One Week: No Mouse, Just Keyboard 364
jfruhlinger writes "Anyone in tech has heard from grousing old-timers who believe the GUI was the beginning of the end of civilization and that EMacs keyboard shortcuts are all the interface anyone should need. But can someone use a modern consumer OS without laying hands on a mouse? Kevin Purdy gave it a week-long try."
Keyboard only support should be mandatory (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, it's just harder (Score:3)
One of our students is blind and he doesn't use a mouse on his computer as it really wouldn't be so useful. He's got a keyboard, a braille output device, and screen reading software. He moves about the system (Windows XP) using only the keyboard. It works, it is just slower than using a mouse.
I've operated Windows systems without mice occasionally because there was some problem, and again, works just fine. Even though I do it rarely, I can still do it just fine.
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Its one of the few areas I found WinXP more usable than Linux -- I can operate a WinXP box from startup to shutdown without a mouse, where I find Gnome's UI requires a mouse to navigate some options.
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It's likely you just weren't aware of a shortcut/command to do what you wanted.
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If you're going through the trouble of mouse keys just to select menus, know that you can reach any menu item by hitting a top menu's Alt+key character, then arrowing down, right if there's a submenu, and finally enter to select. There's even faster ways if you continue using Alt keys once the menu is down.
You don't need to remember control-key shortcuts for this, just where the menu item you're looking for is (which you'd need to know for mouse keys too).
The conkeror web browser (Score:4, Informative)
If you aren't on friendly terms with your mouse I would recommend the conkeror web browser. This has saved me quite some hazzle in situations where I either don't have a mouse (my TV computer) or when the mouse is awkward to use (my laptop with a substandard trackpad).
For those who don't know, conkeror is a web browser based on xulrunner which is designed to be used in an effective manner without a mouse. If you happen to like emacs, you'll probably feel right at home since the keybindings (by default) are inspired by emacs. If you are not familiar with emacs you will probably need some more time to get used to conkeror. However, since conkeror allows you to use a mouse as well if you want to you can adapt to the browser without feeling too handicapped.
If this seems interesting you can find more information about conkeror at http://conkeror.org/ [conkeror.org].
Logoff/Shutdown/Restart (Score:3)
On Win7, how the F*** do you log off, shutdown, or restart without a mouse?
On XP, it was {CTRL+ESC|WinKey}, U, {L|R|S}
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There are several ways. The easiest would be command+D to get to the desktop, and then alt+f4.
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Winkey-R, logoff /s /t 0 /r /t 0
Winkey-R, shutdown
Winkey-R, shutdown
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And more importantly... (Score:2)
Re:And more importantly... (Score:4, Insightful)
Here you have keyboard commands that millions of people have memorized
certainly not millions.
thousands for sure.
maybe 10s of thousands.
why the hell did they change it?
Because opening the start menu puts you in the search bar. Pressing "U" in the search bar puts a U in the search bar. It can't really be used for a hotkey unless nobody is allowed to search for things that start with 'u'.
And for what its worth, putting search in the start bar was a GOOD thing. I rarely ever have to go digging through the start menu hierarchy any more.
Search is better than the run dialog as well because it works for documents, as well.
So why they hell did they change it? Because they made it better, and millions of users (this time actual millions) benefitted.
It's almost as if Microsoft doesn't give a damn about their customers
Or maybe its you that doesn't? Because having everyone else have to push an extra key to get the search box just so people like you could still press U instead of right-arrow would be asinine.
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And for what its worth, putting search in the start bar was a GOOD thing. I rarely ever have to go digging through the start menu hierarchy any more.
Disclaimer: I have not used Win 7. All of my Windows boxes run XP (or, in some cases, 98 ... no need to update a working data-collection setup).
That sure sounds more and more like a command line. At the Unix prompt we (all should) know and love, you type the first few characters, hit TAB, and boom! you get a list of options that the system knows about as exe
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What's this search on start bar? You mean I don't have to use the "Run" menu in order to type "calc" anymore? Is it like the spotlike thingy on Mac?
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Because opening the start menu puts you in the search bar.
This is where they went wrong.
Opening the start menu should put you into the start menu, not some component thereof whereby you then can't get out of.
