7 ms·

90% of People Don't Know How to Use Ctrl+F (2011)

69 points by csense 11y ago

csense 11y ago
Found this while reading https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10319643 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10319643
- MrBra 11y ago
  -1 interesting but wrong place here
_jomo 11y ago
It actually 'hurts' watching people wasting their time with awkwardly slow things on their computers. I keep telling people to use the Home/End keys to jump around in a line, to just hold down Shift for selecting text, pressing Alt to jump/select/delete a whole word, etc. I'm not sure if the average HN reader is aware of these tricks, but a bunch of developers I've met were not until I told them. I can't watch people clicking the new tab icon, clicking in their URL bar, enter the site name and then switch back to the old site to keep on reading. All it takes is a simple Cmd+L, URL, Cmd+Enter. Same with clicking links. If you only use your browser twice a day, you probably wouldn't care, but a lot of "tech-savvy" people don't actually have basic skills in using a computer. This is something I hate about today's tech being 'beginner-friendly'. You don't need to know anything about it to use it. I grew up with this, but I still wish people were forced to sit down and learn some basics about Computers, at least how to properly use them, before they could actually use them.
- glomph 11y ago
  You don't reach for cmd+t by default? I use cmd+t then down arrow then enter.
  - _jomo 11y ago
    Nope, you can open the URL in a new tab by pressing Alt+Enter, so why open a new tab first? (Actually my default action in Firefox is to open a new tab from the URL bar, I use Alt to open in current tab) What is the down arrow supposed to do to the empty URL bar, though?
    - garrettgrimsley 11y ago
      How exactly are you doing this? I just did CMD+L and it focuses the URL bar as expected, but after typing out a URL and hitting CMD + Enter it opens the URL in the current tab. Option + Enter opens the URL in a new tab, but it also switches focus to that new tab.
      - yawaramin 11y ago
        Pressing Cmd-L, typing the URL then pressing Option-Enter is the equivalent of pressing Cmd-T then typing the URL and pressing Enter.
        garrettgrimsley 11y ago
        Edit: Tested and works in Google Chrome and Safari Browser. Yes but the parent comment said that they can open a URL in a new tab without automatically changing focus to that tab. This can be useful when you want to check something after you are finished on the current tab. Unfortunately it does not work as described. CTRL + T, type URL, then CTRL + Shift + Tab will open a new tab and then return to the previous tab.
    - glomph 11y ago
      I meant that I type enough of what I want to open for it to be the first suggestion. The result is that I only do one chord though which feels easier to me. I guess it is about the same though.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  I used to think the same until I used Plan 9 with its rio windowing system and Acme editor revolving heavily around mouse chording. I no longer hold prejudices for preferring cursor movements over keyboard shortcuts, unless it's obviously more inefficient as opposed to more of a subjective grayness. In fact, it's quite tragic how the mouse is somehow seen as a "luser" tool, in favor of keyboard manipulation-driven interfaces being seen as more elite. No one writes mouse-driven interfaces for programmers anymore, which is a sad waste. By the way, none of this is basic computer skills. It's purely arbitrary UI convention and nothing more. Someone decided to bind certain key combinations to reflect a particular semantic action, but it is by no means fiat in the slightest. You're confused.
  - lqdc13 11y ago
    I agree, and I think GUIs make people more productive. In windows land, people tend to use tools that have GUIs. So everyone uses their mouse.
    - tluyben2 11y ago
      GUI interaction is more intuitive and thus easier to learn (children learning tablet use without previous instruction for instance) so yes everyone uses their mouse as they do not know better. Most experienced users use either a mix or only keyboard. For things like coding or writing books and papers (and many other uses; I believe it to be the case for most common uses of Photoshop as well); I dare you any day of tĥe week in a contest where you use only GUI without keyboard shortcuts and me on only keyboard for coding and see who is more productive. I think we can calculate from what mouse movements you need it is probably not physically possible for you to win that. Not that that says all as for the general population GUIs feel more productive compared to the effort you need to actually learn to beat that 'natural' productivity they got from nature.
      - lqdc13 11y ago
        http://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html http://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html VVV quote from the link VVV We’ve done a cool $50 million of R & D on the Apple Human Interface. We discovered, among other things, two pertinent facts: * Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than mousing. * The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than keyboarding.
- roghummal 11y ago
  It actually 'hurts' watching someone 'hurt' watching people not use the shortcuts that person knows.
- lqdc13 11y ago
  Regarding browser shortcuts: As long as they're fast with it, who cares? I've seen people use their mouse for everything and do things a lot quicker than others who knew the hotkeys. In my case, I would say I'm fast with computers and I sort of know the hotkeys, but I use 3 different OSs and two different browsers on each. Each browser has different hotkeys. Now add to that 3 different keyboards with different layouts. All of these things overlap in your head. Instead, I installed a mouse gestures addon on each of my browsers and it works much better. Mouse gestures don't depend on keyboard layouts or browser/OS quirks. I think the worst part is actually getting people to use your site correctly. People usually have no idea how URLs work especially for sites that have different URLs for when you are logged in and when you aren't. They also don't know how to use link share and how to figure out which things are clickable and which aren't.
- mhartl 11y ago
  I agree completely. I'm currently working on a text editor tutorial [1], and one element I emphasize is learning how to use keyboard shortcuts. Future tutorials [2] will cover shortcuts for browsers and other apps as well. Cmd+L, URL, Cmd+Enter This trick doesn't work in Firefox, so I prefer Cmd-T Cmd-L URL Enter, which works in basically all browsers. But the point remains the same: these little productivity hacks add up, and after a while it's hard to imagine doing without them. [1]: Learn Enough™ Text Editor to Be Dangerous, http://learnenough.com/text-editor http://learnenough.com/text-editor [2]: Learn Enough™ to Be Dangerous, http://learnenough.com/ http://learnenough.com/
  - seanp2k2 11y ago
    Don't forget the quick "convert the thing in your clipboard to plaintext so gmail won't paste it in that dumb font" of ^t ^v ^l ^c ^w ^v :)
  - newscracker 11y ago
