"Side Bar" WTF

Re: Windows 8 Video Blakeyrant

Anonymouse — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 11:34:36 GMT

Cassidy:
I know I feel more comfortable and productive at a command line in many cases because I'm familiar with it, but I've never taken any measurements to compare speeds.

I refuse to believe that there can ever be a single input method that can be strictly superior to all others at all possible tasks. In other words, any given input paradigm will most likely have a set of tasks that it will excel at, while there will be others that it will suck at.

Re: Windows 8 Video Blakeyrant

Daniel Beardsmore — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 13:24:25 GMT

Zecc:
I'm cool with a touchpad instead of a mouse (as long as it still has accompanying physical buttons, mind you) …

I had to use my laptop for a few days while resurrecting Windows 8 (within a week, it broke its own bootloader configuration file and stopped booting — a bug that goes back to Vista).

I was surprised how easily I could pull off artwork in Inkscape with a trackpad. However, I do have an advantage: it's a four-button trackpad. So many machines have only two trackpad buttons! I typically use the top-left corner to simulate middle mouse, but having a hardware button allows me to have middle-drag, which is pan in Inkscape, something I use constantly. Plus middle click for zoom in, hold shift to zoom out — so much easier to do with a real button. I find tapping the top-left corner really fiddly, sometimes the driver thinks you just clicked.

Re: Windows 8 Video Blakeyrant

Zecc — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 09:58:46 GMT

joe.edwards:
You can pry my physical mouse and keyboard away from my cold dead fingertips.

I'm cool with a touchpad instead of a mouse (as long as it still has accompanying physical buttons, mind you), but I'll gladly grab the keyboard from your cold dead fingertips if that's what it takes to assure one for myself.

Re: Windows 8 Video Blakeyrant

Gurth — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 09:51:44 GMT

FrostCat:
Doesn't the idea of "doing away with the mouse and keyboard forever" lose meaning in the real world, where people *type*?

The fact that plenty of add-on keyboards are sold for tablets already seems to indicate that many people want to type on something other than a glass pane. Both full-size computers and tablets have their uses, but trying to use one for tasks better done on the other is just making things difficult for yourself, if you ask me.

Re: Windows 8 Video Blakeyrant

joe.edwards — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 05:25:44 GMT

FrostCat:
daveime:
JoeCool:
Closing apps: Alt-F4 works.

When people are pushing touchscreens as the new paradigm, something that will do away with the "mouse and keyboard forever"
Doesn't the idea of "doing away with the mouse and keyboard forever" lose meaning in the real world, where people *type*? I'm trying to imagine people in, say, HR or something, trying to do email and run payrolls and what-not, all from a soft keyboard. And then I imagine them storming the C-level offices with pitchforks.

You can pry my physical mouse and keyboard away from my cold dead fingertips.

Re: Windows 8 Video Blakeyrant

FrostCat — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 03:41:01 GMT

daveime:
JoeCool:
Closing apps: Alt-F4 works.

When people are pushing touchscreens as the new paradigm, something that will do away with the "mouse and keyboard forever"

Doesn't the idea of "doing away with the mouse and keyboard forever" lose meaning in the real world, where people *type*? I'm trying to imagine people in, say, HR or something, trying to do email and run payrolls and what-not, all from a soft keyboard. And then I imagine them storming the C-level offices with pitchforks.

Re: Windows 8 Video Blakeyrant

FrostCat — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 03:37:21 GMT

Cassidy:
Daniel Beardsmore:
You do realise it's not actually Blakeyrat, right?

Oh? Okay, I'll watch.
... time passes..
Consumed. He brings up some interesting points... but god he sounds so whiny about them, labouring his points somewhat.
I'd be interested in Blakey's feedback about UI design and discoverability - whether or not he agrees with points made.

Meh. I couldn't last two minutes, because he was just so wrong from the get-go. I need a higher quality of rant than that guy provided, and it includes at least a modicum of not talking out your ass. The new touch gestures aren't super-discoverable, but you can't be bothered to notice the mouse pointer changing when it hits the edge of the screen, and then experimenting? Are you someone's great-aunt Maude or something?

Re: Windows 8 Video Blakeyrant

Zecc — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 20:12:33 GMT

Gurth:
Ctrl+F4 goes through all windows of all applications, in the way Alt+Tab does in Windows. That last combo doesn't do anything in OS X, but Command+Tab cycles through applications, while Command+` (backtick/grave accent) cycles through the windows of the current application. Often, though, pressing F9 or F10 is handier if you're looking for a specific application or window (that's F3 and Ctrl+F3, respectively, for those used to new-style Mac keyboards).

My mistake. I wasn't sure about Ctrl+F4 and though I had realized I wrote Alt+Tab instead of Cmd+Tab out of habit, I never got to correct myself.

