The origin of Alt+F4 as the close window shortcut on Windows. (It was intentionally chosen as a key combination that you don’t press by accident.)
There was a time when consistency and accessibility were primary considerations in GUI design. Sadly this value system was destroyed in two steps. First web eliminated the structure derived from platform frameworks that underpinned good desktop GUI. Then mobile sidelined the human-centric design thinking that derived from office ergonomics and turned the role of UI designer into “illustrator who draws pictures of apps.”
Frankly, I'm glad the whole "consistent UI is king" era has ended. It largely grew as a reaction to the DOS era when everything was keyboard shortcuts and memorization was key. All the differing approaches made using different application suites maddening!
But then we moved into the GUI and everyone thought it was important not just to have the same shortcuts or even the same menu layouts, but literally the same design language in icon design. It trained people that switching platforms was much harder than it should be. In reality, noone is struggling with the web because of minor layout issues.
How do you know? Is there usability research to support this claim? Probably not, since practically no one does actual usability testing anymore. Product managers just slap something together and then start A/B testing to fudge the narrow metrics that they need for their performance reviews.
Do you need any? Do you really think people struggle at going between CNN, Foxnews, and MSNBC?
Ok, things get harder when we talk about shopping carts, logins, and other details, but even there not all good flows have to look the same in literally every way in order to be usable.
People probably struggle at extracting information efficiently from all of those, yes. That is also probably exacerbated by the fact that all of these sites optimise for “engagement” and ad impressions rather than efficiency.
At least CNN still has lite.cnn.com as a low-fat alternative. (Slightly too slim, otherwise everyone would use it…)
I weep often because I can see that people are making mistakes that make software less useable because they are either ignorant or arrogant and fail to uphold the guidelines that have been worked out over three decades of blood, sweat and tears.
> The Cut command is ⇧ Shift+Del; Copy is Ctrl+Ins; Paste is ⇧ Shift+Ins;
I wish this had caught on. CTRL-X/C/V is okay-ish until you get to different platforms and/or need to use the terminal.
I also wish we'd have stuck to a clearer separation of which modifier keys apply to the OS/desktop level, which ones are app level, and which ones are text/input level.
This is why I love my macOS keybindings. I can not believe what a waste the Windows key is compare to the Command. I use extensive AutoHotKey scripts and hardware keyboard macros to compensate.
I mostly SSH to Linux, but when I use a Linux Desktop, I struggle to get the key bindings to my taste.
> I also wish we'd have stuck to a clearer separation of which modifier keys apply to the OS/desktop level, which ones are app level, and which ones are text/input level.
Oh, absolutely.
A small mercy is that software on Linux never seems to use the Windows aka super key in shortcuts. So i set up my desktop environment such that all its shortcuts use super. It means i have a completely nonstandard setup, but at least it means there are no collisions!
Apps mostly steer clear of ctrl + alt + funky key combinations (ie not letters), so you can have those for locking, rebooting, etc.
But it would be lovely if this was systematic, codified, and standardised.
And it's what everyone used throughout the eighties and most of the nineties, until Microsoft copied the silly Cmd-X/C/V (only with Ctrl in stead of Cmd) from Apple for Windows 95 or thereabouts.
Note that these work as advertised on Windows 10 at least. I seem to recall those were listed as edit keys in a cmd or terminal window at some time in the past, but not when I just checked.
Except for maybe some old Unix software like Vim, I'm guessing a lot of people here were never exposed to a world like DOS where, to a greater of lesser degree, every program had a complete unique command structure. There was even a major lawsuit (which was never really resolved) between Lotus and Borland over the latter mimicking Lotus 1-2-3 menus.
> I'm guessing a lot of people here were never exposed to a world like DOS
Which is why, 16 years ago, I took over that article and fleshed out a stub into something more descriptive, with examples and so on. :-) I'm rather pleased to see it on the front page of HN.
CUA is a lot more pervasive now than people appreciate, I suspect. It's what unifies the designs of KDE, Xfce, GNOME, LXDE/LXQt, Enlightenment, and so on. Mac OS X is closer to it than classic MacOS was. There are visible traces of it in Haiku.
In fact it's almost easier to point to UIs that don't have much trace of it -- aside from touchscreen ones. There are Oberon and A2,. There's Plan 9 -- but its successor Inferno is more CUA-influenced.
It was so prolific that a lot of software at the time came with a cardboard cutout with the keyboard shortcuts printed on it. Most were long and not very wide so they would fit on your keyboard above the function keys. Fancier ones even had cutouts so it rested over the keys and effectively relabeled them.
There was a time when consistency and accessibility were primary considerations in GUI design. Sadly this value system was destroyed in two steps. First web eliminated the structure derived from platform frameworks that underpinned good desktop GUI. Then mobile sidelined the human-centric design thinking that derived from office ergonomics and turned the role of UI designer into “illustrator who draws pictures of apps.”