    > Cmd+L, URL, Cmd+Enter > This trick doesn't work in Firefox, so I prefer Cmd-T Cmd-L URL Enter I didn't understand what doesn't work in Firefox in your example. I use keyboard shortcuts while entering URLs and Firefox has the widest support to fill domain suffixes. Cmd/Ctrl+L takes you to the address bar. Type "domain" and then Cmd/Ctrl+Enter to visit www.domain.com, Shift+Enter to visit www.domain.net, Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+Enter to visit www.domain.org. AFAIK, the original Ctrl+Enter for www.domain.com was from IE, but I haven't seen IE or Chrome support these additional combinations out of the box.
    - mhartl 11y ago
      In Chrome or Safari, typing the URL and hitting Cmd-Enter opens the site in a new tab in the background, allowing you to keep reading the tab you're in. This is why _jomo mentioned "then switch back to the old site to keep on reading," which you don't have to do if you use the Cmd-Enter trick. But that trick doesn't work in Firefox.
      - newscracker 11y ago
- Too 11y ago
  The problem comes later when the current generation of programmers starts creating interfaces of their own without all the keyboard shortcuts because they never grew up using any. Windows 10 is already showing signs of this, in previous windows versions hotkeys were everywhere, they made sense, and they were even easy to discover if you turn on the "underline hotkey" option. In windows 10 even basic shortcuts such as alt+left to go back is missing in most apps, some apps accept backspace but others don't, moving around menus with the keyboard arrows works some times and some times not, tab order totally doesn't make sense and it just shines through that nobody in Microsoft even thought of trying the apps with keyboard only. Just because something can be used with a mouse doesn't mean you have to, i frequently hear people saying that they use the terminal instead of explorer because they don't like the mouse. Well, explorer is one of the most keyboard friendly programs ever once you take some time to learn it. In a folder, just type half the foldername and then enter and you are in, alt+d to go to navigation bar. Alt+up to go up one folder is 2 keys instead of 5 for cd[space]..[enter]. Ctrl+x/c/v instead of cp or whatever, "right clicking" can be done with that weird button between alt+gr and ctrl on the right side of your keyboard, in that menu each line has an assigned button which will be underlined. There are many more tricks and I can't list all of them here, i just strongly encourage people to try using it without using the mouse, you will find out there is not a single action that requires it.
  - Theodores 11y ago
    Here is the history lesson you have been looking for... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access#Influence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access#Influen... IBM were the people that got the function keys and short cuts right, that filtered through with their early work with Microsoft for Windows back in the day. There is some saying about those that don't know their history repeating mistakes that has happened with the situation you describe.
  - mkup 11y ago
    Well, using the terminal instead of explorer in Windows because people don't like the mouse is quite extreme, but using the Far Manager for the same reason is more common, at least in my environment.
  - 11y ago
- newscracker 11y ago
  We're definitely lacking in basic keyboard shortcuts training for people. That ought to be the first class someone takes when learning to use computers. While the mouse and trackpad have their advantages and uses (especially with gestures), there are many cases where the keyboard is significantly faster and saves a lot of time. I see people not even being aware of the shortcut to save something (Cmd/Ctrl+S) and navigating slowly to click the Save icon (and similarly for New, Open, etc.). There are several more examples of basic navigation using Arrow, Home, End, Pg Up, Pg Down and their combinations with Shift or Ctrl that people are not aware of. The most painful one is watching someone work with MS Excel using the mouse for almost everything - one of the best productivity tools used in a very inefficient manner. I also see people being resistant to learning some of these shortcuts when explained to them. That's a big bummer. :( To me personally, it doesn't help that Libre Office Calc has its own set of shortcuts that are different from MS Excel (for example, inserting a line break in a cell can't be done with Alt+Enter like in Excel but instead with Ctrl+Enter). This causes friction when moving between applications and operating systems. You'd think application developers would support people's habits from popular applications and make things easier.
  - cm2187 11y ago
    To me it is less about training than discoverability. If you expect my mum to register for a classroom training or go to a training website you can wait a long time. But she is the typical user who needs to get into keyboard shortcuts
- dasboth 11y ago
  Not knowing/using keyboard shortcuts is one of the banes of developer productivity. Using the mouse to right-click, copy, right-click, paste is bad enough when a "standard" user does it but for a developer it's painful.
  - ianamartin 11y ago
    Agreed. It's nuts to me when I see a fellow developer manually scanning code instead of searching. Then slooooooowly selecting text with the mouse, grabbing an extra letter or two, going back, not getting quite enough, going back again, then right clicking and scanning the context menu for copy, then scrolling to paste and . . . you get the idea. If I'm ever in a situation to be in charge of a hire, part of the interview is going to watch them work on something to see if they are using at least some reasonable shortcuts. Don't have to be a VIM power user, but cut, copy, paste, home, end are a bare minimum in my opinion.
- tragic 11y ago
  I remember going to a user testing session, and marvelling at people (and it was a clear majority of the 10 or so people we tested with) scrolling the long web page by moving their mouse pointer over to the scroll bar (and it was a huge monitor, so that was a long way), clicking and dragging up and down. I had just gotten so used to, well, every other way of scrolling (mousewheel, trackpad, arrow keys, page up/down...) that I'd almost forgotten that scroll bar existed. I guess there's not much we can do about that: scrollbars are at the mercy of OS and browser vendors really.
- WorldWideWayne 11y ago
  That's Ctrl+T, URL, Enter for most desktop computer users. I imagine that the weird, inconsistent, hard to decipher and ultimately confusing symbols that Apple chooses to display for some reason don't help people that are forced to use OS X. I bet that most people don't know about all of the secret handshakes in iOS either, like the four finger pinch to show running tasks and switch between them.
simonblack 11y ago
They don't know how to move the cursor one word to the right? Very strange.
monopolemagnet 11y ago
