
Show HN: An experimental, keyboard-first user interface - dschramm
https://emvi.com/blog/a-new-experimental-user-interface-QMZgmZG1L5
======
DavidVoid
Always good to see companies put some effort into good keyboard navigation!

If you want a keyboard-first interface for your web browser I can recommend
Vimium (which I'm sure a lot of you have already heard of). I'm not actually a
Vim user (at least not yet), but I rely pretty heavily on Vimium's shortcuts
in Firefox nowadays. I started using it when I had a school-provided laptop
which had an awful trackpad which was way too slow and annoying to use for my
taste.

Vimium: [https://vimium.github.io/](https://vimium.github.io/)

Screenshot of shortcuts in Vimium:
[https://i.imgur.com/x1Y7OvQ.png](https://i.imgur.com/x1Y7OvQ.png)

EDIT: I almost forgot to mention my favorite feature (which is not limited to
Vimium).

Custom search engines are great! If I want to go to the Wikipedia page on
aviation then I can just press _Shift+o_ and type _w aviation_ and it will
immediately open that Wikpedia page in a new tab.

The other search engines I frequently use are: google translate, thesaurus
(synonyms), and justwatch (to see if/where a show/movie is available in my
country).

~~~
RobertRoberts
>Custom search engines...

Firefox has had this feature for many many years.

I press ctrl+L (keyboard focus to location bar) type "w aviation" and press
enter.

It's built in already as a default feature. To add a custom search to Firefox,
right click on the search field and click "Add keyword for this search". I
chose "w" for Wikipedia like you have.

~~~
sullyj3
Chrome does this more simply, but the feature is less discoverable. you don't
have to create the keywords manually, you just hit tab after entering the URL
where the search box is located. since the URL is autocompleted, for
frequently used websites this is a matter of typing the first two or three
characters and then hitting right arrow.

~~~
rmetzler
You can also set up custom short codes for search engines in Chrome. I use gh
for GitHub and w for Wikipedia for example. Just type gh space react and use
the keyboard navigation on github to navigate further. A lot of keyboard
enabled sites have set up ? key for help about keyboard commands.

------
Avamander
I suspect most people here are forgetting that the average person types slower
and finds keys slower than they can point-and-click, because they can't touch
type. Keyboard-first user interface is definitely not an improvement if the
same thing can't be done with a mouse in a reasonable time.

~~~
gamegoblin
Is this true for anybody under the age of say, 40? I don't know a single
person between the age of 15 and 40 who can't touch type at least 50 WPM.

I think the main hindrance for most people is not lack of touch typing skills,
but more lack of ability or desire to memorize key bindings or the names of
commands.

~~~
chrismorgan
As an Australian, outside the family I grew up in, and other software
developers I know, I can’t think of _anyone_ that I know can type at 50wpm on
a physical keyboard. But then, I don’t actually know the typing abilities of
many people in the range 15–40. On touch keyboards with autocorrect and
autocomplete, I’ve seen various people typing well past 50wpm. Meanwhile I
type 110wpm on a normal keyboard and maybe 30wpm on a touchscreen phone
keyboard.

(On later reflection, I have actually thought of three that I know or used to
know that can type at a decent speed. But I can think of quite a few more that
can’t.)

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Fellow Australian here.

I work in metal fabrication, and I can tell you the overwhelming majority of
building and fabrication tradespeople can’t touch type, regardless of age.

------
marcosdumay
Web sites tend to be created for novice users, because users come from
everywhere all the time, and tend to not stick around for long enough to get
competent on your design. (Really, on how many sites can a user get
competent?)

I guess it's time to reexamine the reach of assumption, but I'm sure it will
stand correct more often than wrong.

~~~
jborichevskiy
Not 100% related but a fun thought experiment I’ve been thinking about. What
if all these various online marketplaces (Amazon, Shopify, Weebly, Wix, eBay)
had the _exact same interface_ functionality? Themes might be different but
searching, sorting, comparing, and buying were standard across the board, like
NPC shops in video games.

I feel like it would lead to a significant increase in sales, due to the
decreased cognitive load of figuring out yet another shitty interface. Mix in
seamless payments and account management, and the idea of an online store
starts to disappear entirely, to be replaced with the ability to just... buy
stuff.

~~~
dfee
“What if there was only one way to buy things”, “then 100% of things bought
would be bought through that one way”.

If you eliminate differentiation you are eliminating friction, but also
innovation.

~~~
jborichevskiy
Fair point.

Maybe it can better be phrased as,

"what if online marketplaces published their data in an open format allowing
the end client to display them however the user prefers"?

~~~
the_other
You mean like CSS Zen Garden?

~~~
all2
Or via Styx/9p2000. Could you imagine an online store that mounted directly
into your operating system? There would be a whole market of GUIs.

