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The curious case of disappearing Polish S

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Re: The curious case of disappearing Polish S

#61

Post by kosma »

V-2 wrote: post #32

"While France, Germany, and other countries got their early PC with customized keyboards whose layouts mirrored closely the typewriters that came before… [...] …in Poland, we had to find another way of inputting the extra 9 diacritics unique to our language." Did we? I dare to say that your historical account is inaccurate. We stuck to our traditional layout for a while. What does it matter if the keyboard wasn't cus…

> If I recall well, Polish typewriter layout (PN-87) was still available on Windows 95/98.

It's way worse: it's installed by default up to (at least) Windows 7, along with a silent (no feedback!) Left Alt-Shift shortcut that switches the keyboard layout. Press it unknowingly and BAM - suddenly your diacritics don't work anymore and Y/Z are swapped. Annoys the hell out of an Average User.

PS. I'm not saying that the layout was bad - just that there shouldn't be a magic shortcut for a "break my keyboard now!" feature.

Re: The curious case of disappearing Polish S

#62

Post by omaranto »

blahedo wrote: post #15

I do not have sufficient profanity in my verbal arsenal for websites that override basic, fundamental browser behaviour because they think they know better than I do what I actually meant to do. I have noticed Medium being a regular perpetrator of this sort of broken behaviour before. That one of the developers at Medium could run into such a glowing example of one of the many reasons it's nasty to override browser b…

If you ask me web browser's stole CTRL+S! It used to mean "save my work", but in a browser it means "download a copy of the website I am viewing", which seems totally different to me. I can't remember ever wanting that behavior.

I agree with you that websites shouldn't override useful browser behavior, but I'm OK with websites restoring CTRL+S to it's rightful meaning of saving my work.

Re: The curious case of disappearing Polish S

#63

Post by gambiter »

arjie wrote: post #19
blahedo wrote: post #15

I do not have sufficient profanity in my verbal arsenal for websites that override basic, fundamental browser behaviour because they think they know better than I do what I actually meant to do. I have noticed Medium being a regular perpetrator of this sort of broken behaviour before. That one of the developers at Medium could run into such a glowing example of one of the many reasons it's nasty to override browser b…

What is the right approach to have the in-browser editor save? Users may want to manually trigger a save because it makes them feel safe before they close a browser tab.

While I sympathize with a lot of the "don't usurp the browser" arguments, this is really the correct answer. Whether or not it is logical, the fact is we are software developers who create software for USERS.

Re: The curious case of disappearing Polish S

#64

Post by V-2 »

kosma wrote: post #61
V-2 wrote: post #32

"While France, Germany, and other countries got their early PC with customized keyboards whose layouts mirrored closely the typewriters that came before… [...] …in Poland, we had to find another way of inputting the extra 9 diacritics unique to our language." Did we? I dare to say that your historical account is inaccurate. We stuck to our traditional layout for a while. What does it matter if the keyboard wasn't cus…

> If I recall well, Polish typewriter layout (PN-87) was still available on Windows 95/98. It's way worse: it's installed by default up to (at least) Windows 7, along with a silent (no feedback!) Left Alt-Shift shortcut that switches the keyboard layout. Press it unknowingly and BAM - suddenly your diacritics don't work anymore and Y/Z are swapped. Annoys the hell out of an Average User. PS. I'm not saying that the l…

Well, not quite. You are confusing it with 214. That's a different layout. PN-87 is the original one, take a look at https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/1601/1*3uODrDDA876... from the article - note where ń, ś, ć are located.

PN-87: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KB_Polish_QWERTZ_PN87...

214 is some computer-era invention: http://charsetplus.tripod.com/Keyboard/Latin/PL-214.htm

I agree that the alt + shift shortcut is sneaky, but Microsoft wasn't exactly known for its great UX expertise.

It's been frustrating the hell out of not-that-savvy users who would often restart their machines to "fix the keyboard" :)

Re: The curious case of disappearing Polish S

#65

Post by omaranto »

wtbob wrote: post #23
colinplamondon wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd drive me crazy if Gmail _didn't_ do that. Love the keyboard shortcuts, including and especially the ones that override. Highly productive compared to the alternative.

> Highly productive compared to the alternative. I dunno; I really preferred the alternative I used to have: reading email in a proper email client. The only reason I use the web client now is that it's easier when I'm also using my phone to read mail away from my computer. And I'm strongly considering just returning to desktop-only email; that's how much I miss reading mail in gnus.

I read my GMail email in a desktop client and on my tablet and have no problem. Why did you have to switch away from gnus?

Re: The curious case of disappearing Polish S

#66

Post by gambiter »

qewrffewqwfqew wrote: post #10

Yet another example of why websites shouldn't be able to hijack keys that have meaning outside them (in the browser itself, or in the desktop environment). It still blows my mind that browsers permit this and don't provide an easy option to stop such abusive (and dangerous!) behaviour. The workaround is typical of web stuff as well: deal with the symptoms one by one while leaving the underlying problem unquestioned.

It's ahem dangerous?

When was the last time ANYONE truly used Ctrl-S to save the webpage as HTML? And why would my inability to do it with a keyboard shortcut be a dangerous problem?

Re: The curious case of disappearing Polish S

#67

Post by dredmorbius »

inyourtenement wrote: post #53
dredmorbius wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A website should save your work as you go . No fucking excuse.

In both cases, Google Docs and Medium, the website does save your work as you go. What is being discussed is the HUMAN habit of pressing Ctrl-S.

Ah. I'd missed that point.

Too used to G+ which fails in this case.

Re: The curious case of disappearing Polish S

#69

Post by qball12 »

dredmorbius wrote: post #46

Or, as I found on a BBC news page earlier today (and reported via feedback), my middle mouse button on link to open in new tab wasn't -- the page was opening in the present tab. Don't break user controls. Seriously. Fucking. Annoying. The tendency of sites to also force all links to open in a new tab is similarly annoying. I've got the means to choose. Leave it to me. Another argument for disabling JS pretty much eve…

yeees.... now-a-days very often without JS you pretty much get an empty HTML. I mean empty as in - empty.

Re: The curious case of disappearing Polish S

#70

Post by EastSmith »

mahouse wrote: post #51
keeperofdakeys wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if it's happening now, but at one point in time F5 wouldn't work to reload the page if twitter is loaded. And not to mention google plus, that swallows Ctrl+PgDown and Ctrl+PgUp, which happen to be shortcuts to move through tabs. So you are moving through tabs, then you suddenly stop, and you have to reach for the mouse.

Not only it would not reload the page, it would retweet the currently selected tweet. It was silly. But what's really silly is that the browser actually allows a webpage to override such a basic shortcut like F5.

Twitter also once hooked CTRL+F (find in windows) so it can favor the currrent tweet. Horrible.
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