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Posted by ckardaris 1 day ago

GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven(ckardaris.com)
912 points | 450 commentspage 14
waffletower 21 hours ago|
Keyboard driven UIs are easier to instrument by alternative interfaces and has very positive accessibility implications. However, "shoulds" in computing lead toward a "tyranny of compounding responsibilities"; adding interface complexity to a project, particularly the suggested alternative input vectors may cross an upfront and/or maintenance development cost limit for a project.
neuroelectron 21 hours ago||
A lot of comments on VIM here. Vim is a terrible example and a pretty bad design overall, objectively. Legends of great productivity with vim is highly legendary, i.e. fiction. Classic Notepad/Word and similar Guis that have been widely adopted in Linux windowing systems are clearly superior and that's why they're so widely and silently adopted. Not a lot of fanfare for hierarchical GUI menus with keyboard shortcuts.
yndoendo 19 hours ago||
Your making a subjective statement not an objective one about VIM.

Objective would be making the statement that not all GUIs need to be keyboard-driven manged or have accessibility built-in.

Example, GUIs in automation are primary touchscreen driven and have user requirements base on the environment they are in.

GUI standards are objective to who the users actually are or will be.

zahlman 9 hours ago||
This style of flamebait is at least as old as Vim itself.
OhNoNotAgain_99 2 hours ago||
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igkougkousis 9 hours ago||
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arakas4488 20 hours ago||
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bsramin 5 hours ago||
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chatgpt_ljhxeqq 18 hours ago||
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colesantiago 22 hours ago||
I'm glad the fad of TUIs are dying, I don't get the hype of them.

We just need better, efficient and faster GUIs to put these TUIs to an end.

Take a look at gpgui and glaze leading on this. There should be no reason to use TUIs anymore.

It is time to move on from using this arcane technology from the 60s-70s.

https://gpui.rs/

https://glaze.app/

sejje 22 hours ago||
> gpui.rs

I clicked. Never trust a gui library without screenshots.

I'll never quit building TUIs, though. I'm building more TUIs now than ever, with AI assistance making it easy.

mglvsky 22 hours ago|||
> We just need better, efficient and faster GUIs to put these TUIs to an end.

I think, firstly, we need less meaningless red-tape shenanigans from MS/Apple to publish GUI apps

Joker_vD 22 hours ago||
> We just need better, efficient and faster GUIs to put these TUIs to an end.

Well, yeah, it just that those GUIs failed to appear for at least 30 years.

> It is time to move on from using this arcane technology from the 60s-70s.

You mean the GUIs? They were being in development since the early 70s, you know, but they really have flourished in the 80s. So, it's already a 40-years-old paradigm that still haven't managed to displace another contemporary paradigm of TUIs. Well, who knows, maybe in 40 more years it'll make it.

sublinear 23 hours ago|
TUIs are an abomination and most GUIs should just be web.

CLIs should be preferred when available. Learning them pays you back when it's time to write a script or pipe massive amounts of data.

Arainach 23 hours ago||
> most GUIs should just be web.

Hard disagree. Most web interfaces are worse than most native UIs. Inconsistent rendering, keyboard shortcuts and navigation between apps, slow response times, and more.

There's a reason everyone who knows what Electron is bashes every "native" app built with Electron.

sejje 22 hours ago||
yeah--the reason is the bloat and overhead electron brings.

nobody cares about the web layer

Arainach 21 hours ago||
You're ignoring all of the other things I said.

Keyboard shortcuts, navigation, and more are inconsistent in web apps. Will they work at all? Will they use different keys? No one knows. Will they respect my OS theming? What about my font choices or font sizes? Almost certainly not.

BeetleB 22 hours ago|||
> and most GUIs should just be web.

Yikes, no! One of the reasons old timers like me say that using a computer has sucked a lot in the last ~20 years is the use of a browser as an interface to everything.

If you want to make an app that needs a browser to use, then please drastically improve the browser's interface. I mean, this is a no brainer. TUIs are way more superior to doing things via Safari/Firefox/Chrome.

zahlman 9 hours ago|||
Doing GUI on web is obnoxious for people who want to stay offline for things that clearly don't benefit from a network connection (and where a network connection can really only introduce dark patterns). TFA is all about how GUIs should do the things that TUIs just do natively. If you don't like the aesthetic, it's just an aesthetic after all. If you want to use the mouse, you typically can in TUIs.

CLI pipelines are obviously not a real solution to, for example, arbitrary text editing, especially if you don't know what you want to change until you see the text.