Mouse and Keyboard: And never the twain shall meet (aka: fuck you Microsoft's UX team)
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Doing a bunch of repetitive work in Visual Studio. Open a change set. For each file, right click. Click "Compare with previous". Glance to ensure only a predicted small change was made. Close. Next file.
It's getting tedious to do this with the mouse, since I need to right click the file, move mouse down, click the option, then move the mouse back up after. But there aren't any keyboard shortcuts as far as I can see:
Notice the lack of _u_nderlined keyboard interaction cues.
Well, maybe I can meet Visual Studio halfway. I'll use the keyboard for the context menu, then either arrow up/down, or mouse to the right place and... wait, wat
..... so if I use the keyboard to bring up the context menu, it shows me the keyboard shortcut keys. But if I use the mouse, it hides that information, therefore never letting me discover what the keyboard keys are (or that they even exist).
More difficult UX, and UI that actively sabotages learning. Fuck you, Microsoft.
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Someone had to do work to make that happen. How did that ever pass the -100 point rule?
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Fucked with it a bit, turns out that for some reason if you press alt twice on the keyboard before right clicking it also shows those shortcuts?
WTF?
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Explorer and the taskbar do the same thing. So it's either a core "feature" of Windows, or just a "feature" of MS products.
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I have the same thing in the version I use at work, except that shortcuts other than Alt+cue are displayed on the right (including stuff like Alt+F4).
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@mott555 if some of the stories about development in MS are to be trusted, some manager said it's ugly and it had to be removed forthwith.
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It's that goddamned option invented to avoid scaring computer-illiterate people with underlined letters.
It was born either in Windows 95 OSR2, or Windows 98, and at the time it was called something like "Hide underlined letters until I press ALT". And initially, I think it defaulted to unchecked.
Then, in later windows versions such as Windows XP, it defaulted to checked (for the same principle as hiding file extensions: The kind of people who want them are the kind of people who are capable of finding out how to enable them, but those who DON'T want them will never find the option to disable them -- and whether they should be trusted with a computer in the first place is still up in the air)
And in Windows Vista and above, the option was inverted and moved to the Keyboard section of the Ease-Of-Access center: It's now the checkbox "Underline keyboard shortcuts and access keys", which defaults unchecked.
These two options are among the first I change whenever I land on a new computer.
Edited to add: Implementation-wise, I guess menus and controls call
SystemParametersInfo(SPI_GETKEYBOARDCUES)
and if set, they pass theDT_HIDEPREFIX
flag to theDrawText()
function. Well, except when some keyboard navigation is taking place. I wonder how they determine that, though... (Edit2: I found how. Thanks Raymond!)PS: Oh, and additional WTF: The documentation of DrawText does not underline the "normal" text properly in its examples.
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@Medinoc said in Mouse and Keyboard: And never the twain shall meet (aka: fuck you Microsoft's UX team):
It's that goddamned option invented to avoid scaring computer-illiterate people with underlined letters.
It's goddamn VISUAL STUDIO! You can't get more computer literate than that. You're literally PROGRAMMING COMPUTERS! (inb4 hur hur visual basic).
"Hide underlined letters until I press ALT"
Will check when I'm at work tomorrow.
@Medinoc said in Mouse and Keyboard: And never the twain shall meet (aka: fuck you Microsoft's UX team):
Edited to add: Implementation-wise, I guess menus and controls call SystemParametersInfo(SPI_GETKEYBOARDCUES) and if set, they pass the DT_HIDEPREFIX flag to the DrawText() function. Well, except when some keyboard navigation is taking place. I wonder how they determine that, though... (Edit2: I found how. Thanks Raymond!)
PS: Oh, and additional WTF: The documentation of DrawText does not underline the "normal" text properly in its examples.FFS
Got some nice Friday reading lined up.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Mouse and Keyboard: And never the twain shall meet (aka: fuck you Microsoft's UX team):
Doing a bunch of repetitive work in Visual Studio. Open a change set. For each file, right click. Click "Compare with previous". Glance to ensure only a predicted small change was made. Close. Next file.
It's getting tedious to do this with the mouse, since I need to right click the file, move mouse down, click the option, then move the mouse back up after. But there aren't any keyboard shortcuts as far as I can see:
I think you really should use diff command in TFS's command line client instead if you're using Team Foundation Server as your choice of source control. I'm sure CVS or Git also have similar command.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Mouse and Keyboard: And never the twain shall meet (aka: fuck you Microsoft's UX team):
@Medinoc said in Mouse and Keyboard: And never the twain shall meet (aka: fuck you Microsoft's UX team):
It's that goddamned option invented to avoid scaring computer-illiterate people with underlined letters.
It's goddamn VISUAL STUDIO! You can't get more computer literate than that. You're literally PROGRAMMING COMPUTERS! (inb4 hur hur visual basic).
Visual Studio
usesused standard Windows components and components ripped / forked off Office 2003 (Well OK, Visual 2005 and 2008 did), so they follow the option. Can't blame them for obeying the user's config, now can we?
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@cheong said in Mouse and Keyboard: And never the twain shall meet (aka: fuck you Microsoft's UX team):
@Lorne-Kates said in Mouse and Keyboard: And never the twain shall meet (aka: fuck you Microsoft's UX team):
Doing a bunch of repetitive work in Visual Studio. Open a change set. For each file, right click. Click "Compare with previous". Glance to ensure only a predicted small change was made. Close. Next file.