Or hold Command (⌘) if they have a Mac and KeyCue. (It uses the accessibility information for the visually-impaired to construct an exhaustive list of every possible key-binding in the current application context. Another example of many of designing for accessibility paying dividends for beneficial, unintended uses.) Screenshot: http://content.screencast.com/users/xzxzxzxx/folders/Jing/media/2f5cc0b3-fe0d-44fe-8af1-744272f67ce6/00000024.png http://content.screencast.com/users/xzxzxzxx/folders/Jing/me... KeyCue: http://www.ergonis.com/products/keycue/ http://www.ergonis.com/products/keycue/
- lloydde 11y ago
  http://www.mediaatelier.com/CheatSheet/ http://www.mediaatelier.com/CheatSheet/ is a free alternative on the Mac to KeyCue.
  - monopolemagnet 11y ago
    It's the same principle, I tried it. KeyCue lets you perform the action by interacting with the semi-transparent HUD and has themes to make adjustments. 20 € is crazy high for modern app pricing, definitely not at an optimal supply-demand point. Here's the zillions of options, which vary widely in usefulness: http://content.screencast.com/users/xzxzxzxx/folders/Jing/media/6cf70550-7113-44f0-b8ce-ce30081790be/00000025.png http://content.screencast.com/users/xzxzxzxx/folders/Jing/me... http://content.screencast.com/users/xzxzxzxx/folders/Jing/media/83aa36d6-94b2-4166-a07a-8638a9181771/00000026.png http://content.screencast.com/users/xzxzxzxx/folders/Jing/me... http://content.screencast.com/users/xzxzxzxx/folders/Jing/media/3b5c6396-bee8-4f5c-8baf-8890d93bf964/00000027.png http://content.screencast.com/users/xzxzxzxx/folders/Jing/me... http://content.screencast.com/users/xzxzxzxx/folders/Jing/media/7bcf1dec-e06f-49ce-b9d7-a085abf3fa49/00000028.png http://content.screencast.com/users/xzxzxzxx/folders/Jing/me... Plus, you're buying support and sustainability (unless someone were to torrent it, which risks malware and reduces support & sustainability). Cheat is very limited. It won't show modifier-only keys as KeyCue does, and it won't even let me take a screenshot of it (because that involves Shift). Minimal and free, or expensive, pretty with features: pick one. ;)
Animats 11y ago
So where is it documented? There was a time when F1 meant "Help". Some keyboards even had "Help" on the keytop.
- monopolemagnet 11y ago
  A designer failed if help is needed. usually holds for relatively-straightforward apps and real-world designs. The issue where clear, succinct documentation is needed is complicated, enterprise applications which have expert interfaces.
  - exDM69 11y ago
    I strongly disagree with the idea that computer programs should be designed so that no "help" is required. It only works in the simplest of applications. In my opinion, a bigger issue is that most "help" dialogs are so badly written that they are pretty much useless. They are too often written by a developer who doesn't have a clear understanding of the typical use cases. When was the last time you found anything useful behind the F1 key? I see the effects of this in freshmen and newbie developers who don't ever look at the manuals or documentation because they are used to it being non-existent or unhelpful. I hate to be saying RTFM, but I have to because reading the docs is a useful skill, unlike memorizing how a certain tool works.
- mozumder 11y ago
  Sun Sparc keyboards were useful here, with a bunch of additional separate keys on the left for Find, Cut, Copy Paste, Help, Open, etc..
  - makecheck 11y ago
    Heh. Back when I had to use a Sun keyboard for years at a time, I physically removed the giant Help key because it was right next to Escape and I kept hitting it by accident. Each accidental Help would introduce an obnoxious pause as the system launched some help window that stole my focus on top of it all.
chjohasbrouck 11y ago
I think searching for things on the internet should be taught as a core competency, like reading, writing, and arithmetic. I feel like way too much of formal education is focused on memorization. Especially now that we have this ubiquitous searchable memory called The Internet, this time should really be spent teaching kids and young adults how to actually do things. But education focused on developing skills has its roots in trade schools, where kids with bad grades were sent to learn how to retread tires. That precedent makes skill-driven education a tough sell to parents. But I think technology has advanced to the point where skill development is the way to go. There's also resistance from academics who believe distilling university down to a way to attain job market viability somehow cheapens academia; that academics should at least to some degree be academics purely for the sake of academics. But I really believe that if someone has internet access and can wield it well, knowing things is a problem that will solve itself over the course of that individual's life. So why don't we just get on with actually doing things? That's the part of education that benefits most from instruction and traditional academic social structures anyway.
- Theodores 11y ago
  I think that there is a problem with the 'three 'R's' not being taught properly. I am shocked to find people hired to write copy for the internet and lacking basic standards of literacy. Product copy, newsletters, blog posts for 'social media' and that sort of stuff requires some ability to spell, the sort of ability that most people on this site had when they were aged 11. There are also those that 'learned' to write with Microsoft applications that capitalise the first letter of a sentence. When these people are allowed to use something like Wordpress that does not have this magic, what happens? All notion of punctuation goes out of the window and they do not care. They really don't and little things like spelling and grammar shows that, plus if challenged they state that it does not matter as there are more important things - as if!!! IMHO the 90% that cannot use CTRL+F cannot spell or use punctuation. They have the reading age of a small child.
yawaramin 11y ago
I've noticed something else about less-computer-savvy folks. They have a harder time finding items at various locations on the screen by name. If I tell someone to click on e.g. the 'Tools' menu item, they'll spend a lot of time focusing on different parts of the screen trying to find it. They don't seem to be taking in the 'entire' screen at once and pinpointing all the visible words.
- zarify 11y ago
  Well, my idea about this is actually that we're so used to our eyes going to the top of the screen when we hear the word "menu" and regular people don't have the same associations. I think if I went to a platform that followed a different design paradigm than I was used it, I'd have my eyes roaming all over the screen as well.
  - yawaramin 11y ago
    Maybe ... but my point was that even when searching for an arbitrary word on the screen, I notice that I'm significantly faster than a non-savvy user. E.g. if I'm on a call with a support desk and they're walking me through some steps on their website, I find I can easily 'take in' the entire screen and focus on that one word they want me to click on. Of course, I know a website is a bad example here, given that I could've just pressed Ctrl-F, but the idea holds for other complex non-searchable UIs too.
MarkMc 11y ago
It will be revolutionary when users can just say: "Siri, search this document for ..."
- ianamartin 11y ago
  Really? Because personally, I don't want to be sitting in a room full of developers all talking to Siri all at once. That sounds pretty insane to me.
