[HN Gopher] Navigational Instruments (2020)
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Navigational Instruments (2020)
Author : signa11
Score : 47 points
Date : 2023-09-12 11:24 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (exple.tive.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (exple.tive.org)
| uoaei wrote:
| I cover the "search keyword" use case with DuckDuckGo's bangs,
| but it seems even more general than that. Good to know. It's
| unfortunate that DDG's search quality is still behind Google's,
| as bad as the latter's still is, so the utility is still limited
| compared to searching those sites directly with bangs (e.g. !gh,
| !so, !bugzilla).
| nephrite wrote:
| They keep suggesting "#" and "$" but those don't work.
| twic wrote:
| They seem to work for me.
| mdip wrote:
| It's possible you've had these customized (by a toolbar or
| direct setting). I'm fairly certain you can change the built-in
| ones (I have google mapped to "g" like it was (is?) in Opera).
| Rygian wrote:
| This was new to me:
|
| * You can use this trick [Ctrl-Reload] to pop stuff out of the
| middle of your back and forward history stack into new tabs.
| jcutrell wrote:
| Ctrl-Back and Ctrl-Forward clicks work in Chrome as well, very
| handy to have.
| nayuki wrote:
| With the mouse, middle-clicking or Ctrl+leftclicking on those
| buttons have the same effect.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > Add ? to show only search suggestions.
|
| > Hitting Ctrl-enter in the URL bar works like
| autocomplete;"mozilla" go straight to www.mozilla.com, for
| example. Shift-enter will open a URL in a new tab.
|
| These work in chrome too, except new window rather then new tab.
| Animats wrote:
| This is rather EMACS-like. I thought we were past that in user
| interfaces.
| mdip wrote:
| I honestly can't remember if I've seen this done before or if it
| was some early morning dream[0].
|
| My pet peeve is user interfaces that provide no "discovery"
| aspect. I'm not referring to those obnoxious "introduction" tips
| that occur with a lot of software when you first use them or when
| a new version comes out. Those tend to be heavy-handed --
| stopping the action or preventing you from using the application
| without clicking "Skip" somewhere. I'm talking about "hints" in a
| place that is obvious but not overwhelming.
|
| Unfortunately, the "minimalism" of the last few decades has seen
| a _lot_ of these kinds of hints disappear, entirely, from places
| they had previously existed. Many applications have eliminated
| things like "showing what keyboard command would trigger a drop-
| down/hamburger[2] menu item directly".
|
| Back in the "bad old days", nearly everything that was commonly
| used (Cut/Paste, etc) would include a "Ctrl-C" or "Shift-Ins"
| note next to the menu item.
|
| One area that's really common and extremely opaque is the "mouse
| with keyboard modifier" command. Graphics applications
| (Photoshop) and especially 3D design tools (Blender comes to
| mind) can be totally unusable without knowing that "dragging with
| the middle button while pressing ALT rotates the view around an
| set fixed/anchor point" where just dragging with the middle
| button rotates the view treating the "camera"'s location as the
| fixed point.
|
| The mouse cursor has traditionally served a couple of very simple
| purposes: to identify where you're clicking and to provide visual
| feedback on "whether or not clicking on that will do anything[1]"
|
| My "dream" mouse cursor would -- upon initiating a drag, display
| "what the action of dragging will do" along with the available
| modifier keys with a single word or very small description of
| what it does floating by the cursor in as much of a "non-
| distracting" manner as possible. Upon clicking the modifier,
| anything "helpful" in using that feature should surface.
|
| I must have used Photoshop through two or three versions before I
| figured out that you can hold the Spacebar while creating a new
| selection to have it "lock the shape while allowing you to move
| the selection around". Things like the "circle selection" tool
| were always _impossible_ to line up correctly without modifying
| the initial attempt at placing the thing in the right location.
|
| For a simpler software, the extra context _might_ amount to
| simply changing the cursor to a more obvious symbol for the
| action, but considering how many web applications with fancy
| "replacements for built-in things like select lists" fail to set
| the cursor correctly, I'm not holding my breath that anything
| like this will ever happen.
|
| [0] I can't be the only one on this site who regularly dreams
| about code/software. I'm not saying I don't have a problem, just
| that I'm in good company. :)
|
| [1] Minor, sometimes confusing, additional context is provided,
| like the "finger" sometimes indicating that you'll navigate to a
| new link, but can also mean "select an item in a list" which can
| also be a simple arrow.
|
| [2] To Firefox's credit, a lot of menu items include the shortcut
| key.
| mklein994 wrote:
| Cool. I didn't know about "Ctrl+T, Ctrl+Z"; I've always used
| "Alt+D, Alt+Enter" to duplicate tabs. This other shortcut might
| come in handy if I want to immediately edit the URL.
| nayuki wrote:
| With the mouse, you can Ctrl+drag to duplicate a tab.
| NickNaraghi wrote:
| I appreciate this a lot. I've had
| https://wiki.tilde.institute/w/firefox-address-bar-tips as my new
| window homepage in firefox for some time. It has changed how I
| use bookmarks and history alongside OneTab to keep track of the
| might-be-interesting-later pages I need to return to. This feels
| like the next level of the same!
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(page generated 2023-09-12 23:01 UTC)