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Esc, the Windows key, or any arrow key will get you out of the search box.
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why the hell did they change it? Here you have keyboard commands that millions of people have memorized, and they throw them out just for the hell of it. It's almost as if Microsoft doesn't give a damn about their customers. Crazy, I know.
"Training revenue." That, and the ability to sell "new shiny!"
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[winkey] [right arrow] selects the shutdown button
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This has annoyed me to no end as well. Most importantly, force the machine to shut down and not hibernate, etc. without a mouse.
I used the Win, U, U combo very often.
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Yea, this can be a problem. I've had mice go out and then end up confused on how to do some basic things. Shutting down is easy, but if you want to gracefully shut down an application first, or send an email to friends saying why you're going to be late, it's a bit cumbersome. I don't need the mouse when developing code since the tools I use are keyboard friendly (shell terminal and emacs and gcc and gdb) but you need the mouse a lot of dumb applications that don't have convenient keyboard controls (mail
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Dunno about log off and reboot, but shutdown can be done by simply hitting the power button on most computers these days.
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How about you press that nice big shiny button on the box itself?
I love freaking people out by just reaching over and pressing the power button, then watching as the system gracefully shuts down.
They're so used to only touching the actual tower to turn the system *on* that it throws them for a loop when I use the exact same button to turn it *off*.
Surprise!
touchscreens are worse (Score:3)
A worse case: on n900, a device with a keyboard, Nokia in their infinite wisdom decided that to set an alarm you need to swipe a number of times to scroll to the hour and minute you want.
They do not have to be (Score:2)
iOS has really excellent support for the disabled, built in screen reading and everything. You might think the blind could not use a touchscreen well but the devices are small enough it's easy to get position right.
What happened? (Score:2)
I would have loved to click the link in the article, but I couldn't as I too have given up my mouse...
Blind people do every day don't they? (Score:3)
For many folks it's a more than an entertaining jaunt into the wild west of accessibility, it's a way of life.
linux has keyboard mousing by default (Score:3, Interesting)
In soviet linux the keyboard is the mouse:
http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/movecursor.html [tuxfiles.org]
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The same works in Windows and OSX (and probably other OSes). It's an old thing called mouse keys.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Mouse_keys [wikimedia.org]
Windows is the best for it. (Score:4)
I did this from time to time (lets just say in the lab i find it enough if every oscilloscope or auxiliary control computer has a keyboard flying around without a mandatory mouse.
The gnome desktop was hard to navigate, Windows for sure possible and more consistent across applications.
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Even though Mac OS and OS X both have extensive keyboard controls, neither is possible to use exclusively with a keyboard. I've found Windows to be the most keyboard friendly GUI OS. Which I think is kind of odd ...
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No its not odd. A lot of lawyers would wait to kick the shit out of MS or its customers for being non-accessible and sue for an insane amount of money. For MS producing an OS which is non-accessible would put them of the buying list of large customers.
Actually i believe one reason why Apple is targeting consumers is because labor laws can be more harsh when it comes to euqal chances than consumer laws.
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I've found Windows to be the most keyboard friendly GUI OS. Which I think is kind of odd ...
I have heard it said that at some point the military would not buy software that required a mouse, so MS made an OS that didn't require one. I don't know how true this is, but MS has obviously put an enormous amount of effort into allowing their GUI to be run without a mouse. There are probably dozens of people who work on this aspect of Windows/Explorer exclusively.
Too extreme (Score:3)
The mouse is useful to select windows, do edge-scroll between virtual desktops and select text regions. (fvwm2, obviously)
Other than that, I use it for gaming and that is it.
As a blind Windows/Linux user... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's also possible to use a computer soully with a refreshable braille display device, though it gets aggrivating, and there's no way in hell I'd do it for a week.
On the Linux side of things, the accessibility is far worse than in Windows, but Gnome provides a lot of the same types of keyboard navigation mechanisms as Windows (Orca [gnome.org] doesn't work on KDE, sadly).
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Never bug the blind about spelling, unless you want to burn in hell. If it sounds the same when spoken by their TTS engine, chances are they wont do letter by letter navigation over at dicionary.com to get it exactly right. Just read it phonetically and move on.
Try it in Linux (Score:2)
... fail.
