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Google Input Devices Technology

Chrome Does Have a Caps-Lock Key After All 391

Posted by timothy from the who-on-earth-wants-one? dept.
Meshach writes "Amidst all the angst about Google taking away the caps lock key from Chrome it now appears that is not the case. With one small change any user can change the Modifier Key from a Search key to a Caps Lock key. Peace has been restored..." If there must be such a thing as a Caps Lock key on conventional keyboards, I wish it could be banished (along with the Insert/Delete pair) to a hard-to-fumble-upon switch on the bottom of the keyboard or laptop.
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Chrome Does Have a Caps-Lock Key After All More

Chrome Does Have a Caps-Lock Key After All

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  • delete key? what? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by citylivin ( 1250770 ) on Thursday December 09, 2010 @08:42PM (#34509168)

    You dont use the delete key? how do you delete files? right click?!?

    You do know timothy, that backspace is not delete right?

    • There's nothing wrong with the delete key. The problem is that insert is so very close to the delete key that it is easy to hit delete on accident.

      • Then, the solution is to have a Missile Switch Cover-type http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9278 [sparkfun.com] thing over the Delete key. Makes my Nuclear General fantasy more believable too.

      • Re:delete key? what? (Score:4, Funny)

        by h4rr4r ( 612664 ) on Thursday December 09, 2010 @09:03PM (#34509424)

        Get a Man's keyboard. I never have that problem on my Model Ms.

        • Re:delete key? what? (Score:4, Informative)

          by RobertM1968 ( 951074 ) on Thursday December 09, 2010 @09:18PM (#34509594) Homepage Journal

          Get a Man's keyboard. I never have that problem on my Model Ms.

          Same here... :-) The IBM Model M: The World's Greatest PC Keyboard!!! [aibpc.com]

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by h4rr4r ( 612664 )

            My oldest is a 1990 1391401, still the daily work one, but I really want a 1986 one with the metal AT to PS2 converter.

            • I am lacking the converter for my oldest (and use a generic one)... but it's a 1986 model with the original black AT cable) - it's "birthdate label" is in a pic in our blog post. I had an older one (16 days older) which I gave to my mom with a new computer - somewhere around 2 decades ago. She's went through 5 computers... same keyboard. :-)

              Most of my other ones are a bit younger. This one (that I type on now) was born on Feb 5, 1996 in the UK (my only UK keyboard). A few other Model M's and three M13's

          • I like to say "A model M is the only keyboard you can use to kill a man; then type his obituary."

            I really like to say that, at least once a month.

      • Buy a Logitech Wave keyboard then. The "Insert" is in the row of keys that normall holds the Print Screen, Scrlk and Pause keys and the Delete is in it's usual position (but is much larger).

      • then you got to learn how to use keyboard if you keep hitting insert instead of delete.

        I'm a business owner, i sell hosting services, manage tons of servers, code etc etc.

        I *REFUSE* to use any keyboard which has non regular insert/delete key positioning, sizing or anything. how they are, is best how they are. I need both keys, regularly, each and every day.

        For example, i cannot use any logitech keyboard as they have non-standard layouts. It's simply slow and hard to paste into SSH.

        Also VIM uses either key i

    • Yeah, I was gonna say... you can take my delete key when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
    • Well I don't know about mere mortals, but I use a command line every time, and always make up some crazy regular expression to do it just so I can show off my maaaad skillz.

      But seriously, I use all the keys on the keyboard, except some of the F# keys. IF you want to talk about useless keys, let's talk about the 'context menu key' that is located beside the right windows key. That is a useless key. Is there really someone out there that runs a windows desktop and does not use a mouse or lacks the abilit

      • Re:delete key? what? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by jmorris42 ( 1458 ) * <{jmorris} {at} {beau.org}> on Thursday December 09, 2010 @08:59PM (#34509376)

        > IF you want to talk about useless keys, let's talk about the 'context menu key' that is located beside the right windows key.

        Useless keys are very valuable if you think outside the box. Map it to a compose key. Or use it as a special key for things like virtual machines instead of having to make do with chording a bunch of the buckybits. Of course if one is stuck on stupid (i.e. Windows) then there probably isn't much use for a useless key.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by h4rr4r ( 612664 )

        Context Menu key? Windows key?