MrBra 11y ago
I told em so many times. They will just not care using it. The difference is in the approach. First time we used the search in page, we went there expecting to find such a feature. Until they find themselves asking "what the hell, isn't there a way to search in a page?" they won't use and remember it. I think that's caused by the already high level of distress the average user is feeling when using a computer to browse anything else than Facebook. If I remember good how it was for me, they would go like "ok now I'm doing this, browsing this new webpage and I got so many things to remember already, the site name, how I got here, will I find it again, ...", "do you know that you can search a page with this key combination?? Stop! That's just too much! I will learn about it when I finally arrive at level 2 of my progress on using computers."
- nulbyte 11y ago
  I think this is partly the case, coupled with a general assumption that computers are magic. What is really fascinating is to listen to someone work out a very complex logic problem verbally, then have no idea how to fix it because the computer is "too difficult." I wonder what would happen if I answered every question with "Press F1."
atroyn 11y ago
Many people now access the web from touch devices most of the time. I've often been frustrated by the lack of access to keyboard shortcuts in mobile browsers/mobile apps, but perhaps that's what a lot of people are habituated to?
finalight 11y ago
it's okay, i don't even know how to find text on iphone safari
roghummal 11y ago
90% of people using a computer right now do so because the computer provides something they want and what they want can be achieved with the mouse/touchscreen, at a reasonable rate for them. Click this. Swipe that. Tap out a facebook/twitter post. Gratuitous use of autocorrect. These are the reality of that 90%. Don't let your impatience lead you to treat these people poorly. Let them learn by example. If you're sure they'll see the value in a shortcut then go for it but back the fuck off if they don't respond well.
- dingaling 11y ago
  > Gratuitous use of autocorrect. Or the one that drives me crazy; the user sees a squggly-line under a word early in the sentence they have just typed. To back-up to correct it they use backspace to erase the entire sentence back to that word, correct it and then re-type everything again, laboriously slowly. I have to rise from my seat and look out the window whilst they do so.
sandGorgon 11y ago
On the same topic, lack of a uniform cut-copy-paste mechanism in Linux makes me jealous of the Mac people every single day. On a Mac, you can use Cmd-C to copy from vim and paste into Firefox or your shell/terminal. Try doing the same thing in Linux (even with the IBM CUA [1] approved Ctrl-Insert and Shift-Insert) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access
- roghummal 11y ago
  Middle mouse button? I only have to deviate to ^C, ^V when the applications are... not really native. I just pasted this comment from vim to chromium this way. * Doesn't cover cut-copy-paste, just copy-paste.
  - sandGorgon 11y ago
    ahh... the good old days of three button touchpads on laptops. How I miss them :(
    - hyperion2010 11y ago
      You should be able to bind three fingers to middle click on any modern touchpad.
      - sandGorgon 11y ago
        well my 2-year old thinkpad does not recognize 3 finger touch. I would much rather have a uniform cut-copy-paste command rather than wait for some funky hardware support .. or upgrade. If there was some magical way to get gnome-terminal, vim and firefox/chrome honor a universal cut-copy-paste shortcut... then I'm golden. This is more of a political than a technical problem. Yes, I know I can remap keys in firefox, in gnome-terminal and browsers. But then they dont work in skype.. or something else. I would pay good money if there was a kickstarter around this.
- makecheck 11y ago
athrowaway27 11y ago
I used to work with a guy who got way in over his head as a result of being buddy buddy with the boss. He inherrited packaging of applications from another guy who saw the writing on the wall and noped his way out of the company... This guy would google how to do each step in packaging an application, each time he had to do it or modify an existing package, and would often manually scan 100s of lines of scripts looking for a particular keyword, and still to this day does it, even though i would bring up use of ctrl+f every single time he would ask me for help, litterally hundreds of times. I got to the point where i would tell him to let me know when he found the line he was looking for and then i would walk back to my desk, it never failed that 10 minutes later he would text me ok, i found it. After walking back to his desk and helping him, he would move on to the next step, google what he needed to change, and then try to prevent me from going back to my desk while he spent another 10 minutes scanning lines of text to find the keyword he was looking for... to this day, i bet he is still not using ctrl+f.... sickening that someone can get away with that in IT.
rcthompson 11y ago
In a similar vein, one of my coworkers, who is a programmer, almost never uses the shift key. If he needs a capital letter, he just turns on caps lock, then types the letter, then turns caps lock back off. I assume he must still use shift to type things like curly braces and dollar signs, but he's so slow an error prone from using caps lock so much (he sometimes leaves it on by accident and then types half a line before realizing it's in all caps and deleting it.
SixSigma 11y ago
And, of course, by Ctrl-F you mean pressing F3 oh, TMTOWTDI which is part of the problem. Users don't even consider "I spend so much time doing this, there must be a better way". Coupled with the "I don't read manuals" attitude dooms people. So systems are designed for people to get away with zero effort. And from that we end up with baby toys instead of the best tools.
tragomaskhalos 11y ago
Ctrl-F in Outlook wants to forward your message - that's f@cking annoying. Slightly related: I'm a long way from being a vi guru, but even so it's possible to astound people who only know the basic commands; I remember using 'xp' to swap two chars over that completely blew someone away, had to explain that it wasn't in fact some secret incantation
wodenokoto 11y ago
Is that a lot or a few? I'm serious, do we expect most people to know this?
parenthesis 11y ago
When I read the headline, I couldn't for the life of me remember what Ctrl+F does — because I use it without thinking! Since remembering the hand movement, I've almost forgotten the description.
makecheck 11y ago
While certain commands are clearly good to learn, it does require consistency across applications. One or two offenders, especially high-profile ones (Outlook!), can screw it all up. If a user does start exploring short-cuts and keeps being "burned" by unexpected behaviors, they will un-learn those short-cuts because they just aren't useful.
sullyj3 11y ago
I was tempted to ask which keyboard shortcuts I should know about, but it's difficult to free recall all the ones I know, let alone list them concisely.

