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> I’ve never understood why people⁰ care so much about trackpads. ... would be better done with a specialized non-keyboard, non-trackpad input device So you wa

> I’ve never understood why people⁰ care so much about trackpads. ... would be better done with a specialized non-keyboard, non-trackpad input device So you want a specialized input devices for every task on a mobile device. That's an interesting choice. And I guess you also want to carry all these specialized devices around with you? > browsing¹, which IMO should be a slightly glorified text task where Pentadacyl/luakit/qutebrowser/etc.² vi-style keybindings³ are best Ok. Say you see a headline on HN that looks interesting, and you go to click on it. Wait, no, you...uhh...tab tab tab tab tab over to it and press enter to go to the comments page (like we all do) and start reading the comments. And, oh look, you want to respond to one of them. So you...uhh...tab tab...uhh...tab...tab tab tab tab tab tab tab...tab tab? Or you could just point and click. Your proposed critical tasks of shifting the viewport and appending text to the current cursor location meet approximately 0% of computing user needs. The vast majority of all computer interaction is putting the cursor in the right place in the first place. The keyboard is terrible for that, external devices encumber portability, vertical touch screens require significant muscle control and effort, and trackpoints drift and do fewer things while being worse at all of them.

boogies 6y ago
> uhh...tab tab tab tab tab Please take a minute to type the name of any of the browsers I named into your favourite search engine or package manager and return when you know what we’re talking about. (This comment was made via Pentadactyl). > The vast majority of all computer interaction is putting the cursor in the right place in the first place. This is why it pains me to use browsers where I can’t tap [count]gi to focus input fields.
- BugsJustFindMe 6y ago
  > This comment was made via Pentadactyl Enlighten us all. What exactly did you press and what mental decision and awareness process was required to do it starting from the front page? > [count]gi "[count]" sounds like one would need to know how many like things on the page precede the thing you're trying to get to. Thanks but no thanks. 150! Oops, 100! Oops, 130!
  - walterlb 6y ago
    I am actually (non-sarcastically) interested in the answer. I've always wondered if there was a usable keyboard only browsing experience out there!
    - medstrom 6y ago
      "Usable" partly depends on you.
  - SpaceNugget 6y ago
    You just look at the thing you want to click and press F then type the letters that appear on the tag. EDIT: Here's an extremely low quality screencast of me making this comment https://imgur.com/qpppveP https://imgur.com/qpppveP
    - BugsJustFindMe 6y ago
      Thanks. This is a much better reply than the OP's. Now what do you do for things that don't get tagged?
      - SpaceNugget 6y ago
        Pretty much everything clickable gets tagged. Buttons, text inputs, links, etc. If what you want to click on has a word in it, you can press '/' and type the word then hit enter to click it so that would probably be what I would do if there was ever a missing tag. That's also how you can highlight text. This is for vimium at least.
  - boogies 6y ago
    f20 selects this discussion (the 20th link), but I used f4<Enter> to select threads (the 4th link); j,D, and <Space> scroll down by a line, half-screen/page and full-screen/page respectively; fr4 selects the correct reply (the fourth link whose text begins with r); gi goes to the first input field and enters insert mode. In insert mode I may use the simple mixture of emacs/readline and CUA bindings — like ^w to wipe the last word, ^a to go to the beggining of the line and ^e to go to the end (eg. when inserting a > before a blockquote, then appending my commentary) — to write a straightforward comment from beginning to end, or I may use ^i to pop the field open in my $EDITOR (vis), where motions like m to mark my place, G to go to the end, o to open a new line, and M to return to my mark are useful for comments that might be written non-linearly, eg. if they have footnotes. I can save and exit vis (if I use it) with ZZ, and submit the comment with standard CUA <Tab><Enter>. If I reference any other material then Pentadactyl’s browsing bindings like go«character» to open a quickmark, s to search, p or P to paste my X11 primary selection as a search term or the url of a current or new tab, b to fast-as-you-type search through tabs, y to yank the current website, ;y«number and/or title of link to yank» and d to delete a tab are useful (along with standard X11 Shift+Insert to paste the primary selection in insert mode). Ideally though, I should use Pentadactyl only for browsing — for scrolling through and reading web documents — and have a dedicated newsreader that understands what posts, comments, etc. are and could make this several times more efficient. I’m currently dipping my toes in evil-mode emacs, which should enable this. I’ve recently spent less time on HN and more on IRC where I do have a dedicated native client that makes things orders of magnitude more smooth than trying to use a web client in my browser.

