9 ms·

I got to that point and had the same reaction you did, but finished reading the thread and realized he's actually claiming something far more ambitious and inte

by godot 7y ago

I got to that point and had the same reaction you did, but finished reading the thread and realized he's actually claiming something far more ambitious and interesting than I thought he was. Particularly when he clarified that keyboard-only doesn't just mean text-based, and it can be graphical and keyboard-only. I'm trying to imagine UI that are graphical and beautiful but works with keyboard only, and it actually could be a very interesting world if that were popular. It's not unlike games from older days where ways of input is limited and input is purpose-driven. For sure, as you said, there's the discovery/exploratory aspect of using a software where GUI helps a lot. But there's definitely merit in what the author is saying.

galangalalgol 7y ago
All the ms office 365 products are this already minus the beautiful. I only use keyboard shortcuts to interact with them.
- Enginerrrd 7y ago
  Same, and it's really intelligent design because you hit the alt key and it shows you the next key next to the usual buttons so you can keep keyboard navigating instead of forcing you to remember every single one. You end up memorizing them pretty quickly anyway for the most common use cases but can still keyboard navigate very rapidly to novel locations. I'm actually a big fan, despite my reflexive aversion to Microsoft products leftover from the 90's and 2000's.
xmprt 7y ago
For example, take a look at qutebrowser (or Vimium if you're more into getting an extension for your current browser). It support basically 100% keyboard based browsing.
- feanaro 7y ago
  Or Tridactyl.
michaelbuckbee 7y ago
I use a browser extension called Vimium which is an astoundingly faster way to navigate web apps via keyboard. I somewhat reluctantly picked it up in large part to deal with some RSI issues but now I couldn't go back.
grawprog 7y ago
CAD/CAM software would be difficult, possibly unusable to use keyboard only. I had a good left hand hotkey setup for everything I could, but there were things I had to use the mouse for that would have been slow, painful and tedious to do on a keyboard and I can't really think of anything better than a mouse for those.
- Haga 7y ago
  Precision pointing can be done via keyboard, if one uses a screen octtree and arrow keys for pre placement and arrows for fine placement. Do not blame a tool for its outdated use.
- htns 7y ago
  A drawing tablet is better than a literal mouse. They are pretty cheap, have better ergonomics, and you can use them proficiently pretty much instantly.
  - abakker 7y ago
    Not for CAD/CAM. I’ve tried it, but, for my money and time a mouse is way more effective for managing multiple, detailed selections.
    - kaybe 7y ago
      Are you using a 3D mouse?
  - MzxgckZtNqX5i 7y ago
    For you, yes. I (and a lot of other people) have a disorder that makes my hands shakes when the muscles are tense [0]. This means that the only way I can interact precisely is with my arm laying down on the desk and only the fingers moving the mouse. This is just one example of a wide variety of problems/annoyances. To everyone out there design user interfaces: please remember that people are not either perfectly fine or with disabilities in a black&white fashion, there is a lot of grey in between. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_tremor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_tremor
gregmac 7y ago
There's a big challenge in usability with keyboard-only. I don't at all dispute that keyboard is faster, once you learn how to use it with whatever application(s), but that's exactly the problem. I heavily use the keyboard, and for certain things (mostly apps I use daily) I'm highly proficient with it, barely touching the mouse at all. But once in a while I have to work with a spreadsheet, or edit an icon, or use some other piece of software I only use maybe a couple times per year. I simply don't remember shortcuts and I certainly can't justify spending the time to (re)learn enough to be more efficient keyboard-only that with a mouse, so I just rely on the mouse. It's hard to imagine any keyboard-only (G)UI doing a better job at making usage discoverable than what can be done with a mouse-enabled one.
- jonathanstrange 7y ago
  The problem is and always was the lack of a good online help system. Apple and Microsoft did really lousy jobs with those systems. The OS should provide a whole screen display that instantly gives you a cheat sheet of the most important keyboard shortcuts, and it needs to be clearly readable and intelligently organized. Its mysterious to me why this is not standard in every operating system.
asdff 7y ago
I'm not understanding the adversion to the keyboard in the comments here. It's just faster. I prefer not having to reach over and find the mouse or trackpad, then wiggle around to find the cursor. Useful only when the keyboard ux is bad. Imagine playing piano while having to take a hand off the keys and find a mouse during the song. It would be impossible to keep up. Keyboard only is speedy when learned.
- jspash 7y ago
  I'm not taking sides on this one, but thought you might find this article interesting that was posted here 2 days ago. https://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html https://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html The key take-away was they spent a lot of money on a research project specifically about mouse vs. keyboard and found the precise opposite to be true! Surprising to say the least. * Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than mousing. * The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than keyboarding.
  - usrusr 7y ago
    Considering all the time I have wasted in recent years wrestling with text selection and cursor positioning on touchscreen devices, this discussion seems delightfully pointless: they are both so much faster than the third option that any difference between the two must be insignificant.
  - marcus_holmes 7y ago
    I have no idea why you're getting downvoted. Supplying actual data is always useful. Especially when it contradicts a common opinion ;)
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Supplying actual data is always useful. If only that article did that :). Sometimes, articles that contradict a common opinion do so because they're simply dead wrong. This is one of those cases.
toast0 7y ago
> I'm trying to imagine UI that are graphical and beautiful but works with keyboard only, and it actually could be a very interesting world if that were popular. Windows is mostly mouse optional. You very rarely need a mouse, it's just way more common to use one. My memory is a bit off, but I know Win 95 was fine, I think it got a bit worse in XP (a lot more things that were hard to tab to), and 10 is ok, but not great.
- gpderetta 7y ago
  I do not use Windows much, but when the search box was added to the start menu (in Windows Vista I think), it was a huge navigational improvement for me.
- mlonkibjuyhv 7y ago
  I've done a ton of keyboard only on XP and 7 - it's mostly fine. I would like to murder the group of fools that managed to make a GUI for a touchscreen service program that was unusable without mouse and disabled the touch unit for some functionality, but that's neither here nor there.
Doxin 7y ago
Blender is a fairly good example of visual software usable with a keyboard only. Especially in older versions there were a lot of functions you couldn't even get to with a mouse. These days everything has a way to get to it from both the mouse and keyboard. Turns out that an interface like that is really hard to learn but also really fast once you do. Extruding a face along the normal is as easy as getting it selected somehow (which I do with the mouse, but there's plenty of keyboard based selection tools too) and hitting e, followed by z twice, and then either entering a distance on the keyboard or moving the mouse to move it a bit. Personally I love the interplay between keyboard and mouse: you can pick whichever method is most effective. For selecting specific things or moving stuff until it looks right you use the mouse, for selecting in bulk or moving stuff specific distances you use the keyboard. Or a combination. Whichever is convenient. So I think if you can solve the discoverability problem of keyboard shortcuts it'd be a real productivity boost for power users.
- codetrotter 7y ago
  Blender is a great piece of software and I love it but speaking of the keyboard shortcuts in Blender, one thing that annoys me about it is the reliance on the numpad for some of the keyboard shortcuts I would like to use. The reason those shortcuts annoy me is that I don’t have a numpad, so I am unable to use them.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    But you could easily acquire one. I'd imagine most physical keyboards do have numpads?
    - thekyle 7y ago
      I wouldn't say most. I rarely come across laptops that support a numpad for example.
      - shantly 7y ago
        External number pads are cheap. If someone's spending enough time using programs for which a number pad would be very helpful, it's probably worth the few dollars they cost and the tiny amount of space they take up (similar to a normal-size corded mouse—slightly larger footprint, but thinner)
jonathanstrange 7y ago
Full keyboard navigation capability used to be the standard for Desktop applications. It still is, if the application is well-programmed and uses native controls, but unfortunately you can no longer count on it with all those browser-based monstrosities on the desktop nowadays.