[edit]

Perhaps provided on a 9p.mydomain.tld subdomain?

Or would it just be something like nttp instead of http?

[/edit]

------
philjohn
I worked for a company that made software for libraries (public and academic).
It evolved over many years, starting off as a terminal session onto a
mainframe.

The newer windows version still kept every single keyboard shortcut, because
it turns out once you know the shortcuts, it's so much faster than pointing
and clicking.

~~~
EvanAnderson
Developers paying attention to keyboard shortcuts is a fit-and-finish metric.
I'd even go so far as to suggest it's a good indicator of whether the
developer actually cares about their users.

Windows itself did a great job of keyboard shortcut consistency through
Windows 7. Windows 8 and beyond, however, have been less so.

Pressing ALT-F4 while Windows Explorer has focus on Windows Server 2019 and
finding that you're rudely logged-off with not warning (which has _something_
to do with UAC settings, and can be replicated on Windows Server 2012 R2 w/
the "Desktop Experience" feature enabled) gave me a very "Gee, these guys
really don't care about me" kind of feeling. There are others, but they're not
coming to me right now.

~~~
userbinator
That's weird, apparently in Win10 and 8 you should still see a confirmation
dialog, so I'm surprised why 2012R2 and 2019 wouldn't:

[https://winaero.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2012/08/shutdown...](https://winaero.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2012/08/shutdown.png)

[https://www.tenforums.com/attachments/general-
support/241264...](https://www.tenforums.com/attachments/general-
support/241264d1564075354t-start-shutdown-menu-changed-its-default-switch-
user-screen-shot-07-25-19-10.19-am.jpg?s=8da2aa0d464cbab8099a936bd580b926)

~~~
EvanAnderson
Here's some discussion about it:
[https://serverfault.com/questions/967452/windows-
server-2019...](https://serverfault.com/questions/967452/windows-
server-2019-altf4-logs-off-immediately-without-prompt-dialog)

It only happens on Server 2012 R2 when "Desktop Experience" is enabled and
you're logged-on with an account that would have groups stripped from its
token by User Account Control.

I've no doubt it's related to UAC, ultimately, but I've nearly reached the
breaking point w/ my disgust with being unpaid outsourced QA for Microsoft.
Deploying and supporting their products have been my livelihood for 20 years,
but the "new Microsoft" in the Windows as a Service era is straining my
ability to recommend them.

~~~
userbinator
That explains why I've never encountered it, and why it may have gotten past
MS' own testing --- I know MS employees who use the server edition of Windows
on their development systems, but almost everyone turns off UAC because it's
such a pain to work with.

------
pulkas
I think bloomberg terminal's UI is the best keyboard centiric UI ever.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE8HiHZcgEE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE8HiHZcgEE)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODgs0eWAIKc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODgs0eWAIKc)

------
httpsterio
I like the idea and I would use apps like this in my own personal life, but as
a UX designer this is also a super horrible experience if you don't give any
affordance in the UI to the user indicating what type of action they can take.

~~~
marvinblum
Yes we've thought about that too. That's why we added autocompletion and we
will add an interactive tutorial should we decide to commit to this.

~~~
flyinglizard
Not just auto completion but interactive auto completion coming from a list of
options. This is what I did for one of my projects - you get a vertical list
of all possible inputs (within reason of course) which is narrowed down as you
type. You could use the arrows to navigate if you're not inclined to type -
arrows - tab - arrows - tab would build a complete command sequence.

~~~
marvinblum
This is exactly what we did.

------
crocodiletears
This interaction model looks a lot like a hybrid between Blender's tool
search, and FEMA.gov's site navbar, both being among my favorite UI elements
floating around cyberspace. I don't have anything to criticize here, or any
insight to add. I'm honestly just thrilled that this concept of a hybrid
command-line is being explored more thoroughly.

~~~
bastijn
It looks a lot like the command palette of sublime, vs code, etc
(cmd+shift+p). Combined with the navigate functionality of those editors
(cmd+p). Where actions like back map to the command pallet and navigation like
.articles maps to the file navigation.

~~~
myfonj
Exactly. "Command palette" is the name of this user interface element known
from many editors, app launchers and OS app integrations and is proven to be
extremely efficient. It almost seems like the article is reinventing it and
calling it "command line".

BTW even in VS Code there is in fact single unified input: "Go to File input"
(Ctrl+P) that changes behavior according prefixes; "Show all
Commands"(Ctrl+Shift+P) just opens the same input with ">" prefilled; "Go to
Symbol in Workspace" (Ctrl+T) prefills "#", "Go to Line" (Ctrl+G) prefills ":"
and so on. It even shows you placeholder when empty that reads "Type '?' here
to get help [...]" what lists all those prefixes.

------
dschramm
Hello HN!

We just rolled out this little MVP for a new user interface for our knowledge
base software.

I would love to hear what you think about it!

Cheers, Daniel

~~~
Hackbraten
Please add a language selector so I can read the website in English. Or maybe
lose the German localization altogether.