69 points by csense 11y ago

csense 11y ago

Found this while reading https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10319643 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10319643

MrBra 11y ago
-1 interesting but wrong place here

_jomo 11y ago

It actually 'hurts' watching people wasting their time with awkwardly slow things on their computers. I keep telling people to use the Home/End keys to jump around in a line, to just hold down Shift for selecting text, pressing Alt to jump/select/delete a whole word, etc. I'm not sure if the average HN reader is aware of these tricks, but a bunch of developers I've met were not until I told them. I can't watch people clicking the new tab icon, clicking in their URL bar, enter the site name and then switch back to the old site to keep on reading. All it takes is a simple Cmd+L, URL, Cmd+Enter. Same with clicking links. If you only use your browser twice a day, you probably wouldn't care, but a lot of "tech-savvy" people don't actually have basic skills in using a computer. This is something I hate about today's tech being 'beginner-friendly'. You don't need to know anything about it to use it. I grew up with this, but I still wish people were forced to sit down and learn some basics about Computers, at least how to properly use them, before they could actually use them.

glomph 11y ago
You don't reach for cmd+t by default? I use cmd+t then down arrow then enter.
- _jomo 11y ago
  Nope, you can open the URL in a new tab by pressing Alt+Enter, so why open a new tab first? (Actually my default action in Firefox is to open a new tab from the URL bar, I use Alt to open in current tab) What is the down arrow supposed to do to the empty URL bar, though?
  - garrettgrimsley 11y ago
    How exactly are you doing this? I just did CMD+L and it focuses the URL bar as expected, but after typing out a URL and hitting CMD + Enter it opens the URL in the current tab. Option + Enter opens the URL in a new tab, but it also switches focus to that new tab.
    - yawaramin 11y ago
      Pressing Cmd-L, typing the URL then pressing Option-Enter is the equivalent of pressing Cmd-T then typing the URL and pressing Enter.
      - garrettgrimsley 11y ago
        Edit: Tested and works in Google Chrome and Safari Browser. Yes but the parent comment said that they can open a URL in a new tab without automatically changing focus to that tab. This can be useful when you want to check something after you are finished on the current tab. Unfortunately it does not work as described. CTRL + T, type URL, then CTRL + Shift + Tab will open a new tab and then return to the previous tab.
  - glomph 11y ago
    I meant that I type enough of what I want to open for it to be the first suggestion. The result is that I only do one chord though which feels easier to me. I guess it is about the same though.
vezzy-fnord 11y ago
I used to think the same until I used Plan 9 with its rio windowing system and Acme editor revolving heavily around mouse chording. I no longer hold prejudices for preferring cursor movements over keyboard shortcuts, unless it's obviously more inefficient as opposed to more of a subjective grayness. In fact, it's quite tragic how the mouse is somehow seen as a "luser" tool, in favor of keyboard manipulation-driven interfaces being seen as more elite. No one writes mouse-driven interfaces for programmers anymore, which is a sad waste. By the way, none of this is basic computer skills. It's purely arbitrary UI convention and nothing more. Someone decided to bind certain key combinations to reflect a particular semantic action, but it is by no means fiat in the slightest. You're confused.
- lqdc13 11y ago
  I agree, and I think GUIs make people more productive. In windows land, people tend to use tools that have GUIs. So everyone uses their mouse.
  - tluyben2 11y ago
    GUI interaction is more intuitive and thus easier to learn (children learning tablet use without previous instruction for instance) so yes everyone uses their mouse as they do not know better. Most experienced users use either a mix or only keyboard. For things like coding or writing books and papers (and many other uses; I believe it to be the case for most common uses of Photoshop as well); I dare you any day of tĥe week in a contest where you use only GUI without keyboard shortcuts and me on only keyboard for coding and see who is more productive. I think we can calculate from what mouse movements you need it is probably not physically possible for you to win that. Not that that says all as for the general population GUIs feel more productive compared to the effort you need to actually learn to beat that 'natural' productivity they got from nature.
    - lqdc13 11y ago
      http://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html http://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html VVV quote from the link VVV We’ve done a cool $50 million of R & D on the Apple Human Interface. We discovered, among other things, two pertinent facts: * Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than mousing. * The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than keyboarding.
roghummal 11y ago
It actually 'hurts' watching someone 'hurt' watching people not use the shortcuts that person knows.
lqdc13 11y ago
Regarding browser shortcuts: As long as they're fast with it, who cares? I've seen people use their mouse for everything and do things a lot quicker than others who knew the hotkeys. In my case, I would say I'm fast with computers and I sort of know the hotkeys, but I use 3 different OSs and two different browsers on each. Each browser has different hotkeys. Now add to that 3 different keyboards with different layouts. All of these things overlap in your head. Instead, I installed a mouse gestures addon on each of my browsers and it works much better. Mouse gestures don't depend on keyboard layouts or browser/OS quirks. I think the worst part is actually getting people to use your site correctly. People usually have no idea how URLs work especially for sites that have different URLs for when you are logged in and when you aren't. They also don't know how to use link share and how to figure out which things are clickable and which aren't.
mhartl 11y ago
I agree completely. I'm currently working on a text editor tutorial [1], and one element I emphasize is learning how to use keyboard shortcuts. Future tutorials [2] will cover shortcuts for browsers and other apps as well. Cmd+L, URL, Cmd+Enter This trick doesn't work in Firefox, so I prefer Cmd-T Cmd-L URL Enter, which works in basically all browsers. But the point remains the same: these little productivity hacks add up, and after a while it's hard to imagine doing without them. [1]: Learn Enough™ Text Editor to Be Dangerous, http://learnenough.com/text-editor http://learnenough.com/text-editor [2]: Learn Enough™ to Be Dangerous, http://learnenough.com/ http://learnenough.com/
- seanp2k2 11y ago
  Don't forget the quick "convert the thing in your clipboard to plaintext so gmail won't paste it in that dumb font" of ^t ^v ^l ^c ^w ^v :)
