In explorer I use it to rename files, also lets me used my customised 'send to' to choose which editor I want to use on the file (usually emacs or t.h.e. depending upon task).
The thing is, isn't that context menu for files in explorer pretty big? Seems like that's a lot of keystrokes to get the hilight to what you want...
But how often is the focus on the right thing to pull that off? Don't you usually need the mouse to get to thing in the first place?
Alt-Tab and Ctrl-Tab are your friends.:-)
Yes yes yes, I KNOW that. Actually, I'm one of the best "getting around windows without a mouse" people I know, because of years in college when I'd sit way back in a Papasan chair with the keyboard in my lap.
But what the hell do you FIND on these menus that's useful? For instance, if I press while typing in this textbox, I get Undo, Paste, Delete, Select All- of which have their own accelerators. In general, really only things in explorer and on the desktop are worth right clicking on, and then I'm usually using the mouse anyway.
Ok, I've found one exception; I do often tab through links, and having a way to get to "Open in New Window" is a little useful (which leads me to another gripe, it was much cooler when Netscape had "open in new window" as the FIRST damn option, rather than the second as it is in IE; seems irritatingly redundant, given that I coulda left clicked just as easily.)
Still, what's a use for that menu w/ the keyboard, besides maybe open link in new window?
Maybe if all those companies changed the "spam" part of their names to "spem"? Looks too much like "sperm", maybe, but it's kind of nice that it shares some letters with e-mail.
All the time...the less frequently you have to go to the mouse, the better. But how often is the focus on the right thing to pull that off? Don't you usually need the mouse to get to thing in the first place?
The context menu button is, IMO, the best thing to happen to keyboards in a long while. For Christ's sake...it's effectively a "right click" mouse button! However, it's on your keyboard - so it's one less reason to take your hands off the keyboard. Brilliant! Are you being serious? I hardly find the focus is on what I want to right click on! And usually it's much easier to use the mouse to give the thing the focus than to wrangle the arrow keys and what not...
Seriously, could you name a few examples of when you're saved from having to reach for the mouse, or when there's not another, more convenient keycombo to get the job done?
In a similar vein...does ANYONE find that "context menu" key useful, the one to the right of the righthand windows key?
And now that I think about it, how insiduous is it that like every damn PC keyboard made these days gets its own dose of Microsoft branding? That's pretty creepy when I stop to think about it. (I remember my first PC w/ Win95 didn't have that key, so sometimes "ctrl-esc" still comes in useful, like on this one laptop that weirdly moves that key to the top right of the keyboard.)
I just wish IE would get 1/3 of a clue about Ctrl-F; I *always* want to see that box prepopulated with my last search (IE seems to have non-deterministic rules for that, and is less likely to show you the last result if the search was unsuccessful...which is when you'd want it most) and I NEVER want to see that retarded "what kind of search do you want to do?" sidebar that shows up if the page hasn't loaded.
That's actually a really good point, I wish someone would mod parent up.
I think a lot of geeks tend to downplay the importance of the "utilitarian gloss" that Microsoft is pretty decent at. Make things pretty, but keep them accessible.
(Argubly, a lot of Linux is pretty derivative too; it's innovation lies in doing what's been done but for free, and with some other improvements like stability.)
I think the Windows task bar mighta been a Windows innovation in many ways; it certainly beat out what Apple had then by making running programs viewable at all times. (I even like it better than what Apple has now, come to think of it.)
How do you use the elevator on the first room? I say press button and it tells me there are three buttons there and i should pick one but I dont know how...
The danger to planes is going to be shoulder launched missiles from near airports. (Few planes are going to be highjacked now without a HELL of a fight, no matter what weapons the bad guys have, and explosives...well, who knows if they'll be identifiable even with a great view)
And the danger to the nation is in PORTS people...those thousands of semi-anonymous crates coming in ever day, with almost no inspection what so ever. That's how a little baby nuke would get into this nation, and Bush and Ridge are doing very little about it. (There was some good coverage of some technological helps to this problem in)
When the hell did the term "Ham" start getting used? I missed it completely 'til this article.