Supposedly, the operating system that "we" made was supposed to have full keyboard support, so we won't have to leave our beloved home row [vim.org], right?
Wrong. I had a mouse go bad one time, and found out just how wrong.
For starters, just to log off or turn the computer off, you have to click a button in the top panel (in Ubuntu/Gnome), but, although there's a shortcut for the top menu (Alt+F1), you can't get to the panel buttons from there.
Plenty of other annoyances as well, including being not able (or
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Set-up a short cut to open a terminal emulator of your choice and you have more than you need. Alt-F2 also works.
Linux destops are designed so you can use your mouse. Window managers are for keyboard.
Alt-F2
gnome-terminal
Enter
su
poweroff
There might be a user executable shut down command but i have yet to find it, chmod does work though.
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Is probably easier
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You need to have that installed but yes it would be. Its not even in my default repos.
found a script that works without root.
https://gist.github.com/988104 [github.com]
Says is calls what gnome does to shut-down without privateers.
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You should check out the rat poison [nongnu.org] window manager.
If you've ever used screen in a console, you'll be right at home. Where screen uses control-a, ratpoison uses control-t.
Keyboard commands for everything, and no mouse support!
As for the shutdown command, the proper way is shutdown -h now
(-h to halt, -r to reboot)
Of course you can also just run 'halt' to shut down with less typing.
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Dont know how universal it is but this line works on my desktop without privileges /org/freedesktop/ConsoleKit/Manager org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit.Manager.Stop
dbus-send --system --print-reply --dest=org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit
bung it inside a shell script and you don’t need root. Replace stop with restart to restart.
Though when I think about the best short-cut is the power button outside or inside of X it will at least open the shut-down dialogue.
P.S. No real interest in loosing my mouse.
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You should check out the rat poison [nongnu.org] window manager.
If you've ever used screen in a console, you'll be right at home. Where screen uses control-a
And it's really annoying. Outside of screen, ctrl-a (by default) jumps to the front of the line (I love vim, but can't get my head arround set -o vi).
In screen, ctrl-a enters command mode, I'm often halfway through editing the line before I realise what's happened. Sure I could remap, on hundereds of servers, but then it becomes non-standard and is more likely to catch me out when I get to a server that doesn't have the remapping.
Lotus Notes (Score:2)
tabbing between fields is a problem area (Score:2)
I won't even delve into the horror that is non-standard gui/keyboard implementations in flash interfaces.
Next week... (Score:2)
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No keyboard, just mouse.
The original Macintosh could be usefully run that way.
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Except when it came to entering text. Yes, it's possible. No, I would never, ever want to enter anything other than a few words in that manner. Certainly nothing like a 10,000 word paper, which can easily be done without touching a mouse, ever, at least on my computers.
No Monitor Next Week (Score:2)
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You actually use a wysiwyg editor for posting comments, and not <b>bold</b> tags? I don't use a Mac, so clearly my keyboard shortcuts are faster.
Re:Windows? (Score:5, Interesting)
Windows is FAR better than Linux in the run-the-GUI-with-keyboard-only department. Sure, Linux has a better console environment, but these keyboard jockeys utterly failed at keyboard jockeying their graphical programs.
I liked the Amiga's solution: Holding down one of the Amiga keyboard buttons turned the cursor keys into a virtual mouse, with Enter or Space or something representing the mouse buttons. A very simple solution when some program didn't have a keyboard shortcut and it wasn't worth grabbing the rodent.
Re:Windows? (Score:5, Informative)
I liked the Amiga's solution: Holding down one of the Amiga keyboard buttons turned the cursor keys into a virtual mouse.
In Linux you can press SHIFT + NUMLOCK.
This toggles numpad-keys-as-virtual-mouse behaviour.
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My new laptop has no NUMLOCK key, you insensitive clod!
Yes, seriously. Weird, eh?
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Re:Windows? (Score:4, Informative)
Who still wants a keyboard with a numpad?
Every scientist, engineer, businessperson, or individual who thinks quantitatively and likes to do math in real life.
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> Every scientist, engineer, businessperson, or individual who thinks quantitatively and likes to do math in real life.
