*whispers softly* the reason that mice have taken precedence over the keyboard isn't because designers don't know what they're doing but because muscle-memory works to your disadvantage when the app you're writing is changing aspects of its design every other month, like any modern web app
because keyboards provide a discrete set of points, your brain will quickly learn them WHICH IS GREAT if your app never changes BUT means that backwards-incompatible features provide really bad UX
(there is also a steeper learning curve with keyboard design because the connection "key X = Y function" takes time to build, even if you have it written right there on the screen. clicking is extremely intuitive.)
Steeper learning curve for keyboard driven interfaces? Nah.
Most interfaces, if well designed, can be learned quickly.
You ever work retail? Most retail Point of Sale systems (at least, ~10 years ago when I was working retail) are keyboard driven and they are fantasticly fast. New hires learned the system in only a few hours.
Our tocuhscreen based systems, for U-scan and the like, took several days of training, and still proved too complicated for lots of employees.
@ajroach42 @kibi It’s notable that EVERY example I’ve seen in favor of keyboards’ learning curve has been a POS system. It’s entirely possible that keyboards are easier to learn there. But they’re single-purpose, single-designer systems. Modern computers aren’t, and the same lessons don’t apply.
@noelle @kibi I think that might be because it was the only real keyboard driven, non-command line environment that survived in to the modern age.
I'm certainly not saying that keyboard driven interfaces are the only way forward, or should always be used over mice, but they shouldn't be forgotten or dismissed out of hand, either.
@ajroach42 @kibi I don't think anyone's saying "get rid of the keyboard", but the twitter essay that inspired kibi's posts absolutely did say "get rid of the mouse".
"I make no secret of hating the mouse. I think it's a crime. I think it's stifling humanitys progress, a gimmick we can't get over. The mouse is the CueCat except it didn't get ridiculed and reviled as it should have been. It's inappropriate for almost everything we do." https://twitter.com/gravislizard/status/927598314748502018
@kibi @ajroach42 And that's based ENTIRELY around "you can navigate a POS with just the keyboard so why do you need a mouse?" and the answer is "because we're not in 1987 anymore and computers can do more than one thing".
And, like, elsewhere in the same self-contradictory rant even the author of the tweetstorm makes a pretty good argument for the mouse: https://twitter.com/gravislizard/status/927607925635391488
Mice aren't bad. Keyboards aren't bad. Modern software is pretty user hostile and needlessly slow either way.
@ajroach42 @noelle @kibi I disagree, mice are bad
Have you ever tried to teach someone to use a mouse? It's a lot harder than you'd think and not really worth the effort
If you're doing arty type things you'd be better served by a pen, CAD is better with something with a capability to move in 3 dimensions, just about anything else is better with a keyboard
I have, yeah. My grandmother was an 8-bit computer user. When she finally moved to modern computers, the mouse frustrated her for months.
The whole icon metaphor was confusing for her, honestly.
But that's because she learned to use computers without mice first, you know?
I wouldn't want to try and navigate a wiki without a mouse or a touch input.
@ajroach42 @noelle @kibi You can do it easy enough with some minor modifications
If you look at something like Vimium for Chrome it does keyboard navigation really well, just press a key to tell it you want to follow a link or open one in a new tab, then press the couple of keys that pop up next to that link
@troubleMoney @noelle @kibi
I've used vimium. I don't hate it, but I did find it needlessly complex compared to just using a mouse.