Play Counter Strike 1.6, with full multiplayer, in the browser

Played this for a bit but ran into some trouble with the key mappings. CTRL to crouch means that I can't really press anything else without causing firefox to ruin the game.

* CTRL+R (reload) causes the page to refresh

* CTRL+W (walk forward) attempts to close the current tab

* CTRL+S (walk backward) opens a dialog to save the current page

* CTRL+D (walk right) bookmarks the current page

Luckily firefox shows a confirmation dialog before refresh or closing the tab, but that causes the game to freeze until you dismiss it.

Also sound didn't work at all

Say what you like about Apple, but having all these functions on the Cmd key instead is not just more logical, it's actually sane (doubly so for the terminal). I think MS has missed an enormous opportunity when they introduced the Win key; and X11 desktops, toolkits, and apps imitated the more familiar (rather than the better) solutions.

the point of the CTRL key is to send CONTROL messages

anyway, this is just a coincidence, CS was a Windows only exclusive-full-screen game where those combinations had no possible conflict

no one thought we would be playing CS in a browser in the future

on Macs the CMD key is simply a poor man's CTRL key, except when you are in a terminal, where you have to use CTRL again...

doesn't sound so well thought.

> on Macs the CMD key is simply a poor man's CTRL key, except when you are in a terminal, where you have to use CTRL again...

Let me check.

Cmd-F in Notes.app, finds things in the current note.

Cmd-F in Terminal.app, finds things in the current terminal session's history.

Cmd-C in Calendar.app, copies an event.

Cmd-C in Terminal.app, copies the selected text.

Cmd-T in Finder.app, opens a tab.

Cmd-T in Terminal.app, opens a tab.

Cmd-W closes the current window/tab. Cmd-Q quits the app. Cmd-S saves. And so on, in any app, tracing back to 1984 or so.

Whereas Ctrl-C, Ctrl-T, Ctrl-F, Ctrl-S, on Windows/Linux... all do wildly different things, depending whether you are in an xterm, cmd.exe, a game, Emacs, or some other app.

You know what else? Ctrl-C in Terminal.app does the same thing as Ctrl-C in an xterm. This sort of thing is consistent in every app. You're literally having your cake and eating it too.

Windows couldn't use Ctrl-W to mean "close the current tab" in every single application, because - indeed, in a game, holding down Ctrl could mean crouch/sneak, and W to move forward. Windows could've chosen to use Win-W for that, but ignored the opportunity.

> anyway, this is just a coincidence

One of these patterns visible here is deliberate design, the other is piled up coincidences. I don't think it's that easy to confuse one for the other?

> Cmd-F in Terminal.app, finds things in the current terminal session's history.

> Cmd-C in Terminal.app, copies the selected text.

you gotta love Mac users and their cultural bubble

these are non standard keybindings for a Unix shell

so if you are in every other Unix, you have to relearn them

Apple is basically crippling you and locking you in, teaching you the wrong way to do stuff.

It's like learning Italian from Mario Bros and a few stereotypes about gestures taken from American stand ups.

But people seem so happy of their ignorance nowadays that I am probably on the wrong side here.

> in a game, holding down Ctrl could mean crouch/sneak

what happens in a game stays in a game, it doesn't really matter the game has exclusive control of the inputs, they could remap every button to do everything who really cares?

When I'm in VSCode the left mouse click doesn't shoot at anything...

is it an incorrect behaviour?

> you gotta love Mac users and their cultural bubble

I've been using Windows for ~10, Linux for ~20, and Mac for 4 years. I've also worked on my own toy terminal emulator and shell. I believe that good design should be recognised for what it is, regardless of branding, and learned from to improve different aspects of the tools we build and use.

I would very much appreciate it if we could continue this conversation without assuming bias or ignorance.

> these are non standard keybindings for a Unix shell

The shell can't interpret Cmd, which is exactly my point. The terminal emulator is able to provide functionality that the shell alone can't (unless the shell takes on some part of the terminal's duties, a la tmux).

> Apple is [...] teaching you the wrong way to do stuff.

What is the correct way to copy text from a terminal then?

I just want to copy text back & forth between a terminal and a browser. I don't want to memorise two different sets of keybindings to perform the same action. I don't care if copy is Ctrl-Shift-C, or Win-CapsLock-2, I just want the key bindings to remain consistent, to reduce mental fatigue.

> When I'm in VSCode the left mouse click doesn't shoot at anything...

If I'd open Counter Strike in VS Code (100% possible, see TFA), then I would 100% expect left click to shoot.

On the other hand, I've had to rebind some of my StarCraft II hotkeys to make them work on Windows, because normally I use Alt+[F1-F4] for setting up camera hotkeys and... Alt-F4 does something special on Windows, that the game can't ignore.

> I believe that good design should be recognised for what it is, regardless of branding

I am not at all influenced by the brand.

Windows key was a mistake too IMO (that are two BTW! one emulates the right mouse click).

ALT+space was a perfectly fine combo to press with one thumb (especially on laptop keyboards) to open a menu or the app launcher.

They add nothing to the table, it's just another modifier, they are both seriously inferior to function keys, that Mac tried so hard to remove and failed, because a touchbar sucks compared to a physical key.

Just simple plain HMI since Engelbart proved what computers could do.

> I would very much appreciate it if we could continue this conversation without assuming bias or ignorance.

Being a user and being knowledgeable of what constitute a good input interface are two different things.

If you ask people right now they will say touch screens are great, but they are wrong, physical keys are better, we have senses, if we don't use them, we are artificially making us disabled.

Which is never great.

Devices should enhance our capabilities, not cripple them.

Having to remember hundreds of arcane key combos, spread over 10 modifiers it's the exact opposite of good design.

That's why we invented CUA.

> What is the correct way to copy text from a terminal then?

if mouse is enabled

select with LEFT mouse clicked, paste with MIDDLE mouse click

otherwise

ALT+insert SHIFT+insert

that's legacy though, I agree if you are thinking it, but it's out of necessity, not out of will, that it is better to know what works everywhere.

knowing basic vi will enable you to edit text files everywhere on Unix, Emacs not really, Joe? let's hope it's Linux.

> I just want the key bindings to remain consistent, to reduce mental fatigue.

that's exactly why having CMD, CTRL, OPTION (that everybody else call ALT!) is a bad idea.

Apple is so innovative that they can't let go their original keyboard from 40 years ago.

At least back then the Apple key was the Apple logo, it had a branding purpose.

> If I'd open Counter Strike in VS Code (100% possible, see TFA), then I would 100% expect left click to shoot.

of course. because in that case you would be running CS inside VSCode.

but VSCode could disable overriding what the left click does if they wanted to.