4 ms·

I've not used this, but it reminds me some of the UI of early Lotus 1-2-3 (in text, no GUI). It was amazingly intuitive and easy to navigate, even without a mo

I've not used this, but it reminds me some of the UI of early Lotus 1-2-3 (in text, no GUI). It was amazingly intuitive and easy to navigate, even without a mouse. Modern web apps, each unique and confusing, with no reliable way to move focus around and with bizarre text entry "improvements", would have made the Admiral weep.

zozbot234 7y ago
> Modern web apps, each unique and confusing, with no reliable way to move focus around If accessibility is set up correctly, you can still move focus with TAB and activate widgets/buttons with SPACE or ENTER. No different from any terminal app. If client-side JS is being used, the web page could even display additional forms in response to a keyboard shortcut, with no network-introduced latency.
- betenoire 7y ago
  Accessibility is only part of it. You should know where your keys are going to take you, and tabs often become unpredictable and confusing
- downerending 7y ago
  Per sibling, even at best, this just isn't in the same league. And I'm doubtful about "best". And even if it works, why should I need to enable special accessibility features to access a UI mode that isn't utter sh_t?
- badsectoracula 7y ago
  > move focus with TAB and activate widgets/buttons with SPACE or ENTER. No different from any terminal app No different from a terminal app that pretends to be a GUI app :-P. At the minimum many terminal/DOS apps used arrow keys to move between fields and often just pressing enter in a field (often after it was validated), it'd move to the next relevant field. Shortcut keys to move around and/or perform context sensitive functions (e.g. search for product IDs in a field where you are supposed to enter a product ID) would also be available at any time. I remember my father making a program for his job (for his own use) ~20 years ago in Delphi and he was manually wiring all the events to move around with the Enter key, like his previous program (written in DOS and Turbo Pascal) did and was annoyed that he had to do this manually. TBH i do not believe it is impossible to do this nowadays on the web, but just like it wasn't done in the majority of GUI desktop apps that followed the DOS days, i also do not believe it is/will be done in the web apps that is done nowadays. The reasons for this vary, but i think a large part of it is that people simply haven't experienced using the other methods to even think about them.
  - int_19h 7y ago
    It wasn't done by the apps, because the standard UX on all those platforms did not include move-focus-on-Enter - and GUI apps are generally supposed to follow the standard. FWIW I agree that for data entry apps in particular, Enter is just too convenient - and I had to write code to manually implement it in GUI apps, as well.
eitland 7y ago
> Modern web apps, each unique and confusing, with no reliable way to move focus around and with bizarre text entry "improvements" I'd not vote to go back to the 90ies (we've fixed way to many security problems since then) but it would be great if we could all agree that we lost something along the way and try to get it back somehow while keeping the things that work today.

zozbot234 7y ago

> Modern web apps, each unique and confusing, with no reliable way to move focus around If accessibility is set up correctly, you can still move focus with TAB and activate widgets/buttons with SPACE or ENTER. No different from any terminal app. If client-side JS is being used, the web page could even display additional forms in response to a keyboard shortcut, with no network-introduced latency.

betenoire 7y ago
Accessibility is only part of it. You should know where your keys are going to take you, and tabs often become unpredictable and confusing
downerending 7y ago
Per sibling, even at best, this just isn't in the same league. And I'm doubtful about "best". And even if it works, why should I need to enable special accessibility features to access a UI mode that isn't utter sh_t?
badsectoracula 7y ago
> move focus with TAB and activate widgets/buttons with SPACE or ENTER. No different from any terminal app No different from a terminal app that pretends to be a GUI app :-P. At the minimum many terminal/DOS apps used arrow keys to move between fields and often just pressing enter in a field (often after it was validated), it'd move to the next relevant field. Shortcut keys to move around and/or perform context sensitive functions (e.g. search for product IDs in a field where you are supposed to enter a product ID) would also be available at any time. I remember my father making a program for his job (for his own use) ~20 years ago in Delphi and he was manually wiring all the events to move around with the Enter key, like his previous program (written in DOS and Turbo Pascal) did and was annoyed that he had to do this manually. TBH i do not believe it is impossible to do this nowadays on the web, but just like it wasn't done in the majority of GUI desktop apps that followed the DOS days, i also do not believe it is/will be done in the web apps that is done nowadays. The reasons for this vary, but i think a large part of it is that people simply haven't experienced using the other methods to even think about them.
- int_19h 7y ago
  It wasn't done by the apps, because the standard UX on all those platforms did not include move-focus-on-Enter - and GUI apps are generally supposed to follow the standard. FWIW I agree that for data entry apps in particular, Enter is just too convenient - and I had to write code to manually implement it in GUI apps, as well.

eitland 7y ago

> Modern web apps, each unique and confusing, with no reliable way to move focus around and with bizarre text entry "improvements" I'd not vote to go back to the 90ies (we've fixed way to many security problems since then) but it would be great if we could all agree that we lost something along the way and try to get it back somehow while keeping the things that work today.