boogies 6y ago

> uhh...tab tab tab tab tab Please take a minute to type the name of any of the browsers I named into your favourite search engine or package manager and return when you know what we’re talking about. (This comment was made via Pentadactyl). > The vast majority of all computer interaction is putting the cursor in the right place in the first place. This is why it pains me to use browsers where I can’t tap [count]gi to focus input fields.

BugsJustFindMe 6y ago
> This comment was made via Pentadactyl Enlighten us all. What exactly did you press and what mental decision and awareness process was required to do it starting from the front page? > [count]gi "[count]" sounds like one would need to know how many like things on the page precede the thing you're trying to get to. Thanks but no thanks. 150! Oops, 100! Oops, 130!
- walterlb 6y ago
  I am actually (non-sarcastically) interested in the answer. I've always wondered if there was a usable keyboard only browsing experience out there!
  - medstrom 6y ago
    "Usable" partly depends on you.
- SpaceNugget 6y ago
  You just look at the thing you want to click and press F then type the letters that appear on the tag. EDIT: Here's an extremely low quality screencast of me making this comment https://imgur.com/qpppveP https://imgur.com/qpppveP
  - BugsJustFindMe 6y ago
    Thanks. This is a much better reply than the OP's. Now what do you do for things that don't get tagged?
    - SpaceNugget 6y ago
      Pretty much everything clickable gets tagged. Buttons, text inputs, links, etc. If what you want to click on has a word in it, you can press '/' and type the word then hit enter to click it so that would probably be what I would do if there was ever a missing tag. That's also how you can highlight text. This is for vimium at least.
- boogies 6y ago
  f20 selects this discussion (the 20th link), but I used f4<Enter> to select threads (the 4th link); j,D, and <Space> scroll down by a line, half-screen/page and full-screen/page respectively; fr4 selects the correct reply (the fourth link whose text begins with r); gi goes to the first input field and enters insert mode. In insert mode I may use the simple mixture of emacs/readline and CUA bindings — like ^w to wipe the last word, ^a to go to the beggining of the line and ^e to go to the end (eg. when inserting a > before a blockquote, then appending my commentary) — to write a straightforward comment from beginning to end, or I may use ^i to pop the field open in my $EDITOR (vis), where motions like m to mark my place, G to go to the end, o to open a new line, and M to return to my mark are useful for comments that might be written non-linearly, eg. if they have footnotes. I can save and exit vis (if I use it) with ZZ, and submit the comment with standard CUA <Tab><Enter>. If I reference any other material then Pentadactyl’s browsing bindings like go«character» to open a quickmark, s to search, p or P to paste my X11 primary selection as a search term or the url of a current or new tab, b to fast-as-you-type search through tabs, y to yank the current website, ;y«number and/or title of link to yank» and d to delete a tab are useful (along with standard X11 Shift+Insert to paste the primary selection in insert mode). Ideally though, I should use Pentadactyl only for browsing — for scrolling through and reading web documents — and have a dedicated newsreader that understands what posts, comments, etc. are and could make this several times more efficient. I’m currently dipping my toes in evil-mode emacs, which should enable this. I’ve recently spent less time on HN and more on IRC where I do have a dedicated native client that makes things orders of magnitude more smooth than trying to use a web client in my browser.