A seaside town, that they forgot to close down

[venta]

Quick question for Windows users:

[Poll #1511523]

(It came up at work, and I'm curious.)

Comments

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

Use it on Linux (running Gnome) as well.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Interesting; I didn't know it worked on Linux desktops as well.

[wimble.livejournal.com]

It's "enable God mode" in your favourite video game, isn't it?

[venta.livejournal.com]

You think I have a favourite video game ?

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

I currently have a ThinkPad (nth of many) and tend to avoid using keystrokes when I can use the TrackPoint instead*, so I rarely use it.

*Exceptions: keystrokes that I can do without moving my left hand from the home typing position (I'm a touch-typist). Ctrl-V, Ctrl-X, Ctrl-C, and Ctrl-T get a regular look in. Most others don't.

[venta.livejournal.com]

If anyone's curious, holding down Alt and pressing the 'F4' closes your current window, like clicking on the 'x' in the top right corner. If you hit Alt-F4 now, it's quite likely it'll shut your browser down.

[wimble.livejournal.com]

Sorry, that was a generic "your".

As in some poor person asks "How do I ?" and the answer frequently comes back as "Alt-F4". And sometimes, after a delay of a minute or so, the player comes back online, all sheepish.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Ah. I think that one went totally over my head there :)

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

So what does it do?

[stegzy.livejournal.com]

Also makes your IRC client work better

[venta.livejournal.com]

Closes your current window (see comment just above yours).

[wimble.livejournal.com]

Seems to work under KDE too, despite not being listed in the KDE standards. Which is an odd omission!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Blimey. My first ever laptop was a ThinkPad, and my secondmost criticism of it was "what is that stupid rubbery blob doing in my keyboard". Each to their own. It's probably something to do with being A Southerner ;)

(My main criticism was to do with how the power adaptor fitted into the laptop; it was very prone to getting knocked, and ultimately came unstuck from the board inside. Hopefully they've fixed that.)

[wimble.livejournal.com]

Makes *you* work better, certainly!

(for generic "you" again ;)

[wimble.livejournal.com]

Should have been: "How do I <perform some activity;>?" in the comment above. I forgot I was typing HTML.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

I recently paid £threefigure premium for the privilege of retaining that rubbery blob! :) I love not needing a mouse (one less thing to lose/break/have to replace, most mice are annoyingly noisy, and since I use my computer on the sofa there's nowhere sensible to put one anyway); given the things I use the laptop for, I would need a mouse if I did not have the blob.

Power lead on last-but-three went kerfizz-splink-blue flash! which was unexpected and spectacular, but other than that no actual problems with the design - oh, one got smashed by Act of Toddler in Texas, and was replaced by insurance, but otherwise each has been upgraded only when it became economically sensible to do so (smallclanger is now on his 3rd & 4th hand-me-downs, each parent having the same policy). Acquisition of the newest one was mostly because I wanted a system that could run Sims 3!

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

You were trying to incite people to do accidentally silly things then weren't you?

(I'm not saying that's a bad thing if you were, mind :-)

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

[x] I even use Ctrl-F4
[x] I remember when F10 meant 'quit' because it was the highest-numbered function key

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm a big fan of Ctrl-F4 (specially for Firefox tabs), too. Don't think I ever knew about F10 though.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Actually, no, I genuinely wanted to know.

I complained that our software at work doesn't respect Alt-F4. Indeed, I believe this has only recently become the case (or I'd have noticed earlier).

While agreeing that it should respect it, it was ruled to be low priority because "no one uses Alt-F4 much". Which sounded crazy to me. Apparently it's much less commonly used than I believed, though!

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

Is this your standard case of only a small proportion of geeky-types caring about HCI stuff (at work and/or in your f'list)?

It's an area I do a lot of work in, and I always get the impression that that sort of thing is considered a bit of a soft subject that is beneath the attention of *real* geeks.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Not at all, no. Just that this is a less urgent thing to fix than (say) "it crashes". And it slips even further down the list if it's a shortcut that no so many people use.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

The question isn't so much whether your f-list uses Alt-F4 though (and incidentally, at the moment it appears that about half of it do, which is significantly more than 'no-one'), as to whether your software's intended audience does.