        What sort of odd thing are you using?
        Sounds like you need a better keyboard.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by SEE ( 7681 )

        There's no such thing as a useless key; there's only a key you haven't properly remapped in order to exploit. (For Windows NT 4/2000/XP/Vista/7, hunt down use KeyTweak and the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator.)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Burdell ( 228580 )

        I map the Windows logo key to Meta, and the other Windows key (context menu?) to Compose. I get an extra modifier for keyboard shortcuts, and I can easily type those funny characters like and ü.

      • If you think the "context menu" key is useless, can I assume you've never had to navigate Windows on a computer where the mouse is missing or broken? I never plan on using a windows machine without a mouse, but I have had several situations where I was stuck without a functioning mouse, and some developer(Microsoft or someone else) stuck some very important function in a context menu.

      • Re:delete key? what? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by DavidD_CA ( 750156 ) on Friday December 10, 2010 @05:25AM (#34512172) Homepage

        IF you want to talk about useless keys, let's talk about the 'context menu key' that is located beside the right windows key.

        I use the Context key frequently. For example, if you're typing in Word and the spell checker identifies a mistake (red squiggle), I can put my cursor inside the word and use the Context key to pull up the spell check results. This is far faster than grabbing the mouse to use a right-click.

        Likewise with working on files. I often navigate to folders and open them without using the mouse. The Context key lets me "right click" whatever I have selected so that I can send it to a USB drive, email it as an attachment, or open it with an alternative program.

        I would say it gets far more use than the Caps Lock and Scroll Lock combined.

    • I run into the very occasional software package where pressing 'insert' does not put the damn thing in overstrike mode. If I want to replace text, I'll highlight it. It's not even overstrike mode that's really the problem, it's how easy it is to accidentally activate something that's so rarely desired.
    • I'm surprised you didn't have 50 people say to you: "uhhhh, you drag it to the trash, DUH!"

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Hatta ( 162192 )

      You dont use the delete key? how do you delete files?

      rm

  • My printer only has capital letters (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Thursday December 09, 2010 @08:43PM (#34509188) Homepage

    My printer only has capital letters [aetherltd.com], you insensitive clods.

  • If there must be such a thing as a Caps Lock key on conventional keyboards, I wish it could be banished (along with the Insert/Delete pair) to a hard-to-fumble-upon switch on the bottom of the keyboard or laptop.

    Sounds like someone doesn't program using constants....

    • I use constants but I hate caps lock.
      1st, It's really easy to bump by accident.
      2nd, when I type in constants, I often use underscores in them, far more frequently than numerals.

      I would like a good old mechanical shift lock. Something with a solid click to it so it's harder to accidentally engage.
      When I type in constants, I hold one finger on the shift key and make do with the remaining three fingers on my left hand. I find that much easier than the decidedly odd behaviour.

      • I use constants but I hate caps lock. 1st, It's really easy to bump by accident.

        2nd, when I type in constants, I often use underscores in them, far more frequently than numerals.

        I would like a good old mechanical shift lock.

        Something with a solid click to it so it's harder to accidentally engage.

        When I type in constants, I hold one finger on the shift key and make do with the remaining three fingers on my left hand. I find that much easier than the decidedly odd behaviour.

        Get an IBM Model M [aibpc.com]. The keycap has a chunk taken out of it next to the "A" key to make it more difficult to accidentally hit. Actually, all the keys are pretty much more difficult to accidentally hit due to the key design/layout (deeper left-right curves on the keycaps, generous "V" spacing between each key, etc), curvature of the layout (stepped rows), tactile/mechanical aspect, etc... and of course, they make great bludgeoning weapons that you can still use afterwards to type up the suicide note of the pe

      • I would be happy with a feature where a long press on shift activates caps lock. I think thats more intuitive and less likely to be activated accidentally.

  • The caps lock key doesn't bother me (Score:3)

    by Wonko the Sane ( 25252 ) * on Thursday December 09, 2010 @08:46PM (#34509222) Journal

    What I want to know is how I can patch the kernel to force num lock on and ignore all attempts to turn it off.

