Google Wants To Take Away Your Capslock Key

heptapod writes "Slashdot reported earlier about Google's Chrome notebook and keen-eyed readers would have noticed the lack of a caps lock key. 'According to Google, this will improve the quality of the comments, because people will not be able to write all in capital letters. I'm not a fan of the caps lock key myself. I never use it, so it can go to hell, for all I'm concerned. But taking away choice from people is not good, especially when this is not going to improve the quality of comments.'"

Comments

Re:e.e. cummings approves

[somersault]

Stupid people probably don't even know shift works for caps. I've seen people pressing caps just to get a single capital letter in their password.

Use of Caps Lock key

[managerialslime]

For modern web-based applications, you are correct that there is little or no reason for the Caps Lock key.

But for the MILLIONS of people whose job requires them to use antiquated legacy systems, it is often essential.

The largely character-based systems used for accounting, order entry, invoicing, and other core functions are often accessed through terminal emulation software or first generation client-server software. These systems often have a great number of "lookup" codes for everything from SKU to client numbers that fail when using lower case. Those still using first generation client-server software are especially inconvenienced as some of these programs have no option to remap the keyboard.

The sheer volume and costs of re-engineering these systems mean that they will be with us for years to come, no matter how ugly and inefficient when compared to modern systems.

(Well, you did ask.)

Re:Use of Caps Lock key

[moosesocks]

Except that Google brought some reps from Citrix up onto the stage to demonstrate exactly that.

I actually thought that the Citrix demo had the potential to be game-changing. They almost completely divorced business applications from the platform that they run on, and used a dead-simple Linux-derived OS as the client. The idea that corporate users could deploy *any* app, regardless of the OS that it natively runs on to almost *any* end-user is pretty tantalizing. OS lock-in is suddenly no longer an issue, no software needs to be rewritten, and client maintenance got a whole lot simpler. It'd be hard to pitch a more appealing proposal to a corporate sysadmin/beancounter.

(Of course, you could take care of the caps lock thing at the terminal emulation level, by remapping an unused hotkey combination as a Caps Lock toggle. It's a non-issue, and I'm sure there will be other hardware that has the button included. Unlike iOS devices, the platform is open, which I suspect will be a very important thing to the corporate world, as vendors can customize hardware to fit their customers needs.)

Re:Agreed

[meloneg]

Um, SQL isn't case-sensitive. That's just a coding convention.

Re:You can't fix stupid

[BK553]

According to http://www.istartedsomething.com/20101208/fear-not-chrome-os-has-caps-lock it has an option. Crisis over.

Re:You can't fix stupid

[IronWilliamCash]

I use the caps lock key a lot. On French keyboards, when a word begins with an accentuated letter, the only way to display it correctly is to hit caps-lock and press "é" or "à". Give me way to write easily É or À otherwise this is a (arguably minor) feature you remove from me.

I've been using only french keyboards forever and I never have had to use the caps lock key to get a capital É or À or È or  or Ù, etc. Shift works just fine, don't know how you have your keyboard configured but it would seem something is wrong.

Re:Good Riddance

[stewbacca]

If you are a touch typist, having to hold a shift key down for more than 2 capital letters in a row really slows down your typing speed and contributes more to repetitive motion injuries.