Mastodawn

one of the problems with being a retrocomputerist is how often I use a 2025 program and think "this program would be just as functional and 10 times as nice to use if you'd written it for windows 95"

wyatt

@foone

this program would be just as functional and 10 times as nice to use if you’d written it for windows 95

Real.

as a professional maker of bad keyboards, I'd like to show my appreciation for Steelseries's idea to organize a keyboard /categorically/.

POPQUIZ: what category is "enter" under?

one of the problems with being a retrocomputerist is how often I use a 2025 program and think "this program would be just as functional and 10 times as nice to use if you'd written it for windows 95"

The answer is Editing

which contains: Enter, Escape, Backspace, Tab, Space, and Delete.

also note that this dialog box is:
1. slightly too small to show all the categories, even before you start expanding them
2. non-resizable

I don't think this is an oversight, rather it's a technical limitation:

Their ad-hoc windowing system in this Electron container doesn't support resizable pop-up windows.

So I've been hacking on DOS programs a lot recently and it's really made me realize HOW MUCH CODE they have to spend on basic windowing code! but DOS didn't have a GUI, so every program that needed it had to implement it themselves.

And then later, with Windows providing all that code, they only have to write the application-specific code, saving a lot of development and maintenance work.

thank goodness we haven't backslid on the quality of our graphical user interfaces by making everything a fucking webpage.

Matt Palmer Jul 13

@foone it's fine, though, because everyone just embeds 14MB of JavaScript (that has zero cache control headers, so it gets downloaded and parsed on every page load) to provide a half-arsed GUI toolkit. Further, since there are more of these libraries than there are JS developers, no two sites look, feel, or behave the same.

*takes deep, relaxing breath*

Thankyou, I feel better now.

@womble byte for byte it'd probably be smaller and more consistent to just embed a copy of DOSBox and Windows 3.1.

I should prototype that as a joke: a new GUI solution for the web... it's just windows 3.1 in an emulator!

Matt Palmer Jul 13

@foone yes... joke...

Moose Jolly Holcomb Jul 13

@womble @foone ha ha, so funny

Christian Berger DECT 9314 Jul 13

@foone @womble It would likely also be easier to develop for as you could use stuff like Delphi or Visual Basic.

Rob\Viewdata UK Jul 13

@foone @womble
Not a joke, I've got a half* completed project to convert an old win32s application to mobile Web by doing exactly that: In-browser emulated DOS and Windows, set with default shell being the app concerned.

*more like 15%.. All this front-end stuff is outside my comfort zone, plus I've not worked out how to get networking going yet.

Jeroen van Bergen Jul 13

@womble @foone HTTP should add the FUCK_YOU method. You can use that to give some gentle feedback to some websites.

Or, as has been said a million times already: people developing this kind of stuff should be forced to use only 14K4 network connections.

Eniko Fox Jul 13

@foone meanwhile games are still writing all their own GUI code to this day 😩

a kilo of saucepans (rakslice)Jul 13

@eniko @foone but on the plus side games often build interfaces like they actually care if they're any good or not, which is really something

Dror Bogin Jul 13

@foone
True greatness would be to change the text in the arch/ribbon to "HALL OF FOONE"

Jes Moved to @Jes@labyrinth.zone Jul 13

@foone they put a web browser in the fucking mouse driver

aburka 🫣Jul 13

@foone there are like 13 bad decisions summed up as a limitation in that sentence

@aburka exactly!

@foone Electron was such a mistake.

Bryan Redeagle

@foone That dialog box sounds like a hate crime.

Futuristic Robert [KJ5ELX]

@foone I don’t understand why they don’t just show a keyboard so you can select the key you want.

@foone Escape??

@alilly @foone Must have been built by a vim user

manu Jul 13

@foone huh, how are Enter, Backspace and Tab not on the "Arrow" category, where they clearly belong? 🧐

lp0 on fire

@foone, but not Return? FAIL.

Abe the Honest Jul 13

@foone me whenever I see most of post skeunorphic mobile apps

Bryan Redeagle

@foone and probably faster. My favorite part of modern day terminal apps is how snappy they are.

wyatt Jul 13

@foone

this program would be just as functional and 10 times as nice to use if you’d written it for windows 95

Real.

Troldann Arothin Jul 13

@foone Editing? Maybe? I hope?

@troldann Bingo! Editing contains Enter, Escape, Backspace, Tab, Space, and Delete.

Troldann Arothin Jul 13

@foone I don't think that's where I'd have thought to put Escape...I feel like that would be in Function, Commands, or Navigation. Which is obviously terrible because it means we just have confusion.

Walter Nissen Jul 13

@troldann @foone That was my guess, too, because they seemed like the keys that would be used in a word processor.

forest

@foone it must be under commands... right

@swiftyshq Sorry, nope! Commands are like "Print Screen", "Pause/Break", and "Context Menu"

@foone aw fuuuuck

@foone before I read any comments, I'm going to say navigation.

superpositionedkat Jul 13

@foone I'm going with typing mode.

@superpositionedkat Sorry, that's Caps Lock, Scroll Lock, Num Lock, and Insert.

superpositionedkat Jul 13

@foone drat (that actually makes sense)

Justin Fitzsimmons Jul 13

@foone editing?

@smn Bingo! Editing contains Enter, Escape, Backspace, Tab, Space, and Delete.

Justin Fitzsimmons Jul 13

@foone

eblu Jul 13

@foone navigation perhaps?

@eblu Nope, that's Home, Page Up, End, and Page Down.

in that order.

Abe the Honest Jul 13

@foone navigation or command

renegadespork Jul 13

@foone Why didn't they just use a picture of a keyboard and you can click the key you'd like to choose? That's what Steam Input does, and it's super intuitive.

Tim 🛥️🌈Jul 13

@jesse @foone how do you pick a function not already on your keyboard?

renegadespork Jul 13

@spodlife @foone I don't understand your question. I'm assuming this UI is for creating keyboard marcos in the Steelseries software, so the key selector would match whatever model keyboard the driver detected.

Tim 🛥️🌈Jul 13

@jesse @foone sorry, I thought it was the other way round.

lydia!Jul 13

@foone I guess under Navigation?