  • Get rid of all these stupid useless keys (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Simonetta ( 207550 ) on Thursday December 09, 2010 @08:54PM (#34509306)

    I work in the Employment office in Gresham, Oregon USA. I help people use computers. In order to get unemployment checks in Oregon, all applicants have to complete this long questionaire on a PC about their occupational skills, work history, and personal status. People can do this on-line or come into our 'worksource center' and use the computers that we have here. And I'm supposed to help them. (I get minimum wage for this and no benefits. Nnot that that is important. I just want you to know that I'm not a highly paid government employee)
    The information is supposed to match the unemployed with the jobs that all the companies in Oregon have available.

      Not a bad concept except for two things. There are no jobs, and, about half of the people coming through the process can't use computers. And about 15-20% of the people can't speak english and have never, ever, ever used a computer before. I am not bullshitting you about this. It seems like a fantasy to highly-educated young Slashdaughters like yourself, but I assure you that this is the case in the lower-middle class neighborhoods of the USA (and probably the rest of the world as well).

        So I get a lot of people who have never typed on a keyboard before. And they get put in front of a keyboard that was designed for advanced professional word-processing business typists of the early 1980's era. A lot of them must feel like they've been abducted by space aliens, especially the ones who have come from pre-industrial cultures and have been doing 'under the table' unskilled construction labor or fruit picking.

        I would greatly help if there were only half of the keys on the PC keyboard that there are presently. And get rid of the fucking Num-lock key and the stupid Caps-Lock key!

        Please.

        I'm not kidding about this. Just do it.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by jmorris42 ( 1458 ) *

      > I would greatly help if there were only half of the keys
      > on the PC keyboard that there are presently.

      So to please uneducated non computer users who don't own or use computers, we who do know how to use all the keys on a modern keyboard should be forced to endure a crippled user interface. Lemme guess, Obama voter.

      Trust me, every key is needed with the possible exception of caps and num lock. Numlock is just there as a legacy from the old 84 key keyboard and could be eliminated... except a lot of

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jo_ham ( 604554 )

        A baseless, totally irrelevant, ad hominem attack that paints all of your political opponents as stupid and/or illogical. Lemme guess, Tea Partier/Republican.

        (And no, I did not vote for Obama, nor am I the GP).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )

      Put in a request for one of a Ergoguys KB1 Keyboard Or a Greystone BigKeys LX Kids Keyboard

      Worst case, gt stickers with easy to read letters and put themon the keyboard. besure that have a divverent background then the keyboard.

      At least you can tell then to ignore the rest.

      I use cap lock s and num-lock. Don't assume you don't need them so no one does.

      Oregon use to have a free course at PCC on basic computer skills like these, has that stopped? It was part of the resume building job assistant stuff. Good stu

    • Just ask your IT department to map the keys out. That is if the OS was released after 2001. If not your probably out of luck.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by h4rr4r ( 612664 )

        What OS can't map the keys out?

        Even old windows versions do this by registry key, in any OS using X you can use xmodmap.

    • When you quit, set them all to Dvorak.
    • My pre-information age grandfather, who trained and worked as an electronics engineer btw, had a similar problem upon first encountering a VCR remote. The first stage was confusion, the last stage was acceptance, but somewhere in the middle (before he got used to the thing) he came up with the idea of marketing slip-covers for VCR remotes that had a few windows on them so you could press the PLAY, STOP, and FF/REWIND, without having all those extra buttons in the way to confuse you. Doesn't make sense for r

  • What is it with this crazy trend of removing useful keys??

    I don't really care much about caps lock, which is only very rarely useful. But the Delete key??? How do you delete stuff (files, icons, ...) without it? How do you delete right of the cursor instead of left?

    Already, Page Up/Down and Home/End are gone on many notebook keyboards, making simple stuff like select to the start/end of line (Shift-Home / Shift-End) too clumsy to be useful when you need to hold a third Fn key simultaneously. And selecting to the end of the document becomes almost impossible.

    So now someone is advocating the removal of Insert/Delete?

    What is the next step? The return of Bob as a geek power-user OS?

    • But the Delete key??? How do you delete stuff (files, icons, ...) without it?

      Wow... I feel spoiled that I started computers in the day when there was no mouse or even GUI. Here's what you do (assuming Windows).

