing with this for a few minutes: * I wish it had vim keybindings (ie, hit esc, then use hjkl to navigate) * It gives me the option to follow myself. (Bug?) * I like how I can learn commands via the autocomplete bar (issue, branch, graph, etc) * I like how the autocomplete bar refreshes after I have control-tabbed away and back. Too many autocompletes lose this behavior * Searching in a repository username/repo do…
+1 for vim keybindings. I noticed JIRA actually has these the other day (the only thing I like about it).
I'd like to counter here that I prefer that sites don't assign vim bindings, or at least allow me to disable them. The reason being that I make extensive use of the vimium Chrome plugin (similar to pentadactyl on Firefox), which maps common vim keys to useful browser shortcuts (j/k to scroll, shift-j/k to switch tabs, f to enable a "type to click links" mode, etc). On 99% of the websites I use, I almost never need to touch the mouse, which is a especially appreciated when using a laptop with a nub mouse.
When websites use these common vim keybindings in an attempt to be helpful or "hacker cool", they completely bork my browsing setup until I disable the plugin for that site. My experience after that is usually a mix of awkwardly readjusting to the default browsing setup and reflexively trying to use vimium hotkeys and being surprised when they do something completely different. So, while Google Reader gets much "hacker" praise for its vim hotkeys, they make the site a lot more difficult to use for me -- there, accidentally hitting my "scroll down" button will scroll to the next article and make me lose my place, for example.
To web app developers, I completely understand that vim users that use plugins like vimium are a niche within a niche and not all that important in the grand scheme of things, but we would very much appreciate it if you bury the option to disable vim hotkeys somewhere in your site's settings menu. Very few people may be affected if you don't do this, but to those that are, it's even more frustrating than sites that remap the arrow keys, use touch events on mobile browsers, break "middle click to open in a new tab" functionality for no good reason by using javascript onclick events instead of standard anchor tags, or break pagedown functionality by covering up the top part of the document with a giant floating "like this on twitbook" bar.
Re: Introducing the Command Bar
#50Playing with this for a few minutes: * I wish it had vim keybindings (ie, hit esc, then use hjkl to navigate) * It gives me the option to follow myself. (Bug?) * I like how I can learn commands via the autocomplete bar (issue, branch, graph, etc) * I like how the autocomplete bar refreshes after I have control-tabbed away and back. Too many autocompletes lose this behavior * Searching in a repository username/repo do…
Re vim bindings, this tweet[1] by John Nunemaker makes it seem unlikely. (Not actually sure how serious he is, but it's a funny tweet - and I say that as a Vim user.)