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Hidden interface controls that affect usability

(interactions.acm.org)
561 points cxr | 1 comments | 05 Jul 25 23:10 UTC | HN request time: 0.202s | source
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fiddlerwoaroof ◴[06 Jul 25 00:26 UTC] No.44476694[source]▶
I sort of disagree with this: once I’ve internalized the gestures, I really appreciate the lack of UI for them. It’s like vim and emacs: the sparse ui creates a steeper learning curve but becomes a feature once you’ve learned the tool
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bbarn ◴[06 Jul 25 02:23 UTC] No.44477295[source]▶
That was the point of the article. Users with knowledge of how it works can do it fine, but new users can't.

Your average dev who's never used vim or vi will start frustrated by default.

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fiddlerwoaroof ◴[06 Jul 25 02:29 UTC] No.44477337[source]▶
My point is that no one is a new user forever and so I think we need to come up with a better solution than UI taking up screen space for things people end up doing via shortcuts. Menus and command palettes are great for this because they are mostly invisible.

The other important thing is learning to fit into the conventions of the platform: for example, Cocoa apps on Mac all inherit a bunch of consistent behaviors.

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1. chrismorgan ◴[06 Jul 25 03:31 UTC] No.44477599[source]▶
I started out with gVim with menu and toolbars. I quickly removed toolbars and after a while longer menus, as I didn't need them any more, they had taught me—though I seem to recall temporarily setting guioptions+=m from time to time for a while longer, when I couldn’t remember a thing. I think I had also added some custom menu items.

Being a modal editor probably makes removing all persistent chrome more feasible.