Not that it matters all that much, but Hormel, who has taken use of "Spam" in pretty good graces, can't be happy about this at all. It's one thing when your product is linked to a negatively-perceived other concept, but then the further implication that Ham=good, Spam=bad... hrrm.
Re:helping the handicapped illegal?
on
Hacking the XBox
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Actually, I think a better translation is:
Officially, Huang's excellent book is about reverse-engineering, not about hacking the XBox, since that would be against the law. Semiofficially, it is about hacking to help the handicapped, because while that is still against the law, it makes it sound like a good and moral cause to support. In reality, we suspect it's all about hacking the X-box for fun and cranking up its capabilities, from acting as a generic PC to playing pirated games, but as this is both probably illegal and maybe immoral, depending on your perspective, we won't 'fess up to it.
Actually, I sometimes get vaguely concerned that the ADA could be taken too far...I mean some games are meant to be tough for people with no handicap at all, you can't gear everything for the lowest common denominator.
(Though maybe cheat codes would become manditory? Heh.)
Now, I like the Palm, but his description of it makes it sound like it's a multistep process to get anywhere, which isn't quite "quick" to me. Well, there's a few types of quickness:
* the four buttons- that also can 'wake up' a sleeping unit- mapped to the most used PDA functions were probably a bit innovative. (Dunno if there's prior art for that or no) These get you into your tasks very quickly
* everything else is a bit slower of course...power on, go 'home', then start the program.
But you're missing a big part of the quickness, which is the way almost all apps save and restore state. When you switch back to an app, it's right back to where you were using that app. When you turn the app on, it's right where you powered down. The factor you missed that even if your "smalltiming" with your app if it's the only app you're using then the Palm is still giving you the interaction you want. Even if you're bouncing between apps, downtime is minimized, with trivial startup overhead.
Here in the UK we are presently involved in implementing the Disability Discrimination Act, which is about Accessibility. How do you design for this?
It's a very interesting issue, but you wonder if it can be taken too far. You can't design everything for everyone, and to some extent you shouldn't try too hard. A new innovative design for keyboard shouldn't be stymied because it's not so good for a guy with no hands....that poor guy has to look elsewhere for his text entry solution.
The Newton tried to understand and learn from the human. The Palm had grafitti--You were forced to learn it's dialect of writing. You know what? Millions learned grafitti, even "non-techies". My wife, learned grafitti in about an hour, and can really rock writing on a palm. The Netwon never really caught on, in part due to it's handwriting recognition skills.
Not only that (which is a condition arguably defeated by later versions of the Newton and other modern recognition systems) but in many ways I like graffiti more; a system that's easy to learn yet not entirely natural adds a formality that makes sense as my scrawl is turned into real characters--I mean, even I can't always make out my printing, how chould I expect a computer to?
Anyway, a point I'm surprised we haven't heard more of here is the difference between PalmOS and WinCE. Microsoft really thought that the familiarity people had with the start button and other trappings of Win95 would give them an edge on the handheld, but the way things (failed to be) scaled down meant Palm has always had a simpler, cleaner, more intuitive interface.
I dunno, with those crappy search results when your URL doesn't come up in IE...I'm sure there going to count those when talking about "# of queries" in a search engine pissing contest. Maybe they'll add it to their 404-replacement screen. That way you'll be helping MSNBots' query count whether you like it or not.
Yeesh, reminds me of when a lot of computers had mysteriously half-assed support for USB, and there was a lot of "works only with Windows 98 or more recent 'cause th Win95 drivers suck" caveats. It was really hit or miss for a while, looks like they standards and reliability weren't in the best interests of shipping out old 1.1 gear.
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In explorer I use it to rename files, also lets me used my customised 'send to' to choose which editor I want to use on the file (usually emacs or t.h.e. depending upon task).
The thing is, isn't that context menu for files in explorer pretty big? Seems like that's a lot of keystrokes to get the hilight to what you want...
But how often is the focus on the right thing to pull that off? Don't you usually need the mouse to get to thing in the first place?
:-)
Alt-Tab and Ctrl-Tab are your friends.