- newscracker 11y ago
  > Cmd+L, URL, Cmd+Enter > This trick doesn't work in Firefox, so I prefer Cmd-T Cmd-L URL Enter I didn't understand what doesn't work in Firefox in your example. I use keyboard shortcuts while entering URLs and Firefox has the widest support to fill domain suffixes. Cmd/Ctrl+L takes you to the address bar. Type "domain" and then Cmd/Ctrl+Enter to visit www.domain.com, Shift+Enter to visit www.domain.net, Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+Enter to visit www.domain.org. AFAIK, the original Ctrl+Enter for www.domain.com was from IE, but I haven't seen IE or Chrome support these additional combinations out of the box.
  - mhartl 11y ago
    In Chrome or Safari, typing the URL and hitting Cmd-Enter opens the site in a new tab in the background, allowing you to keep reading the tab you're in. This is why _jomo mentioned "then switch back to the old site to keep on reading," which you don't have to do if you use the Cmd-Enter trick. But that trick doesn't work in Firefox.
    - newscracker 11y ago
Too 11y ago
The problem comes later when the current generation of programmers starts creating interfaces of their own without all the keyboard shortcuts because they never grew up using any. Windows 10 is already showing signs of this, in previous windows versions hotkeys were everywhere, they made sense, and they were even easy to discover if you turn on the "underline hotkey" option. In windows 10 even basic shortcuts such as alt+left to go back is missing in most apps, some apps accept backspace but others don't, moving around menus with the keyboard arrows works some times and some times not, tab order totally doesn't make sense and it just shines through that nobody in Microsoft even thought of trying the apps with keyboard only. Just because something can be used with a mouse doesn't mean you have to, i frequently hear people saying that they use the terminal instead of explorer because they don't like the mouse. Well, explorer is one of the most keyboard friendly programs ever once you take some time to learn it. In a folder, just type half the foldername and then enter and you are in, alt+d to go to navigation bar. Alt+up to go up one folder is 2 keys instead of 5 for cd[space]..[enter]. Ctrl+x/c/v instead of cp or whatever, "right clicking" can be done with that weird button between alt+gr and ctrl on the right side of your keyboard, in that menu each line has an assigned button which will be underlined. There are many more tricks and I can't list all of them here, i just strongly encourage people to try using it without using the mouse, you will find out there is not a single action that requires it.
- Theodores 11y ago
  Here is the history lesson you have been looking for... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access#Influence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access#Influen... IBM were the people that got the function keys and short cuts right, that filtered through with their early work with Microsoft for Windows back in the day. There is some saying about those that don't know their history repeating mistakes that has happened with the situation you describe.
- mkup 11y ago
  Well, using the terminal instead of explorer in Windows because people don't like the mouse is quite extreme, but using the Far Manager for the same reason is more common, at least in my environment.
- 11y ago
newscracker 11y ago
We're definitely lacking in basic keyboard shortcuts training for people. That ought to be the first class someone takes when learning to use computers. While the mouse and trackpad have their advantages and uses (especially with gestures), there are many cases where the keyboard is significantly faster and saves a lot of time. I see people not even being aware of the shortcut to save something (Cmd/Ctrl+S) and navigating slowly to click the Save icon (and similarly for New, Open, etc.). There are several more examples of basic navigation using Arrow, Home, End, Pg Up, Pg Down and their combinations with Shift or Ctrl that people are not aware of. The most painful one is watching someone work with MS Excel using the mouse for almost everything - one of the best productivity tools used in a very inefficient manner. I also see people being resistant to learning some of these shortcuts when explained to them. That's a big bummer. :( To me personally, it doesn't help that Libre Office Calc has its own set of shortcuts that are different from MS Excel (for example, inserting a line break in a cell can't be done with Alt+Enter like in Excel but instead with Ctrl+Enter). This causes friction when moving between applications and operating systems. You'd think application developers would support people's habits from popular applications and make things easier.
- cm2187 11y ago
  To me it is less about training than discoverability. If you expect my mum to register for a classroom training or go to a training website you can wait a long time. But she is the typical user who needs to get into keyboard shortcuts
dasboth 11y ago
Not knowing/using keyboard shortcuts is one of the banes of developer productivity. Using the mouse to right-click, copy, right-click, paste is bad enough when a "standard" user does it but for a developer it's painful.
- ianamartin 11y ago
  Agreed. It's nuts to me when I see a fellow developer manually scanning code instead of searching. Then slooooooowly selecting text with the mouse, grabbing an extra letter or two, going back, not getting quite enough, going back again, then right clicking and scanning the context menu for copy, then scrolling to paste and . . . you get the idea. If I'm ever in a situation to be in charge of a hire, part of the interview is going to watch them work on something to see if they are using at least some reasonable shortcuts. Don't have to be a VIM power user, but cut, copy, paste, home, end are a bare minimum in my opinion.
tragic 11y ago
I remember going to a user testing session, and marvelling at people (and it was a clear majority of the 10 or so people we tested with) scrolling the long web page by moving their mouse pointer over to the scroll bar (and it was a huge monitor, so that was a long way), clicking and dragging up and down. I had just gotten so used to, well, every other way of scrolling (mousewheel, trackpad, arrow keys, page up/down...) that I'd almost forgotten that scroll bar existed. I guess there's not much we can do about that: scrollbars are at the mercy of OS and browser vendors really.
WorldWideWayne 11y ago
That's Ctrl+T, URL, Enter for most desktop computer users. I imagine that the weird, inconsistent, hard to decipher and ultimately confusing symbols that Apple chooses to display for some reason don't help people that are forced to use OS X. I bet that most people don't know about all of the secret handshakes in iOS either, like the four finger pinch to show running tasks and switch between them.

simonblack 11y ago

They don't know how to move the cursor one word to the right? Very strange.

