Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sun 11th Nov 2007 15:52 UTC
This is the fifth article in a series on common usability and graphical user interface related terms [part I | part II | part III | part IV]. On the internet, and especially in forum discussions like we all have here on OSNews, it is almost certain that in any given discussion, someone will most likely bring up usability and GUI related terms - things like spatial memory, widgets, consistency, Fitts' Law, and more. The aim of this series is to explain these terms, learn something about their origins, and finally rate their importance in the field of usability and (graphical) user interface design. In part V, we focus on modes.
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Member since:2006-10-08
"What about CAPS LOCK key - there's only one key worse than it - I mean NUM LOCK key. I've recieved many calls about "I can't enter any numbers into Excel datasheet", hitting NumLock has resolved all these problems 
"
Risking to get more off topic with this, you'll find a similar some entries here:
http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_keyboards.shtml
Furthermore, the Num Lock key is a basal means of diagnostics - if switching the Num LED off and on still works, a defect can't be that bad. :-)
Num Lock is an artifact from the XT and early AT era when there were no separated cursor keys. Num Lock made you use the numeric keypad for entering numbers and for cursor control. Today, this choice is obsoleted with the MF-2 style keyboards where both functionality groups are present at one time, so this key is hardly used.
RE: Mode of application
by JonathanBThompson on Sun 11th Nov 2007 23:19
in reply to "Mode of application"
Member since:2006-05-26
What about CAPS LOCK key - there's only one key worse than it - I mean NUM LOCK key. I've recieved many calls about "I can't enter any numbers into Excel datasheet", hitting NumLock has resolved all these problems
Other than the Capslock key difference mentioned above, this is yet another case where (at least with the new Mac keyboard I got with my computer) Apple has made a change: there's exactly one set of arrow keys, and no numlock key at all. Perhaps someone at Apple had too many bad experiences with such keyboards
The one I miss because I've got my muscle memory setup for doing it efficiently is that on this keyboard, there's no Insert key, which, while it can be used by software for modal input mode switching between insert=overwrite and insert at cursor, using Control-Insert to copy and then Shift-Insert to paste is easier and less likely for me to make mistakes, and I've been using that a very long time. Instead, there's an "fn" key there which is a quasimodal key that goes with a lot of the function keys above to map them back into function keys, as opposed to media functions and other machine control functions. Of course, I promptly mapped things back to regular function keys without using fn, because I far more often use keyboard commands for various things than the mouse option, and it's no big deal for me to select fn for the various machine control/system-wide things.
RE[2]: Mode of application
by mdmkolbe on Mon 12th Nov 2007 03:56
in reply to "RE: Mode of application"
Member since:2005-09-15
Indeed, Shift-Insert is not only more universal than any other paste key sequence (e.g it works on Windows Notepad *and* GNU Emacs) but it is also the only way to paste to an RXVT terminal from the keyboard (Ctrl-Y and Ctrl-V are rightly passed through to the underlaying application).
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 15:53 UTC
The new WebKit Opera for Android has been released. "Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!"
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 22:43 UTC
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."More News »
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Member since:
2005-06-29
Slightly off-topic (in context of user interface usability), but real-world story:
I had many times entered screenful of data in attempt to repeat customers problem - just to notice, that particular database has this "expilicit mode change option" turned on and all my input went into nowhere 
Well, solution to this problem was easy enough - when our application detected that it was run under IDE (debugger), this option was disabled automatically 
We develope an accounting software. In one sunny day we got very irritating support call from one of our customers:
"I did enter many documents into database and all these are missing, only the last one is present!"
What happened actually?
In new version, we allowed our software users just overwrite document contents without any explicit mode change command. In old version, users were forced to hit NEW button before entering new document (eg invoice) or hit EDIT button to edit old document.
Users, not seeing old version of our software, didn't have any problems - they did know that like everywhere in Windows, overwriting something destorys old content. But some users of old version, having accustomized to explicit mode changes, assumed somehow that overwriting old content creates new one.
We solved this problem easily - we included one (optional) button/command to force user into edit mode. This way old users had two commans - EDIT or NEW, which changed interface mode to "edit mode" and there was no more problems with document overwriting.
Interestingly, this approach created big annoyances for developers and testers
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What I wanted say with this comment - user interface (or application) mode is really important, especially in multitasking/windowed environment. In old DOS (commandline) times, there was no such problem present - entire user interface was usually straightforward, there were no possibilities to break program flow.
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What about CAPS LOCK key - there's only one key worse than it - I mean NUM LOCK key. I've recieved many calls about "I can't enter any numbers into Excel datasheet", hitting NumLock has resolved all these problems