Yes yes yes, I KNOW that. Actually, I'm one of the best "getting around windows without a mouse" people I know, because of years in college when I'd sit way back in a Papasan chair with the keyboard in my lap.
But what the hell do you FIND on these menus that's useful? For instance, if I press while typing in this textbox, I get Undo, Paste, Delete, Select All- of which have their own accelerators. In general, really only things in explorer and on the desktop are worth right clicking on, and then I'm usually using the mouse anyway.
Ok, I've found one exception; I do often tab through links, and having a way to get to "Open in New Window" is a little useful (which leads me to another gripe, it was much cooler when Netscape had "open in new window" as the FIRST damn option, rather than the second as it is in IE; seems irritatingly redundant, given that I coulda left clicked just as easily.)
Still, what's a use for that menu w/ the keyboard, besides maybe open link in new window?
Maybe if all those companies changed the "spam" part of their names to "spem"? Looks too much like "sperm", maybe, but it's kind of nice that it shares some letters with e-mail.
spim? spom? spum?
All the time...the less frequently you have to go to the mouse, the better.
But how often is the focus on the right thing to pull that off? Don't you usually need the mouse to get to thing in the first place?
The context menu button is, IMO, the best thing to happen to keyboards in a long while. For Christ's sake...it's effectively a "right click" mouse button! However, it's on your keyboard - so it's one less reason to take your hands off the keyboard. Brilliant!
Are you being serious? I hardly find the focus is on what I want to right click on! And usually it's much easier to use the mouse to give the thing the focus than to wrangle the arrow keys and what not...
Seriously, could you name a few examples of when you're saved from having to reach for the mouse, or when there's not another, more convenient keycombo to get the job done?
In a similar vein...does ANYONE find that "context menu" key useful, the one to the right of the righthand windows key?
And now that I think about it, how insiduous is it that like every damn PC keyboard made these days gets its own dose of Microsoft branding? That's pretty creepy when I stop to think about it. (I remember my first PC w/ Win95 didn't have that key, so sometimes "ctrl-esc" still comes in useful, like on this one laptop that weirdly moves that key to the top right of the keyboard.)
I just wish IE would get 1/3 of a clue about Ctrl-F; I *always* want to see that box prepopulated with my last search (IE seems to have non-deterministic rules for that, and is less likely to show you the last result if the search was unsuccessful...which is when you'd want it most) and I NEVER want to see that retarded "what kind of search do you want to do?" sidebar that shows up if the page hasn't loaded.
I'd say builtin GPS Nav is a more recent innovation. It's only tangental to car control, but still...
That's actually a really good point, I wish someone would mod parent up.
I think a lot of geeks tend to downplay the importance of the "utilitarian gloss" that Microsoft is pretty decent at. Make things pretty, but keep them accessible.
(Argubly, a lot of Linux is pretty derivative too; it's innovation lies in doing what's been done but for free, and with some other improvements like stability.)
I think the Windows task bar mighta been a Windows innovation in many ways; it certainly beat out what Apple had then by making running programs viewable at all times. (I even like it better than what Apple has now, come to think of it.)
Are there any open source movements in that direction? It's a tough problem, and one that might gain prominence in the future.
D'ohh... "press 1" didn't do it.
;-)
I'm in for a looooong game
How do you use the elevator on the first room? I say press button and it tells me there are three buttons there and i should pick one but I dont know how...
Could someone please explain why that was considered a damn Troll? It was a relevant point, despite the political (but not untruthful) sidenote.
I swear, some people just shouldn't be Moderators.
This leaves the Compton effect that mainly takes place with medium energies and affects rather light elements,
Err, so you're saying this thing is Straight Outta Compton?
Huh.
This is the wrong battle.
The danger to planes is going to be shoulder launched missiles from near airports. (Few planes are going to be highjacked now without a HELL of a fight, no matter what weapons the bad guys have, and explosives...well, who knows if they'll be identifiable even with a great view)
And the danger to the nation is in PORTS people...those thousands of semi-anonymous crates coming in ever day, with almost no inspection what so ever. That's how a little baby nuke would get into this nation, and Bush and Ridge are doing very little about it. (There was some good coverage of some technological helps to this problem in)
Are you thinking of "Melancholy Elephants" by Spider Robinson?
