Re: A modified keyboard for a data-centric web?

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Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.

Outliners.com Message ID: 330

Posted by mpt26
1999-09-13 17:57:00

That’s all of the 3 modifiers we have, and that’s confusing. That’s why I’d like 3 new keys, next to eachother. The first goes back to the parent, the second adds a new element, and the third adds the first child element.

I think keyboards need fewer keys, not more. Laptop designers get hernias laying out all the current keys onto the laptops’ small keyboards as it is.

I mean, the web has proven to be stronger than Microsoft, Microsoft can add 3 (unusefull) keys,

Just to drag this even more off-topic :-), does anyone know how to disable those keys? I find it extremely annoying, when I’m on a machine running Windows, to be typing away and suddenly find that I’m navigating the Start menu.

so why can’t the web? I have some room left above the cursor keys…

Where there are `Home’, `End’, `Page Up’, `Page Down’, and probably something like `PrtScrn’ and `Ins’ as well. These keys are under-used (although More, of course, responds to all of them:-), and since they’re near the cursor keys, they could be very useful (Page Up to return to the parent element, for example, and Ins for a new element?).

One alternative could be ctrl+left,ctrl+down and ctrl+right. I think that’s better than alt+enter, ctrl+enter and shift+enter.

In most programs/OSes, Modifier+Left/Right is generally reserved for jumping about in the current element—between words or sentences, in other words—and that’s as it should be.

—mpt

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