4 ms·
> 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
by 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 agoIt 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.