3 ms·

Now go fingerless on your smartphone. Oh, we make an exception there do we?

sillyquiet 5y ago
I think the snark is overboard, but I get what you are saying - but I will defend the article in that it's a neat experiment and it sort of highlights gaps in accessibility, like others in the thread have noted. However, my first computer was a Commodore 64 and I currently have a Commodore 64 emulator I love playing around with - and doing everything in keyboard commands is a pita for things like word processors and spreadsheets even when you have the shortcuts in muscle memory. There's a reason the mouse was so successful.
toast0 5y ago
Physical keyboards on smart phones were glorious. Not all the apps would let you go through fields using only the keyboard (and some keyboards didn't have enough navigation keys, anyway), but when it worked well, it worked well. Sadly, it cost money to include a keyboard, so the race to the bottom means you can't find them anymore. Just like real back buttons.
- brokenmachine 5y ago
  Personally, I don't want a physical keyboard on my phone. I am irritated that the menu button was taken away on Android, that was good UI. Now every app does menu differently which is a massive step backwards for discoverability and consistency.
qu4z-2 5y ago
I wish I could, frankly, but smartphone UIs are just not designed for it sadly. Heck, input boxes don't even autofocus on Android (presumably because a virtual keyboard pops up over half the screen for most people once they focus an input) so I need to jab the login field before I can start typing. Whether or not Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V actually copy paste within any given application is about 50/50 (and not always the same between copy and paste!). Since the big new version of Mobile Firefox it no longer scrolls when you send it scroll events (presumably there's a child frame or something). Then again, Android is just generally not ready for production in a lot of ways other than keyboard support (the latter of which I sort of forgive them for -- phone keyboards are unfortunately quite rare these days). So yes, we make an exception, but it's due to necessity not desirability.

I think the snark is overboard, but I get what you are saying - but I will defend the article in that it's a neat experiment and it sort of highlights gaps in accessibility, like others in the thread have noted. However, my first computer was a Commodore 64 and I currently have a Commodore 64 emulator I love playing around with - and doing everything in keyboard commands is a pita for things like word processors and spreadsheets even when you have the shortcuts in muscle memory. There's a reason the mouse was so successful.

toast0 5y ago

Physical keyboards on smart phones were glorious. Not all the apps would let you go through fields using only the keyboard (and some keyboards didn't have enough navigation keys, anyway), but when it worked well, it worked well. Sadly, it cost money to include a keyboard, so the race to the bottom means you can't find them anymore. Just like real back buttons.

brokenmachine 5y ago
Personally, I don't want a physical keyboard on my phone. I am irritated that the menu button was taken away on Android, that was good UI. Now every app does menu differently which is a massive step backwards for discoverability and consistency.

qu4z-2 5y ago

I wish I could, frankly, but smartphone UIs are just not designed for it sadly. Heck, input boxes don't even autofocus on Android (presumably because a virtual keyboard pops up over half the screen for most people once they focus an input) so I need to jab the login field before I can start typing. Whether or not Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V actually copy paste within any given application is about 50/50 (and not always the same between copy and paste!). Since the big new version of Mobile Firefox it no longer scrolls when you send it scroll events (presumably there's a child frame or something). Then again, Android is just generally not ready for production in a lot of ways other than keyboard support (the latter of which I sort of forgive them for -- phone keyboards are unfortunately quite rare these days). So yes, we make an exception, but it's due to necessity not desirability.