4 ms·

Wow, you have to manually activate such an option? On windows it's default. One of the things i love about windows is that it's always been designed for keyboa

by Too 8y ago

Wow, you have to manually activate such an option? On windows it's default. One of the things i love about windows is that it's always been designed for keyboard only use, not just bolted on as an afterthought. Every dialog, widget, application and feature can be used with only the keyboard and it's fast, easy and predictable how to. Unfortunately since windows 8 there's been some regressions in this area with the new metro interface. Defaulting the underlined hotkey to off (since windows xp), was also a big mistake imo.

oneeyedpigeon 8y ago
Keyboard support on the Mac is terrible. It's probably the biggest flaw of the OS, imo. You wouldn't believe some of the ridiculousness - for example, the page up/down, home/end keys are application-specific in their behaviour. Moreover, they sometimes move the view, but not the cursor - an insane behaviour. I regularly find myself moving to the top of a document using the keyboard, then remembering I'm wasting my time and reaching over for the mouse, one click, and back to the keyboard...
- danaris 8y ago
  > Moreover, they sometimes move the view, but not the cursor - an insane behaviour. It's an incredibly useful behaviour. I can't tell you how many times I've had my cursor ready to type a method name, realized I didn't recall the precise wording of the method or the order or type of its arguments, and paged my way up to where the method was defined in the same file...then not had to labouriously search my way back to where I was and click in the right spot to type, but just start typing as soon as I had the information. Bam, it types it in the right spot and jumps the view back to it for me.
latexr 8y ago
> Wow, you have to manually activate such an option? On windows it's default. I don’t think that’s deserving of “wow”. I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. It’s a clear option that is quite visible and present in the exact preference pane you’d expect. And you don’t need to activate it manually. You can do it via CLI: defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleKeyboardUIMode -int 3 > not just bolted on as an afterthought. I haven’t used Windows in years so I can’t compare, but keyboard support on macOS doesn’t feel like an afterthought to me. Without leaving the same screen where one activates keyboard support for all controls, one can also change and set keyboard shortcuts for every other action including every menu option of every app. And if doing it manually isn’t your thing, you can also define those keyboard shortcuts via CLI. It even works for setting single key (no modifier) shortcuts.
- Too 8y ago
  Once a friend of mine with a mac suddenly had a mouse malfunction, can't remember if it was broken or just out of battery but doesn't matter. He was literally stranded, and this is developer who knows how to use a terminal and a keyboard. Everything we were working had to be put on hold, i can't remember the exact scenario but we couldn't even save the document, unlock the machine, get to a terminal or something like. Having keyboard accessibility enabled as default would have saved our ass that day.
  - roryokane 8y ago
    There are definitely hotkeys that allow you to do anything via keyboard; your friend just didn't know them. If they had searched, they would have found the help page https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204434 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204434 "Mac accessibility shortcuts". For example, the global hotkey Control-F7 toggles the above-described "All controls" navigation setting, and Control-F2 switches focus to the menu.

by Too 8y ago

oneeyedpigeon 8y ago

Keyboard support on the Mac is terrible. It's probably the biggest flaw of the OS, imo. You wouldn't believe some of the ridiculousness - for example, the page up/down, home/end keys are application-specific in their behaviour. Moreover, they sometimes move the view, but not the cursor - an insane behaviour. I regularly find myself moving to the top of a document using the keyboard, then remembering I'm wasting my time and reaching over for the mouse, one click, and back to the keyboard...

danaris 8y ago
> Moreover, they sometimes move the view, but not the cursor - an insane behaviour. It's an incredibly useful behaviour. I can't tell you how many times I've had my cursor ready to type a method name, realized I didn't recall the precise wording of the method or the order or type of its arguments, and paged my way up to where the method was defined in the same file...then not had to labouriously search my way back to where I was and click in the right spot to type, but just start typing as soon as I had the information. Bam, it types it in the right spot and jumps the view back to it for me.

latexr 8y ago

> Wow, you have to manually activate such an option? On windows it's default. I don’t think that’s deserving of “wow”. I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. It’s a clear option that is quite visible and present in the exact preference pane you’d expect. And you don’t need to activate it manually. You can do it via CLI: defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleKeyboardUIMode -int 3 > not just bolted on as an afterthought. I haven’t used Windows in years so I can’t compare, but keyboard support on macOS doesn’t feel like an afterthought to me. Without leaving the same screen where one activates keyboard support for all controls, one can also change and set keyboard shortcuts for every other action including every menu option of every app. And if doing it manually isn’t your thing, you can also define those keyboard shortcuts via CLI. It even works for setting single key (no modifier) shortcuts.

Too 8y ago
Once a friend of mine with a mac suddenly had a mouse malfunction, can't remember if it was broken or just out of battery but doesn't matter. He was literally stranded, and this is developer who knows how to use a terminal and a keyboard. Everything we were working had to be put on hold, i can't remember the exact scenario but we couldn't even save the document, unlock the machine, get to a terminal or something like. Having keyboard accessibility enabled as default would have saved our ass that day.
- roryokane 8y ago
  There are definitely hotkeys that allow you to do anything via keyboard; your friend just didn't know them. If they had searched, they would have found the help page https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204434 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204434 "Mac accessibility shortcuts". For example, the global hotkey Control-F7 toggles the above-described "All controls" navigation setting, and Control-F2 switches focus to the menu.