by godot 7y ago

galangalalgol 7y ago

All the ms office 365 products are this already minus the beautiful. I only use keyboard shortcuts to interact with them.

Enginerrrd 7y ago
Same, and it's really intelligent design because you hit the alt key and it shows you the next key next to the usual buttons so you can keep keyboard navigating instead of forcing you to remember every single one. You end up memorizing them pretty quickly anyway for the most common use cases but can still keyboard navigate very rapidly to novel locations. I'm actually a big fan, despite my reflexive aversion to Microsoft products leftover from the 90's and 2000's.

xmprt 7y ago

For example, take a look at qutebrowser (or Vimium if you're more into getting an extension for your current browser). It support basically 100% keyboard based browsing.

feanaro 7y ago
Or Tridactyl.

michaelbuckbee 7y ago

I use a browser extension called Vimium which is an astoundingly faster way to navigate web apps via keyboard. I somewhat reluctantly picked it up in large part to deal with some RSI issues but now I couldn't go back.

grawprog 7y ago

CAD/CAM software would be difficult, possibly unusable to use keyboard only. I had a good left hand hotkey setup for everything I could, but there were things I had to use the mouse for that would have been slow, painful and tedious to do on a keyboard and I can't really think of anything better than a mouse for those.

Haga 7y ago
Precision pointing can be done via keyboard, if one uses a screen octtree and arrow keys for pre placement and arrows for fine placement. Do not blame a tool for its outdated use.
htns 7y ago
A drawing tablet is better than a literal mouse. They are pretty cheap, have better ergonomics, and you can use them proficiently pretty much instantly.
- abakker 7y ago
  Not for CAD/CAM. I’ve tried it, but, for my money and time a mouse is way more effective for managing multiple, detailed selections.
  - kaybe 7y ago
    Are you using a 3D mouse?
- MzxgckZtNqX5i 7y ago
  For you, yes. I (and a lot of other people) have a disorder that makes my hands shakes when the muscles are tense [0]. This means that the only way I can interact precisely is with my arm laying down on the desk and only the fingers moving the mouse. This is just one example of a wide variety of problems/annoyances. To everyone out there design user interfaces: please remember that people are not either perfectly fine or with disabilities in a black&white fashion, there is a lot of grey in between. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_tremor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_tremor

