6 ms·

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 aro

by _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.

by _jomo 11y ago

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.