I am not sure if by inference this would include network administrators... but in any case, managing routing rules without a numpad would be insane (and possibly unhealthy)
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Well said! And if we are at keys we need - I'll never buy a keyboard without the INS/Delete HOME/END PageUp/PageDown keys.
Probably I'm too fucking old - but I love my Ctrl/Shift+Insert and can't stand ctrl+x/c/v.
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Hey man, thanks for tossing out the Model-M I bought for $5 at a junk store (and thanks to the proprietor who didn't know what he had and just stacked it with the rest of the $5 keyboards).
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HMM? almost every linux program has extensive keybindings, and there are a few "use keys to move the mouse pointer" programs around.
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It turns out that the blind who use both Windows and Linux extensively don't use the mouse at all. Linux has an awesome screen reader, Orca, which currently only works with Gnome (sorry KDE - but maybe soon?). It works, but basic crap like the GTK calendar control and icons in tables are not accessible at all, not due to Orca, but due to lack of caring about accessibility across the Gnome groups, especially the GTK+ team. Windows wins (sorry Linux). This is because that great evil man Bill Gates actuall
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I liked the Amiga's solution: Holding down one of the Amiga keyboard buttons turned the cursor keys into a virtual mouse
You can do the same in X, with shift-numlock. Recent versions will require an xorg.conf option [archlinux.org] to enable it however.
BTW, what's with X.org shipping broken by default these days? You have to add options to enable basic functionality like mousekeys or ctrl-alt-backspace. Lame.
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"Windows is FAR better than Linux in the run-the-GUI-with-keyboard-only department."
That MAY have been true early on but it simply isn't any more. I frankly don't see much of a difference feature-wise between Windows, MacOS, or Linux. Gnome and KDE have all the KB features Windows does. Also given the fact that you can re-map the entire keyboard in all three OS's the differences aren't really all that different. It simply isn't significant to point out the differences between the 3 platforms anymore.
Keyboard shortcuts for mice in many places (Score:2)
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Windows is FAR better than Linux
WARNING: Trigger phrase detected. Ninja assassins dispatched.
Re:Windows? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Windows is actually mostly OK w/o mouse. Most MSFT applications are quite keyboard friendly. Ditto Mac OS X. The OSs give impression that they were at least somehow tested for the occasional mouse failure. (Safari with keyboard only is very functional.)
Can't say the same for the modern Linuxes, Ubuntu 11.04 in particular (IIRC previous versions, based on GNOME 2.x are not better). Recently my trackball dyed and I had to get around with only keyboard. It was abysmal. Essentially, it went like Alt-F2, xte
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But I thought Ubuntu was supposed to be the most accessible of the Linux distributions!
(Note for the humor-impaired: Yes, it's a pun.)
(Note for the those that have a well-developed sense of humor: No, it's not a very good pun.)
(And a note from me, the pedant: Pure, raw, actual Linux doesn't have any sort of user interface at all!, except for pe
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OSX ?
How does one access the menu items without a mouse in OSX? Genuinely asking... on windows you press alt, and then you can navigate the menu system with the arrows. I'm pretty sure that doesn't work on the mac.
And I know I've hit thousands of OSX dialog boxes that won't let you tab between the buttons or controls. (especially radio buttons and checkboxes...) My mac's not in arms reach or I'd fool around and find some examples...
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System Preferences .... > Keyboard > Keyboard shortcuts.
You can choose to move focus to the menu bar, dock, cycle through window focus, focus on the tool bar, next window in the application, status menu (the right part of the menu bar). Also lets you change tab settings at the bottom. If it's a menu option in an app, you can assign a key to it.
Should look like this [imageshack.us]
Also in dialog boxes: A "Command-$$" will select the dialog entry starting with $$ letter.
Say the save dialog box shows up:
"Save" "Don't S
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You must not have full keyboard navigation turned on.
Control-F7, or turn it on in the System Preferences pane.
Then you can keyboard navigate virtually everything.
Someone else mentioned the default key for keyboard navigating the menubar, but I have mine customized (also in the Keyboard pref)... since I have the control key where it belongs ("Apple Keyboard" with an ADBUSB converter), it makes things easier to type. ^1 goes to the menubar, ^2 goes to the Dock, ^4 goes to the window toolbar.. I have a few mo
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Specifically, for either the Menubar or the Dock, you hit the hotkey, then use arrows or type-selection to navigate to specific items, and space to 'hit' the currently selected item.