As a German native speaker, I find the German translation quite difficult to
read.

~~~
marvinblum
You can change that on the account settings page.
[https://emvi.com/account](https://emvi.com/account)

------
eyelidlessness
For (relevant) prior art, see Notational Velocity (which appears to have
successors in various states, nvAlt and nvUltra).

There's also Alfred, Quicksilver and Enso

~~~
matlin
Additionally, Superhuman seems to be doubling down on this approach for their
productivity inbox and VS Code has this type of input/UI available with Cmd-P.
Spacemacs kind of does this when helping you navigate emacs modes.

It's a fantastic marriage of traditional search box feature discovery and
keyboard shortcuts.

~~~
marvinblum
These are the places where we got our inspiration from :) But we couldn't find
any relevant attempts to implement something like this in a browser,
especially for non-technical users.

------
rplnt
Check out Vivaldi browser. I find it unusable due to its performance, but they
do some interesting stuff.

[https://help.vivaldi.com/article/quick-
commands/](https://help.vivaldi.com/article/quick-commands/)

Also, classic Opera had single key page navigation (and loads and loads of
shortcuts).

[https://web.archive.org/web/20111014104313/http://help.opera...](https://web.archive.org/web/20111014104313/http://help.opera.com/Windows/9.50/en/keyboard.html#single-
key)

~~~
dotancohen
The thing missing from both those implementations is link following. That's
the "HT" in "HTML" and "HTTP", so no supporting it from the keyboard seems
almost unacceptable to me in a web browser. Yes, I'm aware that no major
brower _ever_ did support link hinting out of the box.

I'm using Tridactyl now, and am extremely happy with it. There are some
problems, notably on the lack of Tridactyl support before the page loads, but
with TreeStyleTabs it is the best browsing experience I ever rememeber having.

------
wainstead
I used ratpoison for a while on one of my Linux boxes and much liked it.

> The name "ratpoison" reflects its major design goal: it lets the user manage
> application windows without using a mouse. Unlike other tiling window
> managers like Ion, ratpoison completely ignores the mouse (or "rat"), and
> avoids window decorations as much as possible. The default keybindings are
> specifically designed to not conflict with Emacs.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratpoison](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratpoison)

------
notRobot
Relatedly, there's nothing I hate more than new keyboards and laptops not
including the "menu key", which has the same action as a right-click.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menu_key](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menu_key)

I have a hard time living without it.

~~~
marvinblum
Good idea! We can bind that additionally to the Control + Space keyboard
shortcut.

------
Groxx
Seems we might be giving it the hug of death. In case it renders weird / 503s:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200320200023/https://emvi.com/...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200320200023/https://emvi.com/blog/a-new-
experimental-user-interface-QMZgmZG1L5)

~~~
marvinblum
Hm everything is looking good so far. We'll switch to a more powerful machine
anyway soon ;)

~~~
marvinblum
Just in case, here is our Medium blog:
[https://medium.com/emvi](https://medium.com/emvi)

------
zzo38computer
I think the solution should be to use the "accesskey" attribute.
Unfortunately, not enough web page writers use it.

~~~
marvinblum
Wow I actually never heard of this! I will definitely consider it while
implementing more features of Emvi in our new UI.

------
dariusj18
Let's bring back gopher and use this as an interface.

~~~
achillean
Not sure if joking but Gopher is alive on the Internet today (281 results) if
you wanted to create a new interface and test it w/ real data:

[https://beta.shodan.io/search?query=port%3A70+gopher](https://beta.shodan.io/search?query=port%3A70+gopher)

------
chickenpotpie
I've had an idea for a while now to have a website that only has a text input
like this to allow simultaneously building a website and a voice assistant
(Alexa/Google Home) plugin. The development is much faster because it's the
same back end for both apps, gives a standardized UI, and the auto fill on the
website teaches what is possible on the voice assistant.

------
nemoniac
An excellent keyboard-first interface exists already. It's called Emacs. Give
it a chance. It might surprise you.

~~~
CarlRJ
Vim

------
dangoor
This gave me a sense of deja vu. A couple of weeks ago, there was repl.it's
"graphical command line":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22498665](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22498665)

------
staplers
Looks like Notion for purist developers.

[https://www.notion.so/](https://www.notion.so/)

------
RMPR
I absolutely like this, being a keyboard centered user, I like to see things
making my life a lot easier.

------
keenmaster
I could see this getting acquired to enhance Microsoft’s Cortana or Apple’s
Siri and Spotlight.

~~~
marvinblum
We are open for offers :D

------
p2t2p
See also: dot menu in Jira

~~~
p2t2p
I mean try pressing dot on your keyboard on any page in Jira