When the hell did the term "Ham" start getting used? I missed it completely 'til this article.
Not that it matters all that much, but Hormel, who has taken use of "Spam" in pretty good graces, can't be happy about this at all. It's one thing when your product is linked to a negatively-perceived other concept, but then the further implication that Ham=good, Spam=bad... hrrm.
Actually, I think a better translation is:
Officially, Huang's excellent book is about reverse-engineering, not about hacking the XBox, since that would be against the law. Semiofficially, it is about hacking to help the handicapped, because while that is still against the law, it makes it sound like a good and moral cause to support. In reality, we suspect it's all about hacking the X-box for fun and cranking up its capabilities, from acting as a generic PC to playing pirated games, but as this is both probably illegal and maybe immoral, depending on your perspective, we won't 'fess up to it.
Actually, I sometimes get vaguely concerned that the ADA could be taken too far...I mean some games are meant to be tough for people with no handicap at all, you can't gear everything for the lowest common denominator.
(Though maybe cheat codes would become manditory? Heh.)
Now, I like the Palm, but his description of it makes it sound like it's a multistep process to get anywhere, which isn't quite "quick" to me.
Well, there's a few types of quickness:
* the four buttons- that also can 'wake up' a sleeping unit- mapped to the most used PDA functions were probably a bit innovative. (Dunno if there's prior art for that or no) These get you into your tasks very quickly
* everything else is a bit slower of course...power on, go 'home', then start the program.
But you're missing a big part of the quickness, which is the way almost all apps save and restore state. When you switch back to an app, it's right back to where you were using that app. When you turn the app on, it's right where you powered down. The factor you missed that even if your "smalltiming" with your app if it's the only app you're using then the Palm is still giving you the interaction you want. Even if you're bouncing between apps, downtime is minimized, with trivial startup overhead.
Here in the UK we are presently involved in implementing the Disability Discrimination Act, which is about Accessibility. How do you design for this?
It's a very interesting issue, but you wonder if it can be taken too far. You can't design everything for everyone, and to some extent you shouldn't try too hard. A new innovative design for keyboard shouldn't be stymied because it's not so good for a guy with no hands....that poor guy has to look elsewhere for his text entry solution.
The Newton tried to understand and learn from the human. The Palm had grafitti--You were forced to learn it's dialect of writing. You know what? Millions learned grafitti, even "non-techies". My wife, learned grafitti in about an hour, and can really rock writing on a palm. The Netwon never really caught on, in part due to it's handwriting recognition skills.
Not only that (which is a condition arguably defeated by later versions of the Newton and other modern recognition systems) but in many ways I like graffiti more; a system that's easy to learn yet not entirely natural adds a formality that makes sense as my scrawl is turned into real characters--I mean, even I can't always make out my printing, how chould I expect a computer to?
Anyway, a point I'm surprised we haven't heard more of here is the difference between PalmOS and WinCE. Microsoft really thought that the familiarity people had with the start button and other trappings of Win95 would give them an edge on the handheld, but the way things (failed to be) scaled down meant Palm has always had a simpler, cleaner, more intuitive interface.
Man, thank goodness bruce banner has such flexible pants.
"HULK STOMP! HULK SMASH! HULK- er -- go cover privates..."
(maybe it's the stretching that distorts their color somehow?)
Besides the seeming flammability risk, what about fumes?
I dunno, with those crappy search results when your URL doesn't come up in IE...I'm sure there going to count those when talking about "# of queries" in a search engine pissing contest. Maybe they'll add it to their 404-replacement screen. That way you'll be helping MSNBots' query count whether you like it or not.
Yeesh, reminds me of when a lot of computers had mysteriously half-assed support for USB, and there was a lot of "works only with Windows 98 or more recent 'cause th Win95 drivers suck" caveats. It was really hit or miss for a while, looks like they standards and reliability weren't in the best interests of shipping out old 1.1 gear.