“I don’t want to navigate the entire web with my keyboard.” Sure, I don’t want either. BUT there are people out there who are forced into using keyboards or even less than a keyboard with as few as Tab+Enter equivalent devices, like tetraplegic people (or Stephen Hawking, to name a celebrity). The fact is they succeed in (I wonder if I could, guess no!).
So spatial navigation is certainly a great improvement for many people but Tab surfing won’t disappear till we innovate with brain electrodes and other futuristic devices.
More generally, webdesigners and webdevelopers waited for years that as few computers as possible had 15" CRT in 800x600, 2 button mice and 56k to throw out support. This day has come but … wait … now has arrived iPhone and N90, Asus EEE PC, PSP, touchscreen laptops and there are still Braille tablets or Jaws and Home Reader assistive technologies, to name a few.
And if there are a bit of frenzy comments about start-ups in the mobile industry, I guess there is a huge pot of money out there for those that won’t forget support for these stange tiny computers surfing at speed going from 3G down to … 14.4k.
Even more off topic, googlebot is wget-ascii surfing, no css support, no images, no javascript and everybody loves him!
Obviously, this kind of message is a kind of honeypot for firefox plugins groupies … And obviously, Opera addicts (like me) tend to say the nordic browser did it ages ago.
However, using Opera since quite ages (I used the ad-sponsored version wayback in 2000), I’ve never missed any feature of Firefox which, for most of them, were already present in Opera.
As for keyboard navigation. I began with the simple “A” key, which brings you down to the next link, but soon became a shift-arrows addict, since it provide most efficient page navigation.
In fact, i began to use my opera muscle memory anywhere, hopping anyone would implement the mouse shortcuts (left-right clicks, and all those sorts of things), the ctrl and ctrl-shift clicks, and all other real innovations this browser provides.
Hit-a-Hint is also just what I’ve been looking for, but I’ll have to re-program myself to use Page down and Page up now instead of Space and Shift-space!
“spatial navigation is worlds better than the insanity of pressing tab 125 times.”
Well, I guess, but isn’t using the mouse or trackpad worlds better than that?
I mean, I guess I don’t see why the mouse isn’t the most appropriate and reasonable tool for finding control #125 in the middle of a dense page. It doesn’t take long and there’s no ambiguity.
I guess I see “spatial navigation” in browsers (other than mobile ones, of course) as a solution in search of problem. But maybe that’s because I use a laptop and thus have a trackpad at my fingers at all times—I rotate my wrist a total of two inches, a lot more efficient than using a mouse, and once your motor skills adapt to the trackpad you can do just about everything you could do with a mouse with it. (I can’t play FPS with a trackpad for the life of me, but that’s really the only thing I use a mouse for. I prefer the trackpad even for things like graphic design at this point.)
To carry the theme of the last couple of posts, I’d love to hear your thoughts on (generalized) touch screen interfaces, including the iPhone and other devices. (Partly based on this article - http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/news/2008/02/gsma_wrapup)
I work for a company that designs and builds operator control units for mobile robots, and we’re working with touchscreens more and more. Love to hear your thoughts!
Keyboard navigation is one of my favorite features of Opera. If you do a lot of browsing, its a much more efficient way to use the web than a mouse, and much kinder on the wrist - especially when combined with Opera’s keyboard shortcuts for handling tabs and so on.
I’ve converted most of my non-geek friends away from IE. While Firefox is great, Opera is much better suited for the less computer savvy, and much more secure than IE. Recommend Opera to an IE using friend today!
I’ve also noticed how counter-intuitive it seems that Opera’s market share in PCs is tiny, but they’re leading in several emerging markets. I’ve come to the conclusion that when it comes to the Browser Wars, Opera may be holding down a fort in the field of PCs; but while IE and Firefox are fighting over the same old territory, Opera is really focusing on conquering the new world. My post on this subject gives the numbers for some of the things you mentioned:
The Nintendo Wii has sold over 9.27 million units, which have access to the Wii “Internet Channel”, exclusively powered by the Opera browser as a free download from from April to June 30th. The download now costs 500 “Wii points”, the equivalent of $5.
the Wall Street Journal reports that more than 15 million cellphone users have downloaded the Opera Mini browser.
Opera is the default browser on over a dozen miscellaneous internet devices and counting.
Opera also produces an Opera Mobile browser for the Symbian S60 and Windows Mobile smartphones, and recently announced an agreement with Chinese wireless service provider KongZhong to develop a browser for Chinese users, sharing “advertising revenues, search- related revenues and other revenues from “KongZhong Opera””.
The main thing is that Opera needs to do more to maintain their lead in mobile devices. With all the new custom operating systems and software platforms for cell phones, Opera better be trying to get partnerships as the default browser.
Yeah, Jeff - that one-dimensional tab thing is terribly inefficient for navigating a 2D web page. Somebody should invent a two-dimensional pointing device. /snark
I realize this is about how to navigate with the keyboard - but seriously? We’ve got perfectly good 2D navigational hardware, and I don’t buy the notion that it’s inefficient to reach for it. I think you’re trying to solve a non-problem.
I can’t really get into Opera. It’s got a lot of great utility options, but there’s so much feature bloat that it drives me nuts. It’s not helped by Opera’s inability to see past the binary on/off featureset.
You either use no tables, or you imust/i have the tab bar on. Where Firefox figured out that no one wants a blank bar sitting around uselessly, Opera’s (and IE) have stuck to the same paradigm: even if it’s not being used, it must stay around.
There are lots of little things like that. It makes you realize the difference between open source and closed.
That, and it’s closed source. I don’t want be stuck with the option of changing browsers, using outdated code, or going into constant ads, and there’s no part of Opera that says it won’t do so in the future.
Oh, and as a general aside, Amazon.com and yahoo.com are perfect examples of how not to build a site in the first place, even before trying to navigate sans mouse. Amazon’s decision to not make the “Books” box act as a link of its own is inexplicable, and the entire “Featured Services” box and its dozen links should just be slapped behind a “Help” or “Sales” link.
Jeff, I know your an M$ guy, but really are going to have to opine on this position at some point. I would expect the problems with IE7 to just leap out at someone with your technical level, like it does for most of us. IE still plays by its own rules, is still broken, and pilfered nearly all its new functionality from other browsers (and did so poorly IMO).
Please don’t take this as blind IE-bashing. I evangelize Firefox because it’s the best I’ve seen. If you’re seeing something else, I’m all ears.
gattsuru: Hi, I’m nobody! (I like having my tab bar around even when there’s only one thing on it. I dislike controls that appear and disappear depending on the state of other things in the system.)
