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A non-zero number of websites have followed web twitter in making '?' produce a hotkey display. Naturally tumblr isn't one of them.

by mst 5y ago

mrguyorama 5y ago
Except now how am I supposed to know '?' brings up this display?
- johnsoft 5y ago
  The same way you know you can run any command with `--help`. Most commands anyway. I'm looking at you, netcat
  - myself248 5y ago
    At least there's a man page for those, there's no man page for crappy websites.
  - mst 5y ago
    In fact quite a lot of commands also respond to -?, which is my guess for what inspired this. Either way, even an extremely imperfectly honoured convention is better than no convention at all.
  - npteljes 5y ago
    >The same way you know you can run any command with `--help`. Not really though. Some command in the distant past once told me that I need to type /? to use the correct parameters. And then another one told me that /? is invalid, I need to type --help for help. And thus, I was aware. Contrast this with youtube, which I use for 10+ years now, where I have 500+ videos sorted into playlists, and I even know some shortcuts - discovered mostly by accident - and never once saw the "?" help page, until I read this hacker news thread. Anecdote, I know.
- mst 5y ago
  In the case of twitter, because it's documented along with all of the other shortcuts in the documentation: https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/how-to-tweet https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/how-to-tweet They have rather more docs than you'd expect, the big problem seems to be that nobody expects them to have useful documentation so it often doesn't occur to us to look - hence why I figured it was worth posting it for people who didn't know about it yet.
  - mrguyorama 5y ago
    An interesting disconnect to me is that I thought you were referring to generic websites, not ones that you can actually add/do stuff in. Contrast a site like "Youtube" where you usually just passively consumer (and indeed it DOES have a shortcut list viewed by typing '?') and something like jira where users are expected to be somewhat familiar and doing lots of things
    - mst 5y ago
      For youtube, there's a menu link that tells you and also documentation here: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7631406?hl=en-GB https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7631406?hl=en-GB Like I say, the big problem here is 'realising that googling "$site keyboard shortcuts" actually has a point in the first place' - hence why I tell people about '?' any time I think it might be useful :D

A non-zero number of websites have followed web twitter in making '?' produce a hotkey display. Naturally tumblr isn't one of them.

by mst 5y ago

A non-zero number of websites have followed web twitter in making '?' produce a hotkey display. Naturally tumblr isn't one of them.

mrguyorama 5y ago

Except now how am I supposed to know '?' brings up this display?

johnsoft 5y ago
The same way you know you can run any command with `--help`. Most commands anyway. I'm looking at you, netcat
- myself248 5y ago
  At least there's a man page for those, there's no man page for crappy websites.
- mst 5y ago
  In fact quite a lot of commands also respond to -?, which is my guess for what inspired this. Either way, even an extremely imperfectly honoured convention is better than no convention at all.
- npteljes 5y ago
  >The same way you know you can run any command with `--help`. Not really though. Some command in the distant past once told me that I need to type /? to use the correct parameters. And then another one told me that /? is invalid, I need to type --help for help. And thus, I was aware. Contrast this with youtube, which I use for 10+ years now, where I have 500+ videos sorted into playlists, and I even know some shortcuts - discovered mostly by accident - and never once saw the "?" help page, until I read this hacker news thread. Anecdote, I know.
mst 5y ago
In the case of twitter, because it's documented along with all of the other shortcuts in the documentation: https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/how-to-tweet https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/how-to-tweet They have rather more docs than you'd expect, the big problem seems to be that nobody expects them to have useful documentation so it often doesn't occur to us to look - hence why I figured it was worth posting it for people who didn't know about it yet.
- mrguyorama 5y ago
  An interesting disconnect to me is that I thought you were referring to generic websites, not ones that you can actually add/do stuff in. Contrast a site like "Youtube" where you usually just passively consumer (and indeed it DOES have a shortcut list viewed by typing '?') and something like jira where users are expected to be somewhat familiar and doing lots of things
  - mst 5y ago
    For youtube, there's a menu link that tells you and also documentation here: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7631406?hl=en-GB https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7631406?hl=en-GB Like I say, the big problem here is 'realising that googling "$site keyboard shortcuts" actually has a point in the first place' - hence why I tell people about '?' any time I think it might be useful :D