Comments on: Custom events as API end points for key bindings and more

By: eyelidlessness

eyelidlessness — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 05:27:21 +0000

Addendum to point #4: Allow users to reassign key commands!

By: Nosredna

Nosredna — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 04:46:44 +0000

This is a pretty tough problem.

I find myself more and more confused as I tend to think of the app I’m in rather than the OS. Safari and Firefox looks so much the same to me on Mac and PC that I often find myself doing things like hitting Ctrl-T to open another bvrowser window. I keep trying it because I KNOW it works. Then finally, oh yeah–wrong computer.

By: eyelidlessness

eyelidlessness — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 00:41:13 +0000

“and might cause unexpected behaviors to users who aren’t”
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I meant to add that, even as a keyboard junky, I found Gmail’s keyboard commands infuriating for this reason and quickly disabled them. Which reminds me:
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4. Allow users to turn off this feature. Like it or not, the web is still the web; if users prefer the behavior they’re accustomed to (no key commands), they should have that option available.

By: eyelidlessness

eyelidlessness — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 00:39:22 +0000

I think it’s important to be cautious about a few things with keystrokes on web apps:
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1. Key combinations should use a modifier key. Without them, you interfere with some configurations of find as you type, which is wrong to do to your users. It also provides cognitive dissonance to users who are accustomed to key commands, and might cause unexpected behaviors to users who aren’t. That is also wrong to do to your users.
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In some cases exceptions can be made (non-standard use of right/left arrows, pgup/dn, escape and so on), but it’s important for those exceptions to be made for keys which are already commonly used as keystrokes in existing software.
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2. Respect the OS’s conventions. All of the major browsers allow accurate OS detection, use that. If your user is on OS X, you should bind to metaKey rather than ctrlKey where possible. This isn’t really a hard and fast rule however; for example, if you want to offer a functionality similar to OS X’s Spotlight, it makes sense to use a similar key combination, such as ctrl+space. In fact, I’d recommend always providing commands similar to the established ones where functionality is similar. For example, if your richtext editor has a special copy function, it makes sense to bind it to ctrl (or cmd) shift c.
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3. Research existing key combinations in the various browsers and OSes, and avoid conflicts with those. Obviously you cannot hijack combinations like ctrl-w, but to varying degrees you can hijack some existing combinations. That is wrong to do to your users.

By: Dion Almaer

Dion Almaer — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 18:17:32 +0000

Anjanb,

Exactly! I love the idea of having actions as you describe (next, prev, etc). It would be very lightweight to start seeing common events that people expose and “standardizing” them so you know that “n” always goes to the next item in a list etc.

Cheers,

Dion

By: anjanb

anjanb — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 16:46:07 +0000

hi dion,

“I love keyboard shortcuts. I hate the mouse. I wish that Web applications would offer more keyboard shortcuts a la Gmail,”

Do I love keyboards ? (I use emacs) These days I use the mouse more because the web browser forces me to use the mouse. Keyboard doesn’t give me as much control browsing stuff that mouse does.

I’ve long wanted web apps to provide keyboard users something. Especially those tutorials . they should have a KEY for NEXT page, etc. All the tutorials and articles on the web should have a PREV, NEXT, PAGE UP, PAGE DOWN standardized. What would it take to do that ?

Will try out what you’ve done and see if I can include them in my apps.

thank you,

BR,
~A