gregmac 7y ago

There's a big challenge in usability with keyboard-only. I don't at all dispute that keyboard is faster, once you learn how to use it with whatever application(s), but that's exactly the problem. I heavily use the keyboard, and for certain things (mostly apps I use daily) I'm highly proficient with it, barely touching the mouse at all. But once in a while I have to work with a spreadsheet, or edit an icon, or use some other piece of software I only use maybe a couple times per year. I simply don't remember shortcuts and I certainly can't justify spending the time to (re)learn enough to be more efficient keyboard-only that with a mouse, so I just rely on the mouse. It's hard to imagine any keyboard-only (G)UI doing a better job at making usage discoverable than what can be done with a mouse-enabled one.

jonathanstrange 7y ago
The problem is and always was the lack of a good online help system. Apple and Microsoft did really lousy jobs with those systems. The OS should provide a whole screen display that instantly gives you a cheat sheet of the most important keyboard shortcuts, and it needs to be clearly readable and intelligently organized. Its mysterious to me why this is not standard in every operating system.

asdff 7y ago

I'm not understanding the adversion to the keyboard in the comments here. It's just faster. I prefer not having to reach over and find the mouse or trackpad, then wiggle around to find the cursor. Useful only when the keyboard ux is bad. Imagine playing piano while having to take a hand off the keys and find a mouse during the song. It would be impossible to keep up. Keyboard only is speedy when learned.

jspash 7y ago
I'm not taking sides on this one, but thought you might find this article interesting that was posted here 2 days ago. https://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html https://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html The key take-away was they spent a lot of money on a research project specifically about mouse vs. keyboard and found the precise opposite to be true! Surprising to say the least. * Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than mousing. * The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than keyboarding.
- usrusr 7y ago
  Considering all the time I have wasted in recent years wrestling with text selection and cursor positioning on touchscreen devices, this discussion seems delightfully pointless: they are both so much faster than the third option that any difference between the two must be insignificant.
- marcus_holmes 7y ago
  I have no idea why you're getting downvoted. Supplying actual data is always useful. Especially when it contradicts a common opinion ;)
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Supplying actual data is always useful. If only that article did that :). Sometimes, articles that contradict a common opinion do so because they're simply dead wrong. This is one of those cases.

toast0 7y ago

> I'm trying to imagine UI that are graphical and beautiful but works with keyboard only, and it actually could be a very interesting world if that were popular. Windows is mostly mouse optional. You very rarely need a mouse, it's just way more common to use one. My memory is a bit off, but I know Win 95 was fine, I think it got a bit worse in XP (a lot more things that were hard to tab to), and 10 is ok, but not great.

gpderetta 7y ago
I do not use Windows much, but when the search box was added to the start menu (in Windows Vista I think), it was a huge navigational improvement for me.
mlonkibjuyhv 7y ago
I've done a ton of keyboard only on XP and 7 - it's mostly fine. I would like to murder the group of fools that managed to make a GUI for a touchscreen service program that was unusable without mouse and disabled the touch unit for some functionality, but that's neither here nor there.

Doxin 7y ago

Blender is a fairly good example of visual software usable with a keyboard only. Especially in older versions there were a lot of functions you couldn't even get to with a mouse. These days everything has a way to get to it from both the mouse and keyboard. Turns out that an interface like that is really hard to learn but also really fast once you do. Extruding a face along the normal is as easy as getting it selected somehow (which I do with the mouse, but there's plenty of keyboard based selection tools too) and hitting e, followed by z twice, and then either entering a distance on the keyboard or moving the mouse to move it a bit. Personally I love the interplay between keyboard and mouse: you can pick whichever method is most effective. For selecting specific things or moving stuff until it looks right you use the mouse, for selecting in bulk or moving stuff specific distances you use the keyboard. Or a combination. Whichever is convenient. So I think if you can solve the discoverability problem of keyboard shortcuts it'd be a real productivity boost for power users.

codetrotter 7y ago
Blender is a great piece of software and I love it but speaking of the keyboard shortcuts in Blender, one thing that annoys me about it is the reliance on the numpad for some of the keyboard shortcuts I would like to use. The reason those shortcuts annoy me is that I don’t have a numpad, so I am unable to use them.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  But you could easily acquire one. I'd imagine most physical keyboards do have numpads?
  - thekyle 7y ago
    I wouldn't say most. I rarely come across laptops that support a numpad for example.
    - shantly 7y ago
      External number pads are cheap. If someone's spending enough time using programs for which a number pad would be very helpful, it's probably worth the few dollars they cost and the tiny amount of space they take up (similar to a normal-size corded mouse—slightly larger footprint, but thinner)

jonathanstrange 7y ago

Full keyboard navigation capability used to be the standard for Desktop applications. It still is, if the application is well-programmed and uses native controls, but unfortunately you can no longer count on it with all those browser-based monstrosities on the desktop nowadays.