      - Go to the icon/file/whatever (use the mouse to right-click it) - wait for context menu
      - Hit "Shift D" to permanently delete it or hit "D" to move to recycle bin

      Failing having a mouse, use the keyboard to change the selection to the one you want, hit Shift-F10 to pull up it's popup menu, then follow deletion steps above.

      For multiple files, you can hold shift while selec

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rduke15 ( 721841 )

        What are you talking about? Do you suggest that the Delete key is not needed because all these file-manager specific shortcuts combined with right-click context menus and what-mot can be used instead?

        Are you trying to say that a relatively standard key is not needed because every single program has it's own proprietary multi-key shortcut to accomplish the same task?

  • I won't be happy until they bring back the NUM LOCK key!!!!!

  • How to kill the evil capslock key (Score:5, Funny)

    by yelvington ( 8169 ) on Thursday December 09, 2010 @09:09PM (#34509498) Homepage

    xmodmap -e "clear Lock"

    If this doesn't work, get a real operating system.

  • I mean this is the second story on this amazing saga of whether the Chrome OS will have caps lock. Are any of the techies who visit this site going to buy a laptop that can only run one program (Chrome) and can't be modified?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nomadic ( 141991 )
      They bought ipads didn't they.

    • Re:WHO CARES? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jmorris42 ( 1458 ) * <{jmorris} {at} {beau.org}> on Thursday December 09, 2010 @09:22PM (#34509650)

      > Are any of the techies who visit this site going to buy a laptop that can only run one program and can't be modified?

      Don't bet on that last bit. I'm totally stoked about Chrome but not because I actually want such a retarded thing. How long have we been waiting for ARM based netbooks? Just when it looked like the Year of Linux on the Netbook was here and would soon abandon the power guzzling Atom for a more sensible ARM, Wintel threw its weight around and netbooks vanished. Hint: if it isn't cheap, small, light, flash based and netcentric it ain't a netbook. What the marketing folks are branding as netbooks these days are three pounds plus and have hard hard drives loaded with Windows. Well now here comes ARM based hardware just waiting to get repurposed to running a more general purpose netbook environment. And rooted it will be, just like every Android product has been rooted.

      • Well now here comes ARM based hardware just waiting to get repurposed to running a more general purpose netbook environment.

        Here? Are you talking about the Cr-48 from TFA? Because that's an Atom device, not ARM.

        • Re:WHO CARES? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by jmorris42 ( 1458 ) * <{jmorris} {at} {beau.org}> on Thursday December 09, 2010 @11:25PM (#34510628)

          > Because that's an Atom device, not ARM.

          It is also a limited run prototype intended to seed the developer market. If Google puts a stupid Atom into the production hardware I'll lose all respect for them. It runs one application and one plugin. It is ported to ARM as is Flash. Intel hopes to someday (maybe even next year... yeah right) get idle power consumption down to under a watt. You can get some pretty nice ARM SoC solutions that top out at a watt. And that is for everything but the backlight, not just the CPU. These prototypes are three fracking pounds. If that is anything like what is going to ship Google can pack it in now and save everyone the bother.

          Not to mention that if it ships with Intel Inside the pricetag is going to be right in with the modern Windows based netbooks and again, why bother? If they aren't planning to deliver them at retail to end users for $200 in WiFi or free with a 3G data plan then again, Google is far less savy than I have been giving them credit for. To hit those pricepoints ARM is the only option. Intel has no plans to offer a SoC solution anytime in the next couple of years and there are multiple ARM based solutions shipping that have CPU+GPU+3G+WiFi+Bluetooth+Power on the same chip and you can get SoC+RAM+FLASH on a very small module.

      • Powered by a nVidia Tegra 2 processor and a special version of Android.

        However, reviews haven't been kind on it:
        http://www.reghardware.com/2010/11/03/review_netbook_toshiba_ac100/ [reghardware.com]
        10/100
        "The beautifully designed and executed hardware is very close to my ideal netbook, and it's hardly an exaggeration to say that I'm heart-broken by Toshiba's cocked-up Android implementation. The best one can hope for is a firmware rescue from the open source community, although I wonder if the product will stay around long en

  • How would you ever turn it off? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by lawpoop ( 604919 ) on Thursday December 09, 2010 @09:13PM (#34509550) Homepage Journal

    I wish it could be banished (along with the Insert/Delete pair) to a hard-to-fumble-upon switch on the bottom of the keyboard or laptop.

