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You can only build a muscle memory for keyboard commands, if there are uniform shortcuts across different programs. Which is the case with commands such as ctrl

by jcfrei 15y ago

You can only build a muscle memory for keyboard commands, if there are uniform shortcuts across different programs. Which is the case with commands such as ctrl-c, ctrl-v, ctrl-w etc. However creating such uniform shortcuts won't fit the variety and complexity of today's applications - shortcuts are easy if you're dealing with trivial tasks like text editing in vim and emacs. However especially on the web (where many users probably spend most of their time) building an intuitive and usable interface for keyboards would be nearly impossible, given the variety of web applications.

koenigdavidmj 15y ago
Related anecdote: in Vim, ^W is the fairly useful 'delete previous word'. Pretty much everywhere else, it is 'destroy window'. This had led to many an issue.
- Wilduck 15y ago
  Also related: In Emacs C-n is next line, which I would use to scroll through a small portion of the document. Most everywhere else it spawns a new window, so in Firefox I would want to scroll down 5 or 6 lines and end up with a bunch more windows open.
  - technomancy 15y ago
    This is why I've stopped using programs that don't have the decency to at least pretend to be Emacs.
- SkyMarshal 15y ago
  Although, if you learn Vim, there are Vim extensions for just about every program you might use - Firefox, Chrome, Eclipse, etc. I love being able control many programs with Vim's or Vim-like keybindings.
jokermatt999 15y ago
Vim navigation (j/k, etc) seems to be fairly standard for "move through items in a list". It's in Gmail, DuckDuckGo, and some others I can't remember offhand. Are there any other examples I'm missing?
- rquirk 15y ago
  A couple of terminal applications that aren't vim that also use j/k are screen and w3m. Screen on its ctrl-a " selection screen and in ctrl-a esc mode, w3m on just every webpage (though it also uses emacs ctrl-v to scroll down a page).
- unfasten 15y ago
  > Are there any other examples I'm missing? Twitter, Github and Kalimba¹ are the ones I can immediately recall. ¹Kalimba is Embedly's HN frontend, very nice for quickly going through stories: http://hn.embed.ly/ http://hn.embed.ly/

by jcfrei 15y ago

koenigdavidmj 15y ago

Related anecdote: in Vim, ^W is the fairly useful 'delete previous word'. Pretty much everywhere else, it is 'destroy window'. This had led to many an issue.

Wilduck 15y ago
Also related: In Emacs C-n is next line, which I would use to scroll through a small portion of the document. Most everywhere else it spawns a new window, so in Firefox I would want to scroll down 5 or 6 lines and end up with a bunch more windows open.
- technomancy 15y ago
  This is why I've stopped using programs that don't have the decency to at least pretend to be Emacs.
SkyMarshal 15y ago
Although, if you learn Vim, there are Vim extensions for just about every program you might use - Firefox, Chrome, Eclipse, etc. I love being able control many programs with Vim's or Vim-like keybindings.

jokermatt999 15y ago

Vim navigation (j/k, etc) seems to be fairly standard for "move through items in a list". It's in Gmail, DuckDuckGo, and some others I can't remember offhand. Are there any other examples I'm missing?

rquirk 15y ago
A couple of terminal applications that aren't vim that also use j/k are screen and w3m. Screen on its ctrl-a " selection screen and in ctrl-a esc mode, w3m on just every webpage (though it also uses emacs ctrl-v to scroll down a page).
unfasten 15y ago
> Are there any other examples I'm missing? Twitter, Github and Kalimba¹ are the ones I can immediately recall. ¹Kalimba is Embedly's HN frontend, very nice for quickly going through stories: http://hn.embed.ly/ http://hn.embed.ly/