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GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

ckardaris.com

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Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#491

Post by chrisjj »

Eji1700 wrote: post #209
manlymuppet wrote: post #56

Power user experience is not the same thing as user experience in general. If you want to make the argument that all developer tooling should be keyboard-driven, fine, be my guest. But most people aren't willing to deal with the learning curve of keyboard-driven GUIs, and that's okay. We shouldn't force it. HN's insistence on acting like all users are Arch Linux efficiency perfectionist hacker types is painfully corn…

Eh I think things like vimium have kinda solved this. Push a button, every icon is now labeled with a key, type that key, counts as a click, done. I get that this does NOT solve for say, someone who's blind (i guess you could announce them, not sure), but it is easy enough I've found even lower tech people are fine with it. As always, a lot of the trick is communicating the interface and using modern standards, not "…

> Push a button, every icon is now labeled with a key, type that key, counts as a click, done.

So, omits the text-labelled buttons?

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#492

Post by wraptile »

Timwi wrote: post #383

It's so weird for me to live through software evolution to the point where this no longer goes without saying. In the Windows 3.1 days, it was nearly impossible to make a program that wasn't fully keyboard-usable. Even if you left out all the hotkeys in the menus and messed up the tab order, it was still possible (even if annoying) to get through it with the keyboard, and adding the hotkeys (as well as actual shortcu…

My favorite example of keyboard power is qutebrowser¹ which turns any website keyboard navigable as well as all browser functionality too. It's a really fast and comfortable work flow.

https://qutebrowser.org/

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#493

Post by cma »

DarmokTanagra wrote: post #429

TUI? sure. GUI? not really possible for tools like blender, solidworks etc.

Keyboard alone is not going to make sense for lots of tasks in something like Blender, but Blender is one of the most keyboard driven 3D apps for tasks where it makes sense. It's operations and modalness feel almost like vim. Built in and widely used plugins like node wrangler even bring that to the graph stuff.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#494

Post by SilasX »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #12

Keyboard accessibility is one of those things that tends to get swept under the rug or forgotten about entirely alongside accessibility in general. The funny thing is that the former usually falls out of the latter. Part of the blame lands on the shoulders of popular UI frameworks (or in the case of those choosing to eschew use of such, the developers who made that choice). The older frameworks tend to make this fair…

This has been a source of tremendous frustration for me. I was really happy to discover c. 2009 that you could get browser extensions that let you do anything on a website (like clicking links) from the keyboard. But increasingly, they're failing at making items detectable as clickable. Which is like, why? How do you go through the effort to make a framework to automate the process of putting in UI elements ... and somehow fail to comply with basic standards that would allow interoperability.

I suspect that a lot of the resistance to disability compliance in websites[1] is due to how it would let you bypass ads. If a screen reader can cut through the cruft to get to what you need, then everyone can use software that does it.

[1] like in the Domino's case https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21188092

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#495

Post by apothegm »

sdeframond wrote: post #455
WhyNotHugo wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#496

Post by apothegm »

gregdeon wrote: post #326
TomatoCo wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pos…

Yep. In accessibility research, they call these "situational disabilities". When you need to open a door with your arms full of groceries, you aren't so different from someone who is never able to open a door. Accommodations that help people with permanent disabilities also help other people in the right situations, too.

Yup. Or people with temporary disabilities — who have simply broken limb or had a surgery. Most places are hellish to navigate on crutches. Heavy doors alone make so many places nearly inaccessible, and that’s before you even get to stairs.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#497

Post by apothegm »

ckardaris wrote: post #440
Xirdus wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have my opinion on aesthetics of additional ways of repeating information already available by color coding. But to each their own. Other than that, is enabling/disabling any of the aforementioned features ever a question of aesthetics?

For example, opting to not enable high-contrast mode is a question of aesthetics. Arguably reading text would become easier for the user, but they prefer to sacrifice a little of the readability in favor of looks.

In fact, for some people high contrast is headache-inducing.

I’ve installed a utility on my laptop that supports “sub-zero” display dimming for nighttime use because monitors are now over-optimized for max brightness, with min brightness being retina-searing for eyes adjusted to a dim room.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#498

Post by adverbly »

I say this as a vimium user:

Don't make me use a keyboard for drawing.

Don't make me use a keyboard for video games.

Don't make me use a keyboard for 3D modeling.

There are probably many more exceptions.

Stop pushing for global rules.

Accept diversity.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#499

Post by danaris »

Xirdus wrote: post #428
ckardaris wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can — or should be able to — independently toggle all of those features. For example, the app should work in high-contrast mode with disabled color coding, it should work with touch gestures disabled, etc. A good common framework helps here. Then, it's up to each user to set their settings properly.

Riddle me this - why would you want to disable something that increases usability of an application? (Yes, this is a loaded question - I never said these features are bad, just that usability and accessibility are sometimes at odds with each other.)

There are very few accessibility features that increase usability across the board for everyone.

If they did, they'd just be called "features".

Disabling high-contrast display makes the colors more aesthetically pleasing.

Disabling large-print text allows you to view more text on the screen at one time.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#500

Post by bethekidyouwant »

timnetworks wrote: post #447

And it's not just for websites. Analogy: the doorframe is of a standard width so that a wheelchair can get through. This means manufacturers can make equipment that will fit in your house without calling you first! You never have to worry you bought a new refrigerator that needs to be pulled into a hole in the roof because it won't fit through the door. You never have to worry about delivering food to a grocer becaus…

The standard doorway width came before the standard wheelchair width
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