From: Juerd Date: 22:56 on 13 May 2005 Subject: Firefox hate No, I did not want you to close that tab with the textarea in which I had just written a lot, when I accidentally pressed ^W instead of ^V. Damnit. Now I have to start over. Juerd
From: Chris Devers Date: 23:06 on 13 May 2005 Subject: Re: Firefox hate On Fri, 13 May 2005, Juerd wrote: > No, I did not want you to close that tab with the textarea in which I > had just written a lot, when I accidentally pressed ^W instead of ^V. > > Damnit. Now I have to start over. Could be worse -- at least Firefox warns you before closing multiple tabs or windows. You ever notice how close [cmd]+[w] is to [cmd]+[q] is ? You ever want to beat the person who set that convention ? Or, for that matter, the people who write software that doesn't make any effort to handle destructive-yet-easily accidental keystrokes like that ? I sure do.
From: Juerd Date: 23:38 on 13 May 2005 Subject: Re: Firefox hate Chris Devers skribis 2005-05-13 18:06 (-0400): > You ever notice how close [cmd]+[w] is to [cmd]+[q] is ? Not on my keyboard. On my keyboard, M and W are as close as Q and W on yours. > You ever want to beat the person who set that convention ? No, [Q]uit and [W]indow make some kind of sense, and I'm not affected by their short interdistance on QWERTY keyboards. I still don't quite like [Z]undo, [X]ut, [C]opy and [V]aste. Only the C makes sense. Yes, they're chosen because of their key positions. This is the greatest thing wrong with them. Cut something, and when pasting hit C instead of V. Gone is your cut text. > Or, for that matter, the people who write software that doesn't make any > effort to handle destructive-yet-easily accidental keystrokes like that ? Yes! Juerd
From: Chris Devers Date: 23:51 on 13 May 2005 Subject: Re: Firefox hate On Sat, 14 May 2005, Juerd wrote: > Chris Devers skribis 2005-05-13 18:06 (-0400): > > > You ever want to beat the person who set that convention ? > > No, [Q]uit and [W]indow make some kind of sense But that's the thing! They don't! At first glance, the mnemonic seems to make literal sense, and this in turn makes the keystrokes seem appealing defaults. But if you look at the standard [American] QWERTY layout, the problem with having these two variant actions sitting next to each other like a firecracker and a land mine is obvious, and clearly insane. I'd have been happier with keys that were less "obvious", but also less dangerous to people with occasionally sloppy finger memory. > I still don't quite like [Z]undo, [X]ut, [C]opy and [V]aste. I think of the X/V ones as pictographs rather than literally: "cutting" is like crossing-out the selection, and "pasting" is telling the computer to put the contents of the buffer "right down here". As for Z, it's not a mnemonic in any way, but I actually memorized that one because the act of setting things back to how they were before the most recent injustice happened kind of reminded me of Zorro and his "Z" slice in the sand/tree/etc. I'm positive that this wasn't the intention when selecting that key, but it made sense to me... :-)
From: Abigail Date: 00:07 on 14 May 2005 Subject: Re: Firefox hate --ZmUaFz6apKcXQszQ Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Fri, May 13, 2005 at 06:51:21PM -0400, Chris Devers wrote: >=20 > But if you look at the standard [American] QWERTY layout, the problem > with having these two variant actions sitting next to each other like a > firecracker and a land mine is obvious, and clearly insane. Clearly insane? Why? I've programmed my window manager so that hitting F5 starts a new xterm, and hitting F6 kills the current window. Doesn't create problems for me.=20 Now, having to use more than a single key to do elementary things like killing windows, or getting a new xterm, that's clearly insane. ;-) Abigail --ZmUaFz6apKcXQszQ Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFChTMuBOh7Ggo6rasRAmzoAJ9Hzwxrh3XkMi/L5yl9Cu4ibfBnIQCgg/Bu VE4+zwoE7KS8lIKqwj/uPv8= =7ue+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --ZmUaFz6apKcXQszQ--
From: Rhesa Rozendaal Date: 00:38 on 14 May 2005 Subject: Re: Firefox hate Abigail wrote: > Now, having to use more than a single key to do elementary things like > killing windows, or getting a new xterm, that's clearly insane. ;-) Yes. I can't count the number of times I have cursed the insane programmers that think a popup box with "Are you sure you want to exit?" is something a user wants. Or all those programs that don't listen to ctrl+w. I don't want to memorize all those different keystrokes! Rhesa
From: Juerd Date: 23:40 on 13 May 2005 Subject: Re: Firefox hate Chris Devers skribis 2005-05-13 18:06 (-0400): > You ever notice how close [cmd]+[w] is to [cmd]+[q] is ? You're right, by the way, it was cmd, not ctrl. I'm entirely used to hitting a different key (and this is annoying when using Linux -- fortunately, my Thinkpad laptop has no windows keys), but in writing I still use ^. Weird. Juerd
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