monopolemagnet 11y ago

Or hold Command (⌘) if they have a Mac and KeyCue. (It uses the accessibility information for the visually-impaired to construct an exhaustive list of every possible key-binding in the current application context. Another example of many of designing for accessibility paying dividends for beneficial, unintended uses.) Screenshot: http://content.screencast.com/users/xzxzxzxx/folders/Jing/media/2f5cc0b3-fe0d-44fe-8af1-744272f67ce6/00000024.png http://content.screencast.com/users/xzxzxzxx/folders/Jing/me... KeyCue: http://www.ergonis.com/products/keycue/ http://www.ergonis.com/products/keycue/

lloydde 11y ago
http://www.mediaatelier.com/CheatSheet/ http://www.mediaatelier.com/CheatSheet/ is a free alternative on the Mac to KeyCue.
- monopolemagnet 11y ago
  It's the same principle, I tried it. KeyCue lets you perform the action by interacting with the semi-transparent HUD and has themes to make adjustments. 20 € is crazy high for modern app pricing, definitely not at an optimal supply-demand point. Here's the zillions of options, which vary widely in usefulness: http://content.screencast.com/users/xzxzxzxx/folders/Jing/media/6cf70550-7113-44f0-b8ce-ce30081790be/00000025.png http://content.screencast.com/users/xzxzxzxx/folders/Jing/me... http://content.screencast.com/users/xzxzxzxx/folders/Jing/media/83aa36d6-94b2-4166-a07a-8638a9181771/00000026.png http://content.screencast.com/users/xzxzxzxx/folders/Jing/me... http://content.screencast.com/users/xzxzxzxx/folders/Jing/media/3b5c6396-bee8-4f5c-8baf-8890d93bf964/00000027.png http://content.screencast.com/users/xzxzxzxx/folders/Jing/me... http://content.screencast.com/users/xzxzxzxx/folders/Jing/media/7bcf1dec-e06f-49ce-b9d7-a085abf3fa49/00000028.png http://content.screencast.com/users/xzxzxzxx/folders/Jing/me... Plus, you're buying support and sustainability (unless someone were to torrent it, which risks malware and reduces support & sustainability). Cheat is very limited. It won't show modifier-only keys as KeyCue does, and it won't even let me take a screenshot of it (because that involves Shift). Minimal and free, or expensive, pretty with features: pick one. ;)

Animats 11y ago

So where is it documented? There was a time when F1 meant "Help". Some keyboards even had "Help" on the keytop.

monopolemagnet 11y ago
A designer failed if help is needed. usually holds for relatively-straightforward apps and real-world designs. The issue where clear, succinct documentation is needed is complicated, enterprise applications which have expert interfaces.
- exDM69 11y ago
  I strongly disagree with the idea that computer programs should be designed so that no "help" is required. It only works in the simplest of applications. In my opinion, a bigger issue is that most "help" dialogs are so badly written that they are pretty much useless. They are too often written by a developer who doesn't have a clear understanding of the typical use cases. When was the last time you found anything useful behind the F1 key? I see the effects of this in freshmen and newbie developers who don't ever look at the manuals or documentation because they are used to it being non-existent or unhelpful. I hate to be saying RTFM, but I have to because reading the docs is a useful skill, unlike memorizing how a certain tool works.
mozumder 11y ago
Sun Sparc keyboards were useful here, with a bunch of additional separate keys on the left for Find, Cut, Copy Paste, Help, Open, etc..
- makecheck 11y ago
  Heh. Back when I had to use a Sun keyboard for years at a time, I physically removed the giant Help key because it was right next to Escape and I kept hitting it by accident. Each accidental Help would introduce an obnoxious pause as the system launched some help window that stole my focus on top of it all.

chjohasbrouck 11y ago

I think searching for things on the internet should be taught as a core competency, like reading, writing, and arithmetic. I feel like way too much of formal education is focused on memorization. Especially now that we have this ubiquitous searchable memory called The Internet, this time should really be spent teaching kids and young adults how to actually do things. But education focused on developing skills has its roots in trade schools, where kids with bad grades were sent to learn how to retread tires. That precedent makes skill-driven education a tough sell to parents. But I think technology has advanced to the point where skill development is the way to go. There's also resistance from academics who believe distilling university down to a way to attain job market viability somehow cheapens academia; that academics should at least to some degree be academics purely for the sake of academics. But I really believe that if someone has internet access and can wield it well, knowing things is a problem that will solve itself over the course of that individual's life. So why don't we just get on with actually doing things? That's the part of education that benefits most from instruction and traditional academic social structures anyway.

Theodores 11y ago
I think that there is a problem with the 'three 'R's' not being taught properly. I am shocked to find people hired to write copy for the internet and lacking basic standards of literacy. Product copy, newsletters, blog posts for 'social media' and that sort of stuff requires some ability to spell, the sort of ability that most people on this site had when they were aged 11. There are also those that 'learned' to write with Microsoft applications that capitalise the first letter of a sentence. When these people are allowed to use something like Wordpress that does not have this magic, what happens? All notion of punctuation goes out of the window and they do not care. They really don't and little things like spelling and grammar shows that, plus if challenged they state that it does not matter as there are more important things - as if!!! IMHO the 90% that cannot use CTRL+F cannot spell or use punctuation. They have the reading age of a small child.

yawaramin 11y ago

I've noticed something else about less-computer-savvy folks. They have a harder time finding items at various locations on the screen by name. If I tell someone to click on e.g. the 'Tools' menu item, they'll spend a lot of time focusing on different parts of the screen trying to find it. They don't seem to be taking in the 'entire' screen at once and pinpointing all the visible words.

zarify 11y ago
Well, my idea about this is actually that we're so used to our eyes going to the top of the screen when we hear the word "menu" and regular people don't have the same associations. I think if I went to a platform that followed a different design paradigm than I was used it, I'd have my eyes roaming all over the screen as well.
- yawaramin 11y ago
  Maybe ... but my point was that even when searching for an arbitrary word on the screen, I notice that I'm significantly faster than a non-savvy user. E.g. if I'm on a call with a support desk and they're walking me through some steps on their website, I find I can easily 'take in' the entire screen and focus on that one word they want me to click on. Of course, I know a website is a bad example here, given that I could've just pressed Ctrl-F, but the idea holds for other complex non-searchable UIs too.

