4 ms·

I was just reading this week about someone trying to get their UHK keyboard to launch an application on Windows by producing a sequence of keys starting with th

by dm319 3y ago

I was just reading this week about someone trying to get their UHK keyboard to launch an application on Windows by producing a sequence of keys starting with the Windows key. They needed to put in a delay to get this to work, and it reminded me of my frustrations launching programs in Windows as the start menu takes its sweet and variable time. Not least because I know the technology has been focused on getting adverts into the start menu.

danuker 3y ago
Isn't there still the Run dialog, Win+R in newer versions of Windows?
- abwizz 3y ago
  this is the way. but putting delay between events (not keystrokes) is nevertheless a good practice
- Anthony-G 3y ago
  Thanks. I had forgot about that because the Windows key by itself was fast enough in Windows 7 that I stopped using Win+R.
- mwcampbell 3y ago
  There is, but even that's not perfect. I have this stupid habit where I bring up the NVDA screen reader when I want it by typing Windows+R, typing "nvda", and pressing Enter. (I have low vision, and I use a screen reader sometimes, but not all the time.) I know, I really should use a desktop keyboard shortcut instead. Anyway, it's muscle memory, and I do it automatically, without watching for the Run dialog to appear. Only sometimes, the Run dialog doesn't appear fast enough, and maybe the "n" doesn't make it into that dialog's edit box. Or, on one or two embarrasing occasions, the Run dialog didn't grab focus at all, or at least not until way too late, and a message that just said "nvda" made it into a chat window.
- whywhywhywhy 3y ago
  MacOS manages to provide an advanced search launcher experience as fast or faster than the run dialog that requires the perfect exe name. What’s Microsoft’s excuse? Tired of their incompetence being handwaved and a several decades old jank non-solution being held up as acceptable. MS needs more accountability in their teams.
Ekaros 3y ago
Or this new version will just break... I had some nice weeks when the search just didn't work at all... While I was too lazy to restart the computer to fix it... Then again, I guess any other OS might break in same way. Like my Debian VM just kinda stops responding to part of the screen sometimes if programs are maximised...
mike_hearn 3y ago
This is partly an OS design issue. There's no deep reason the OS should ever throw away keypresses, but contemporary GUIs have a very weak and flaky notion of focus. Contrast this with mainframe apps where users could learn to go incredibly fast, because keystrokes were buffered per connection and the mainframe would process them serially, so even if you typed faster than the machine could process them it wouldn't matter, no keys were lost.
- giantrobot 3y ago
  It's not necessarily Windows throwing away keypress events but the order of events system wide not necessarily staying in the expected order or the target for an event not being active at the right time. If you activate the start menu with a keypress it's going to grab focus. Before it grabs focus the previous window in focus will get events. The same applies with panels (drawers? I forget Windows' name for them) in the Start Menu. There's a non-zero time between activation and grabbing focus to receive keypress events. Everything from animation delays to stupid enumeration bugs can affect a windows not grabbing focus to receive keypress events. Scripting a UI always has challenges with timing like this. A mainframe terminal has a single input context. You can fire off a bunch of events quickly because there's no real opportunity for another process (on that terminal) to grab focus and receive those events. Note the above doesn't absolve Windows of any stupid performance/UX problems with bad animation timings and general shittiness. Microsoft has been focusing on delivering ads and returning telemetry with Windows instead of fixing UX and performance issues.
  - mike_hearn 3y ago
    Yes, my point is that an alternative OS design could serialize keystrokes such that a keypress has to be handled (including focus changes) before the next keys are delivered, allowing you to type ahead without keypresses going to the wrong place or depending on the vagaries of timing. It might require a different approach to UI API and design, though.
    - immibis 3y ago
viraptor 3y ago
That sounds terrible. Why interact with the start menu at all if you can just start the application itself through the path? That's the kind of abuse that delays things in the first place.

by dm319 3y ago

danuker 3y ago

Isn't there still the Run dialog, Win+R in newer versions of Windows?

abwizz 3y ago
this is the way. but putting delay between events (not keystrokes) is nevertheless a good practice
Anthony-G 3y ago
Thanks. I had forgot about that because the Windows key by itself was fast enough in Windows 7 that I stopped using Win+R.
mwcampbell 3y ago
There is, but even that's not perfect. I have this stupid habit where I bring up the NVDA screen reader when I want it by typing Windows+R, typing "nvda", and pressing Enter. (I have low vision, and I use a screen reader sometimes, but not all the time.) I know, I really should use a desktop keyboard shortcut instead. Anyway, it's muscle memory, and I do it automatically, without watching for the Run dialog to appear. Only sometimes, the Run dialog doesn't appear fast enough, and maybe the "n" doesn't make it into that dialog's edit box. Or, on one or two embarrasing occasions, the Run dialog didn't grab focus at all, or at least not until way too late, and a message that just said "nvda" made it into a chat window.
whywhywhywhy 3y ago
MacOS manages to provide an advanced search launcher experience as fast or faster than the run dialog that requires the perfect exe name. What’s Microsoft’s excuse? Tired of their incompetence being handwaved and a several decades old jank non-solution being held up as acceptable. MS needs more accountability in their teams.

Ekaros 3y ago

Or this new version will just break... I had some nice weeks when the search just didn't work at all... While I was too lazy to restart the computer to fix it... Then again, I guess any other OS might break in same way. Like my Debian VM just kinda stops responding to part of the screen sometimes if programs are maximised...

mike_hearn 3y ago

This is partly an OS design issue. There's no deep reason the OS should ever throw away keypresses, but contemporary GUIs have a very weak and flaky notion of focus. Contrast this with mainframe apps where users could learn to go incredibly fast, because keystrokes were buffered per connection and the mainframe would process them serially, so even if you typed faster than the machine could process them it wouldn't matter, no keys were lost.

giantrobot 3y ago
It's not necessarily Windows throwing away keypress events but the order of events system wide not necessarily staying in the expected order or the target for an event not being active at the right time. If you activate the start menu with a keypress it's going to grab focus. Before it grabs focus the previous window in focus will get events. The same applies with panels (drawers? I forget Windows' name for them) in the Start Menu. There's a non-zero time between activation and grabbing focus to receive keypress events. Everything from animation delays to stupid enumeration bugs can affect a windows not grabbing focus to receive keypress events. Scripting a UI always has challenges with timing like this. A mainframe terminal has a single input context. You can fire off a bunch of events quickly because there's no real opportunity for another process (on that terminal) to grab focus and receive those events. Note the above doesn't absolve Windows of any stupid performance/UX problems with bad animation timings and general shittiness. Microsoft has been focusing on delivering ads and returning telemetry with Windows instead of fixing UX and performance issues.
- mike_hearn 3y ago
  Yes, my point is that an alternative OS design could serialize keystrokes such that a keypress has to be handled (including focus changes) before the next keys are delivered, allowing you to type ahead without keypresses going to the wrong place or depending on the vagaries of timing. It might require a different approach to UI API and design, though.
  - immibis 3y ago

viraptor 3y ago

That sounds terrible. Why interact with the start menu at all if you can just start the application itself through the path? That's the kind of abuse that delays things in the first place.