    The only thing that will change it make it hard to turn off, so that we'll have users going for months with their caps lock on because they can't find where to switch it back.

  • >"If there must be such a thing as a Caps Lock key on conventional keyboards, I wish it could be banished (along with the Insert/Delete pair) to a hard-to-fumble-upon switch on the bottom of the keyboard or laptop."

    There are many reasons one might need or want a Caps-lock key and it doesn't and shouldn't be hidden away. I often need one when coding and doing certain types of data entry. I certainly find it a lot more valuable than the apparently mandated, non-standard, changing, "my this" and "my that"

  • Speak for yourself! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Coolhand2120 ( 1001761 ) on Thursday December 09, 2010 @09:22PM (#34509648)
    How do you switch your cursor from insert to overwrite mode? How do you delete characters on the right hand side of the cursor? How would you easily delete a line via keyboard (CTRL+DELETE).

    What about ctrl+delete (cut)
    what about ctrl+insert (paste)
    What about CTRL+ALT+DELETE?

    Did you actually think about how others use the keys before you so cavalierly decided to banish a key? And why pick on insert delete when there is so much more low hanging fruit? Why not pick on F9-F12? Scroll lock?! Or the duplicated forward slashes or pipe key? Who uses tilde or grave!? And I guess we couldn't get rid of one set or the other of the windows keys?

    Personally, I cannot dispense with a single key for me or my clients. If I'm on a support call the last thing I want to hear is "I don't have a delete key" –

    “Oh they can right click on the task bar!”

    No! They cannot, there is no taskbar!.
    You might as well upload a virus that prevents you from accessing the windows task manager. Please let's think about the children, they'll be supporting windows XP until they die, let’s give them a easy way to log on to the machine.

    I hope all these forward thinking kids think about the repercussions of their actions before we end up with a crappy cell phone keyboard hooked up to a Cray 32.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Hatta ( 162192 )

      How do you switch your cursor from insert to overwrite mode?

      R

      How do you delete characters on the right hand side of the cursor?

      dh

      How would you easily delete a line via keyboard

      dd

  • DUMBASS IDEA, EYE NEED CAPSLOCK. (Score:5, Informative)

    by DoninIN ( 115418 ) <don.middendorf@gmail.com> on Thursday December 09, 2010 @09:23PM (#34509664) Homepage
    No, really, I use it frequently. Not just to post inane l33tspeak to the interwebs either. I mean I really do use the thing as part of my daily life. I deal with a few hundred part numbers, many of them are long numbers, sprinkled with letters in there.. My left hand hit the caps lock and my right hand jumps to the numpad and I'm pecking out E5-FU7-Z009A001 etc for a few lines... Natural, easy. The way the keyboard has been used for... Well decades, getting rid of the caps lock is even dumber than adding "windows" keys and whatever other crap we added to go from 101 to 10-Whatever we're at now. Key combinations are more suited for those extra functions.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )

      I am in a similar situation. What really pains me is basically the CAPS lock key is being used to sole a software problem. If the software was worth a damn, it would do it automatically. The stuff I write does, that's for damn sure.

  • this video:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm-Vnx58UYo&NR=1 [youtube.com]

    Probably because of the fire, nitrogen and conveyor belt.

  • Obligatory Quote Reference... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    http://www.bash.org/?835030

  • We need keys for the "cents", "degree", "multiplication" and "division" symbols, and a shift-tab key to tab backwards through form fields.

    And when web browsers properly implement multicolumn text (where columns are added and removed as needed based on the browser window size), we'll need "Page Left" and "Page Right" keys.

    And how often do non-programmers need the "carot" symbol, the "pipe" symbol, or curly braces? Get a programmer's keyboard if you need those.

    And it would be nice if Apple and Microsoft could

  • What about one-handed people? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by KarlIsNotMyName ( 1529477 ) on Thursday December 09, 2010 @11:57PM (#34510822)

    Seriously. People incapable of using both hands at once, how are they going to manage comfortably typing all the capital letters without caps-lock?

    Too many seem to only think of how they themselves use something an assume the entire world needs only that.

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