If that intended audience is primarily the-man-on-the-Clapham-omnibus, then your colleagues are probably right. If the intended audience is sysadmins, developers or other geeks, however, you probably are.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Earlier it was much closer to 'no one' :)

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

Ah, you've just not got far enough in development yet :-). Fairy nuff. Not surprising it's got left for now then.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Not for any technical reason, but because Linux UI designers long ago decided that copying Windows idioms was a good idea if they ever hoped to convert any Windows users!

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Every Day is Like Sunday, Morrisey? covered by ohhh what is her name that woman with a voice like bees.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I like it too. The world is split into people who incompetently tap it like some kind of magic button going "I hate this mouse" and people who put their finger on it and point.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Yes! I think the first half think we do it by some kind of mind-control or something, given the weird looks I get when I'm using it sometimes. It's really very simple indeed, minimalist (I find it helps minimise RSI-type symptoms), and not at all scary, but to some it's like magic, apparently...

I don't like the Evil touchpad that has appeared below the keyboard on all new laptops, including the newer ThinkPads, but so long as I avoid accidentally resting my thumb on it I can cope.

... but it's not just Windows

[bondagewoodelf.livejournal.com]

Actually, I use what is at hand.

Got a windows 98 desktop, a windows xp laptop, a diskless workstation X-terminal, and 2 Linux servers (one Slackware, one Debian))

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Me neither - the first thing I did with my new laptop (not new amymore) was disable the touchpad.

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

Nice one. [grin]

[qatsi.livejournal.com]

Ctrl+W seems to be a synonym in most applications these days.

[shui-long.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I'm not alone... I loathe touchpads, and when I had a company laptop with one which couldn't be disabled in the bios I resorted to sticking a sheet of plastic over it.
I've had a series of Thinkpads of my own, largely because of the "blob" (and decent keyboard, and generally good build quality), though a couple of them developed screen failures.

[shui-long.livejournal.com]

Likewise. (Thinkpad, 8-finger typing, and using Ctrl-X, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-B, Ctrl-I and Ctrl-U.)
But I can still remember the days of WordPerfect for DOS with the card stuck above the keyboard to list all the functions...

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

LOL, yes - that's a flashback! I quite liked that as a method of doing stuff, and remember how weird Word ?6 was when I first switched to it. 1994. Blimey.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

I've just realised I could actually do that, thank you - not having had one before it actually didn't occur to me as something to go and do upon its arrival. (I've not had this machine very long at all, so it's not like I suffered with it for years. *g*)

God Mode

[eviltwinemma.livejournal.com]

Combined with Alt+Tab, makes a glorious classroom tag-team for dealing with pupils who think they've hidden the fact they're on games/internet/email by minimising windows...

Sample exchange:
Me: "What are you working on?"
Pupil: "errr... this spreadsheet thing, innit..."
Me: "Riiight. Can I just..." *Lean over**Alt+Tab**Alt+F4*
Pupil: *gasp* "How did you do that? Awww, I was on Level 5!"
Me: *grin* *saunter off* *block game site* *ban pupil from Internet/email*

[venta.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know how to work it - I just found it inconvenient, bad for RSI, and in all ways inferior to the nice touchpad they'd given me as well.

My work laptop (Dell) has one, and I don't believe I've ever touched it (except just now, to verify that I could instead still use it!)

Like I said to Bo-Peep earlier, each to their own :) I'm glad to hear that there are people who like the silly rubbery blob, it's always mystified me why laptop manufacturers still included them.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Can I raise a small flag for Ctrl-W, which used to also be used for closing apps, and sometimes still does?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yup, you and Quatsi (http://venta.livejournal.com/322233.html?thread=4699833#t4699833) can try and take it to the masses :)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Heh, great minds. I really must try and read all the comments in future ;-)

[venta.livejournal.com]

One kudo to you for spotting the subject line. I'm not sure about the cover version, though I'm intrigued by your description!

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Amy Allison - that's her name.