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

You can't fix stupid

[elrous0]

Those of us who use it sparingly or for specialized reasons will be deprived of it. And those who USE IT TO ON EVERYTHING WITHOUT REALIZING IT'S THE EQUIVALENT OF SHOUTING will still be stupid. And stupid people will find a way to be annoying no matter what you do.

You could take every key but "a" away and websites/services will still be filled with denizens sporting aol email addressees posting:

aaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Re:You can't fix stupid

[rockout]

You may not, but apparently everyone else needs to RTFA a little more closely. It appears to me that it's very likely that the reason for omitting caps-lock is just to save space, and a little joke about message board comments was taken a little too seriously by the so-called writer at Gizmodo. It also seems very likely that a double-tap on the shift key will toggle on caps-lock, as it does on the iPhone.

Really, how can you read that article and not come away with the feeling that the writer is a little clueless, or trying to create a story where there isn't one, or both?

Re:You can't fix stupid

[rockout]

I agree. The level of disappointment was heightened, though, by the fact that Taco took this "google wants to control your CAPS" and ran with it as if it were fact (is he a dumbass or also trying to create a story?) and there were some 200+ posts that were debating the merits of Google doing this. Did it really go over that many people's heads?

e.e. cummings approves

[eldavojohn]

And stupid people will find a way to be annoying no matter what you do.

Like just holding down the shift key?

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.

Re:e.e. cummings approves

[dintech]

I have a colleague who uses her mouse upside down. Meaning invert x, invert y, clicking with her thumb, cable facing downwards. She says that's just how she started using it and it never occured to her to use it the other way. She's no less accurate than I am with a mouse either.

I've heard stories of one individual completely stumped when he ran out of desk space but couldn't move the mouse cursor any more to the right than the middle of the screen. Clearly he didn't realise that you pick the mouse up...

Re:e.e. cummings approves

[Doug Neal]

And stupid people will find a way to be annoying no matter what you do.

Like just holding down the shift key?

Yes.

I'm a bit scared

[suso]

As much as I hate the caps lock key (reassigned mine to be an extra Esc), I just submitted a bug on Chrome that it doesn't have a command line --geometry option, which I consider a pseudo standard thing for X apps. I can't help but see that Google is going from the mostly standards compliant company they once were to becoming a Microsoft as far as following standards goes. I'm sure there are other examples people will bring up and maybe a comment along the lines of "They were never standards compliant".

Good Riddance

[Sonny Yatsen]

The Caps Lock key is an arcane relic of the ancient IBM keyboards and for most users, it's completely unnecessary. It screws up passwords, for one, and it is in a position that is way too easy to hit accidentally. Besides, there's been a movement to ditch it for ages now, and thus far nobody's complained. Did nobody notice that the OLPC computer also ditched the CapsLock? Besides, anyone who still wants to use all caps still has the shift button.

It's a start but

[NiteShaed]

"According to Google, this will improve the quality of the comments"

They should probably take away all the other keys too.......

Agreed

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a database programmer, and I use caps lock on a regular basis. It's off by default, of course, but if I had to type stuff like this all day without caps lock I'd go mad:

CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW part_glass_part2 AS
        SELECT part_key, sum(line_sqft) AS sum_sqft, sum(line_lbs) AS sum_lbs
        FROM part_glass_part1
        GROUP BY 1;

Re:Agreed

[Kilrah_il]

OTOH, database programmers aren't the intended target audience of Chrome OS. Just sayin'

Re:Agreed

[meloneg]

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

I love the caps lock key

[david.given]

...I couldn't use Emacs or shell editing without it. Beats me why it's labelled 'caps lock', though --- the other control keys on the keyboard are all labelled 'Ctrl'.

Re:Does anyone actually use it legitimately?

[germansausage]

CAD guy here. We have lots of drawings where the convention is to put all text in caps. I use capslock all the time.

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

[toQDuj]

On top of that, in Japan, you can use the caps lock key to switch to a different kind of characterset. Quite useful, really...

B.

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:Choice

[John Hasler]

> Can you still buy netbooks with capslock? Yes? Then you still have choice.

In fact, you have more choice.