MarkMc 11y ago

It will be revolutionary when users can just say: "Siri, search this document for ..."

ianamartin 11y ago
Really? Because personally, I don't want to be sitting in a room full of developers all talking to Siri all at once. That sounds pretty insane to me.

MrBra 11y ago

I told em so many times. They will just not care using it. The difference is in the approach. First time we used the search in page, we went there expecting to find such a feature. Until they find themselves asking "what the hell, isn't there a way to search in a page?" they won't use and remember it. I think that's caused by the already high level of distress the average user is feeling when using a computer to browse anything else than Facebook. If I remember good how it was for me, they would go like "ok now I'm doing this, browsing this new webpage and I got so many things to remember already, the site name, how I got here, will I find it again, ...", "do you know that you can search a page with this key combination?? Stop! That's just too much! I will learn about it when I finally arrive at level 2 of my progress on using computers."

nulbyte 11y ago
I think this is partly the case, coupled with a general assumption that computers are magic. What is really fascinating is to listen to someone work out a very complex logic problem verbally, then have no idea how to fix it because the computer is "too difficult." I wonder what would happen if I answered every question with "Press F1."

atroyn 11y ago

Many people now access the web from touch devices most of the time. I've often been frustrated by the lack of access to keyboard shortcuts in mobile browsers/mobile apps, but perhaps that's what a lot of people are habituated to?

finalight 11y ago

it's okay, i don't even know how to find text on iphone safari

roghummal 11y ago

90% of people using a computer right now do so because the computer provides something they want and what they want can be achieved with the mouse/touchscreen, at a reasonable rate for them. Click this. Swipe that. Tap out a facebook/twitter post. Gratuitous use of autocorrect. These are the reality of that 90%. Don't let your impatience lead you to treat these people poorly. Let them learn by example. If you're sure they'll see the value in a shortcut then go for it but back the fuck off if they don't respond well.

dingaling 11y ago
> Gratuitous use of autocorrect. Or the one that drives me crazy; the user sees a squggly-line under a word early in the sentence they have just typed. To back-up to correct it they use backspace to erase the entire sentence back to that word, correct it and then re-type everything again, laboriously slowly. I have to rise from my seat and look out the window whilst they do so.

sandGorgon 11y ago

On the same topic, lack of a uniform cut-copy-paste mechanism in Linux makes me jealous of the Mac people every single day. On a Mac, you can use Cmd-C to copy from vim and paste into Firefox or your shell/terminal. Try doing the same thing in Linux (even with the IBM CUA [1] approved Ctrl-Insert and Shift-Insert) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access

roghummal 11y ago
Middle mouse button? I only have to deviate to ^C, ^V when the applications are... not really native. I just pasted this comment from vim to chromium this way. * Doesn't cover cut-copy-paste, just copy-paste.
- sandGorgon 11y ago
  ahh... the good old days of three button touchpads on laptops. How I miss them :(
  - hyperion2010 11y ago
    You should be able to bind three fingers to middle click on any modern touchpad.
    - sandGorgon 11y ago
      well my 2-year old thinkpad does not recognize 3 finger touch. I would much rather have a uniform cut-copy-paste command rather than wait for some funky hardware support .. or upgrade. If there was some magical way to get gnome-terminal, vim and firefox/chrome honor a universal cut-copy-paste shortcut... then I'm golden. This is more of a political than a technical problem. Yes, I know I can remap keys in firefox, in gnome-terminal and browsers. But then they dont work in skype.. or something else. I would pay good money if there was a kickstarter around this.
makecheck 11y ago

athrowaway27 11y ago

I used to work with a guy who got way in over his head as a result of being buddy buddy with the boss. He inherrited packaging of applications from another guy who saw the writing on the wall and noped his way out of the company... This guy would google how to do each step in packaging an application, each time he had to do it or modify an existing package, and would often manually scan 100s of lines of scripts looking for a particular keyword, and still to this day does it, even though i would bring up use of ctrl+f every single time he would ask me for help, litterally hundreds of times. I got to the point where i would tell him to let me know when he found the line he was looking for and then i would walk back to my desk, it never failed that 10 minutes later he would text me ok, i found it. After walking back to his desk and helping him, he would move on to the next step, google what he needed to change, and then try to prevent me from going back to my desk while he spent another 10 minutes scanning lines of text to find the keyword he was looking for... to this day, i bet he is still not using ctrl+f.... sickening that someone can get away with that in IT.

rcthompson 11y ago

In a similar vein, one of my coworkers, who is a programmer, almost never uses the shift key. If he needs a capital letter, he just turns on caps lock, then types the letter, then turns caps lock back off. I assume he must still use shift to type things like curly braces and dollar signs, but he's so slow an error prone from using caps lock so much (he sometimes leaves it on by accident and then types half a line before realizing it's in all caps and deleting it.

SixSigma 11y ago

And, of course, by Ctrl-F you mean pressing F3 oh, TMTOWTDI which is part of the problem. Users don't even consider "I spend so much time doing this, there must be a better way". Coupled with the "I don't read manuals" attitude dooms people. So systems are designed for people to get away with zero effort. And from that we end up with baby toys instead of the best tools.

tragomaskhalos 11y ago

Ctrl-F in Outlook wants to forward your message - that's f@cking annoying. Slightly related: I'm a long way from being a vi guru, but even so it's possible to astound people who only know the basic commands; I remember using 'xp' to swap two chars over that completely blew someone away, had to explain that it wasn't in fact some secret incantation

wodenokoto 11y ago

Is that a lot or a few? I'm serious, do we expect most people to know this?

parenthesis 11y ago

When I read the headline, I couldn't for the life of me remember what Ctrl+F does — because I use it without thinking! Since remembering the hand movement, I've almost forgotten the description.

makecheck 11y ago

While certain commands are clearly good to learn, it does require consistency across applications. One or two offenders, especially high-profile ones (Outlook!), can screw it all up. If a user does start exploring short-cuts and keeps being "burned" by unexpected behaviors, they will un-learn those short-cuts because they just aren't useful.

sullyj3 11y ago

I was tempted to ask which keyboard shortcuts I should know about, but it's difficult to free recall all the ones I know, let alone list them concisely.