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Thanks for the information.
I wonder why on earth is that not on by default?
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Perhaps using OSX without a mouse is considered "doing it the wrong way"?
Well, that excuse worked last time ...
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I think because some people are "confused" by the focus ring.
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try pmount for umounting next time
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It appears that Ctrl-Alt-D was the shortcut I was missing. In Windows 7 I too do not know how to get to the desktop with keyboard shortcuts (in Win XP IIRC it was Win, Esc, Tab; hm something similar works in W7 too), but raw window of Explorer is sufficient (where from you can navigate e.g. to computer management).
Otherwise, Linux, or X Window System, is probably the most keyboard unfriendly environment I have ever encountered. KDE 3.x in my past experience was OK (they mimic Windows a lot, also in keyb
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Yes, and thank goodness for the keyboard shortcuts. When MSFT made all of their applications with the "Windows 7" look, they managed to add an extra mouse click to everything you want to do, and also managed to hide most of the common features that you might use in Word or Excel. Fortunately, the keyboard shortcuts are still the same.
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Essentially, it went like Alt-F2, xterm, sync, etc, shutdown -h how.
Um, how do you shut down? :)
Seriously, though, Microsoft seems to be losing it lately; I have two examples.
First, the scroll wheel often doesn't work in some of the Management Console applets. That's a huge usability fail. (Even though I prefer not to use the mouse.)
The second is that in recent OS and Office, there are more than one accelerator with the same key, requiring the user to hit <key>, then Enter, in order to complete an action that previously required just <key>. This cuts user pro
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Exactly my thought and most webpages can use some work on that.
Maybe even browsers.
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Using the magic trackpad with OS X is awesome for most work, especially any browsing since scrolling is so much better than with a wheel. The only thing I dislike is that the web hasn't caught up to gestures yet.
Funny thing, though, the only mouse I have is a gaming mouse because regular mice don't feel at all comfortable.
Firefox + gestures + OS X (Score:3)
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=737074 [macrumors.com]
There are assignable gestures hidden in about:config, and browsing is so much better once you find some customized combinations that you like. Here are the ones that I have altered and find helpful:
Swipe down: new tab
Swipe up: go home
Pinch in: close tab
Pinch out: toggle between full
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Naturally (Score:2)
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On the other hand, OSX is atrociously tied to the mouse.
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No it's not.. In fact, I'll say that it's quite the opposite. It helps to know the shortcuts, but I get to do lots without touching the mouse.. some of hte most important shortcuts are:
- cmd-space (opens spotlight) Spotlight can be used as an application luncher and/or find specific files
- cmd-q (quit current program)
- cmd-w (close current window)
- while typing, pretty much if not almost all the applications allow for a few of the emacs shortcut
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When Microsoft started Windows, that was also true. There were rules for how to
do GUI stuff and if you implemented that "GUI stuff" you also had to implement
the keyboard version of the navigations.
Are you kidding me? Things like, oh for example the Ribbon interface in Office 2010 make using just a keyboard even EASIER. EVERYTHING is accessible by keyboard, with key combinations that could be memorized, as opposed to having to navigate menus with the keyboard for anything where there wasn't an assigned keyboard shortcut.
Except you didn't read the above comment, and responded as if you thought it said the exact opposite of what it actually says... Originally, *everything* had an ALT+Key combination... The magic ribbon didn't actually change anything, it just utilized the previously arranged instruction set. In other words, there was no "navigating menus" once you understood the keyboard combinations. The magic ribbon just changed the "look and feel" of the interface, and alienated anyone who had gotten used to the old way o
Hiho Mousketeers!! (Score:2)
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Well allocating the whole alphabet would be dumb I think. A good keyboard interface would not do "Windows+letter" combos, they'd have different combos, some longer keystrokes for more options, a key vastly easier to hit than Windows or Command, etc.
The "Windows+letter" combo is only used for menu shortcuts from all I've seen. And that's where the design fails. They start with the GUI menu _first_ and then map hotkeys to that so that the result is something clumsy.
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