It's getting tedious to do this with the mouse, since I need to right click the file, move mouse down, click the option, then move the mouse back up after. But there aren't any keyboard shortcuts as far as I can see:
I think you really should use diff command in TFS's command line client instead if you're using Team Foundation Server as your choice of source control. I'm sure CVS or Git also have similar command.
I think you're looking for the "Troll Blakeyrat" department. That's down the hall, past the Dead Trans Hooker Storage Lockers.
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@Medinoc said in Mouse and Keyboard: And never the twain shall meet (aka: fuck you Microsoft's UX team):
Can't blame them for obeying the user's config, now can we?
I can. I did. "aka: fuck you Microsoft's UX team".
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Quite frankly I think adding this option in the first place was a bad idea, because it hampers discovery. I wouldn't have known about menu keyboard shortcuts if it weren't for underlined letters in the first place!
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@Lorne-Kates said in Mouse and Keyboard: And never the twain shall meet (aka: fuck you Microsoft's UX team):
so if I use the keyboard to bring up the context menu, it shows me the keyboard shortcut keys.
Since XP or earlier, by default, ALL menus hide the accelerator key, and someone at Microsoft deserves a punch in the face for that. Unless VS is going above and beyond, there's always been a control panel item to enable the underlines systemwide.
ETA:
Also: TIL emoji are case-sensitive. :hanZo:
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@Medinoc said in Mouse and Keyboard: And never the twain shall meet (aka: fuck you Microsoft's UX team):
Quite frankly I think adding this option in the first place was a bad idea, because it hampers discovery. I wouldn't have known about menu keyboard shortcuts if it weren't for underlined letters in the first place!
OTOH, underlining text makes it harder to read. I think this is actually OK, since the majority of users will never use any keyboard shortcuts except Ctrl+X/C/V, so you optimize for the average user by removing the indicators by default.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Mouse and Keyboard: And never the twain shall meet (aka: fuck you Microsoft's UX team):
Doing a bunch of repetitive work in Visual Studio. Open a change set. For each file, right click. Click "Compare with previous". Glance to ensure only a predicted small change was made. Close. Next file.
Sigh, I was seriously annoyed by this as well, it really made me miss the choice of tools / options I had when I was using Subversion rather than TFS.
However, there's something interesting about all this. Someone at Microsoft must also have thought it was silly so they added a few workarounds:
- You can do Shift + Double click.
- You can highlight the file and press Shift + Enter
- That's still too annoying, so there's an option which can't be edited through the Visual Studio options but can be set in the registry. And because this is a rogue feature, the Git handler reacts differently and ignores this option.
EDIT: Ah yes, that last option also has the effect of switching the effect of Doubleclick and Shift + Double click rather than just making Double click as well as Shift + Click open the diff viewer. Which means you might get extra confused when you're back to using TFS projects after working with Git projects so that Shift + Double click will now open the file rather than showing diffs.
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@Medinoc said in Mouse and Keyboard: And never the twain shall meet (aka: fuck you Microsoft's UX team):
but those who DON'T want them will never find the option to disable them -- and whether they should be trusted with a computer in the first place is still up in the air)
No, they should not.
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@JBert said in Mouse and Keyboard: And never the twain shall meet (aka: fuck you Microsoft's UX team):
You can do Shift + Double click.
Nice! Bookmarked!
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@Lorne-Kates said in Mouse and Keyboard: And never the twain shall meet (aka: fuck you Microsoft's UX team):
(inb4 hur hur visual basic).
hur hur C#
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@asdf said in Mouse and Keyboard: And never the twain shall meet (aka: fuck you Microsoft's UX team):
I think this is actually OK, since the majority of users will never use any keyboard shortcuts except Ctrl+X/C/V
Guess I'm in the minority, for once. I use plenty of other shortcuts. Ctrl+M,O; Ctrl+K,K; Ctrl+K,C; Ctrl+K,U; …
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@abarker In Visual Studio? Yeah, maybe that should ignore the setting, since it's mostly used by people who actually use keyboard shortcuts.
I was talking about hiding the hints in general, not in VS specifically.
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@Lorne-Kates said in [Mouse and Keyboard: And never the twain shall meet (aka: fuck you
I think you're looking for the "Troll Blakeyrat" department. That's down the hall, past the Dead Trans Hooker Storage Lockers.
Thanks. This new forum system is awful, but it's good to know that trolling Blakeyrat is still its own department.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Mouse and Keyboard: And never the twain shall meet (aka: fuck you Microsoft's UX team):
@Medinoc said in Mouse and Keyboard: And never the twain shall meet (aka: fuck you Microsoft's UX team):
It's that goddamned option invented to avoid scaring computer-illiterate people with underlined letters.
It's goddamn VISUAL STUDIO! You can't get more computer literate than that. You're literally PROGRAMMING COMPUTERS! (inb4 hur hur visual basic).
"Hide underlined letters until I press ALT"
Will check when I'm at work tomorrow.
@Medinoc said in Mouse and Keyboard: And never the twain shall meet (aka: fuck you Microsoft's UX team):
Edited to add: Implementation-wise, I guess menus and controls call SystemParametersInfo(SPI_GETKEYBOARDCUES) and if set, they pass the DT_HIDEPREFIX flag to the DrawText() function. Well, except when some keyboard navigation is taking place. I wonder how they determine that, though... (Edit2: I found how. Thanks Raymond!)
PS: Oh, and additional WTF: The documentation of DrawText does not underline the "normal" text properly in its examples.FFS
Got some nice Friday reading lined up.