As for Cmd+`, it doesn't work in keyboards without a key for the backtick (obviously). F9, F10 and F3 are nice but they often conflict with applications. These are configurable, mind you.

Re: Windows 8 Video Blakeyrant

Gurth — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 18:39:48 GMT

Cassidy:
Gurth:
an app that gets closed and then re-opened will bring back the documents where you left off.

I would find that useful - bit like hibernation support. Often I want to continue where I left off after being interrupted with a journey or so.

I find it very handy: I often work on a bunch of documents at the same time, for example, and I like not having to manually re-open them all and find my place in them the next time I start up the application.

Zecc:
Ctrl+F4 on Mac is used for switching between windows of the currently focussed application (since Alt+Tab doesn't).

Ctrl+F4 goes through all windows of all applications, in the way Alt+Tab does in Windows. That last combo doesn't do anything in OS X, but Command+Tab cycles through applications, while Command+` (backtick/grave accent) cycles through the windows of the current application. Often, though, pressing F9 or F10 is handier if you're looking for a specific application or window (that's F3 and Ctrl+F3, respectively, for those used to new-style Mac keyboards).

Re: Windows 8 Video Blakeyrant

El_Heffe — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 18:24:20 GMT

JoeCool:
You are reading more into my statement than is there. How is it missing any point? Where do I argue that you should need to memorize key strokes? Why are you making shit up that I didn't say?

There were several comments about "this key combination does this" and "this key combination does that". That's what I was really responding to, not you specifically. I should have been more clear about that.

Re: Windows 8 Video Blakeyrant

JoeCool — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 18:08:00 GMT

El_Heffe:
JoeCool:
Closing apps: Alt-F4 works.
Yes it does. And there are lots of other key combinations that do lots of other things. And everyone here is familiar with all of them. But that completely misses the point. One of the main ideas behind a GUI is that you don't have to type a bunch of commands or know a bunch of key combinations -- everything you need is right there on the screen, either as an icon or button or menu item. When you elimate the graphic elements and force users to use various key combinations instead, you've just taken a giant step backwards to the old days of DOS.

You are reading more into my statement than is there. How is it missing any point? Where do I argue that you should need to memorize key strokes? Why are you making shit up that I didn't say? In fact, if you read further on in the thread, you will see that I complain about trying to print and not having a menu to do it.

Re: Windows 8 Video Blakeyrant

El_Heffe — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 18:00:06 GMT

JoeCool:
Closing apps: Alt-F4 works.

Yes it does. And there are lots of other key combinations that do lots of other things. And everyone here is familiar with all of them. But that completely misses the point. One of the main ideas behind a GUI is that you don't have to type a bunch of commands or know a bunch of key combinations -- everything you need is right there on the screen, either as an icon or button or menu item. When you elimate the graphic elements and force users to use various key combinations instead, you've just taken a giant step backwards to the old days of DOS.

Re: Windows 8 Video Blakeyrant

JoeCool — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 11:22:54 GMT

daveime:
JoeCool:
Closing apps: Alt-F4 works.

When people are pushing touchscreens as the new paradigm, something that will do away with the "mouse and keyboard forever". for you to suggest keyboard shortcuts as the easiest method to do something seems just a tad counterintuitive.
I'll tell you what it reminds me of ... the bad old days of Linux, where despite having a wonderful Gnome or KDE IDE, doing anything useful means dropping down to shell, and typing "tar -xvfc file destination".

Did you even watch the video? The whole point of this conversation is figuring out how to do things in Windows 8 on a laptop or desktop where there is no touch screen.

Re: Windows 8 Video Blakeyrant

Cassidy — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 10:50:02 GMT

Ben L.:
I run Fedora with xfce

Can I ask your opinion of XFCE over other X servers? I know the general anti-bloat/streamlined/speedy comments people have made, but would welcome more experiential feedback.

Ben L.:
To compile a program, I type "go build". Editing a file named pants.go is simply "vim pa[tab]"...keyboards are simply more efficient

I'm not convinced they are - Blakey once asked the question if you were measurably more efficient or simply felt it. I know I feel more comfortable and productive at a command line in many cases because I'm familiar with it, but I've never taken any measurements to compare speeds.

For some things I use aliases and scripts to kick off as a background task, for others I use graphical means. SFTP is one where I use both, depending upon the OS I'm currently on.

Re: Windows 8 Video Blakeyrant

Cassidy — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 10:38:05 GMT

daveime:
I'll tell you what it reminds me of ... the bad old days of Windows, where despite having a wonderful Control Panel or User Management IDE, doing anything useful means dropping down to shell, and typing "NET USER" or "NET USE" or "ARP -a" etc...

THAT WAS YEARS AGO TECHNOLOGY HAS MOVED ON STOP TALKING ABOUT ANCIENT STUFF O GOD WHY DO I BOTHER etc...