[bastion]

moose_n_squirrel, on 04 March 2011 - 01:27 PM, said:

winsmith1984, on 04 March 2011 - 11:55 AM, said:

Is there a quicker way to open a file than Command-O? Coming from Windows, I really miss the ability to open files just by pressing Enter.

Even though I have always been a Mac user, this has always bugged me about the Mac. Come on Apple, when a file is selected, most of the time we want to open it, not rename it! Windows does this right.

The penalty for opening a file by mistake can be quite severe. Severe enough that it's obnoxious if it's easy to do by mistake, such as by tapping one centrally-located key.

[mooncaine]

Sadly, it took me about 40 presses of the Tab key to figure out how to get to this article without using the mouse.... I should have turned on MouseKeys.

444 Nope, looks like I didn't have MouseKeys on.

[mooncaine]

bastion, on 04 March 2011 - 02:14 PM, said:

moose_n_squirrel, on 04 March 2011 - 01:27 PM, said:

winsmith1984, on 04 March 2011 - 11:55 AM, said:

Is there a quicker way to open a file than Command-O? Coming from Windows, I really miss the ability to open files just by pressing Enter.

Even though I have always been a Mac user, this has always bugged me about the Mac. Come on Apple, when a file is selected, most of the time we want to open it, not rename it! Windows does this right.

The penalty for opening a file by mistake can be quite severe. Severe enough that it's obnoxious if it's easy to do by mistake, such as by tapping one centrally-located key.

The penalty for accidentally renaming a file can be severe, too. I prefer accidentally opening a file to accidentally renaming it, then noticing too late for Finder's single Undo to restore the old name.

If a file starts opening accidentally, and I don't want to wait just so I can quit the program, I can just do CMD-OPT-Esc, arrow down to the offending program, and whack the Return key (force quit).

[mooncaine]

Efficiency isn't only about speed. Some of us prefer keyboard shortcuts because of pain, or because we want to avoid getting a painful condition like carpal tunnel.

I used to struggle with wrist and hand pain. A good ergo keyboard, tray, trackball and a healthy appreciation for keyboard shortcuts made an amazing difference for me. Scarcely a pain except when I've been editing media for long hours (doing long 'drag' moves where I must hold down a mouse button while moving the mouse). Sometimes switching back to using a mouse for a while, or a tablet, helps, too.

It helps me to have a trackball with configurable buttons, so I can make one of them a Click Lock (click once to hold the mouse button down, click again to release, so no need to hold the mouse button down for those long drags).

Butler and TextExpander help a lot, too. I'm a happy customer who's used both for years.

[moose_n_squirrel]

mooncaine, on 04 March 2011 - 02:36 PM, said:

bastion, on 04 March 2011 - 02:14 PM, said:

The penalty for opening a file by mistake can be quite severe. Severe enough that it's obnoxious if it's easy to do by mistake, such as by tapping one centrally-located key.

The penalty for accidentally renaming a file can be severe, too. I prefer accidentally opening a file to accidentally renaming it, then noticing too late for Finder's single Undo to restore the old name.

What's the worst that can happen if you open a file or application by accident? It opens. You might wait for an app to load. You get worried about some RAM being taken up. So what? The worst case scenario is that you opened an AppleScript that has destructive results, but how often is that going to happen?

I think the penalty for an accidental rename is far worse. If a file is renamed by accident, you could lose track of it in a large folder (like a Downloads folder with 472 items), you could break links that other documents have to that file especially if you lose the Undo and can't remember exactly what the original name was, etc.

Windows does this right.

This post has been edited by moose_n_squirrel: 04 March 2011 - 02:51 PM

[Martian]

CAUTION….Custom Keyboard Shortcuts are really great if they are well thought out and used sparingly. But if you go overboard and become habituated to a whole bunch of non-standard key combinations, it will bite you in the ass every time you must set up a new Mac or startup drive, or borrow someone else’s computer.

Another point….given that your hands will still be on the mouse regardless of how efficiently you use the keyboard, why not use the mouse itself more efficiently while your hands are there? Buy a mouse with as many programmable keys as you can. For example, just having Cut and Paste a thumb-press away right on the mouse is a huge time and effort saver.

[bastion]

moose_n_squirrel, on 04 March 2011 - 02:51 PM, said:

mooncaine, on 04 March 2011 - 02:36 PM, said:

bastion, on 04 March 2011 - 02:14 PM, said:

The penalty for opening a file by mistake can be quite severe. Severe enough that it's obnoxious if it's easy to do by mistake, such as by tapping one centrally-located key.

The penalty for accidentally renaming a file can be severe, too. I prefer accidentally opening a file to accidentally renaming it, then noticing too late for Finder's single Undo to restore the old name.

What's the worst that can happen if you open a file or application by accident? It opens. You might wait for an app to load. You get worried about some RAM being taken up. So what? The worst case scenario is that you opened an AppleScript that has destructive results, but how often is that going to happen?

The worst that can happen? Data destruction. It depends greatly on the nature of the file being opened and the application the OS chooses to open it. But some effects are:
You will wait for the app to load and the document to be opened. This can take quite a lot of time and system resources depending the file and the machine.
Certain data files will change automatically as a result of being opened. Undo or close-without-saving is unlikely to exist in exactly those scenarios.
The consequences of opening an application by mistake can be completely arbitrary, and need not be overtly destructive to be undesirable.
Metadata absolutely will change. That can have consequences in the future depending on other processes running on the machine.

Quote

I think the penalty for an accidental rename is far worse. If a file is renamed by accident, you could lose track of it in a large folder (like a Downloads folder with 472 items), you could break links that other documents have to that file especially if you lose the Undo and can't remember exactly what the original name was, etc.

There is no cost inherent in putting a file into rename mode, which is what "enter" does on the Mac. For any cost to manifest you have to type additional keys and then commit the edit before you realize you've done anything. How often does this actually happen to you? And seriously: Losing track of a file within its folder is "far worse" than outright destruction? I can't agree with that.

Quote

Windows does this right.

Windows does it the way you prefer. That's not a synonym for "right." I frankly loathe the Windows way, and I've been a professional Windows programmer since the 3.1 era. (Why do I feel so strongly against it? See the list of potential consequences above and understand that I have experienced each of them multiple times.)

[moose_n_squirrel]

I understand your points and enjoy this friendly discussion. But...

bastion, on 04 March 2011 - 04:07 PM, said:

The worst that can happen? Data destruction. It depends greatly on the nature of the file being opened and the application the OS chooses to open it. But some effects are:
You will wait for the app to load and the document to be opened. This can take quite a lot of time and system resources depending the file and the machine.
Certain data files will change automatically as a result of being opened. Undo or close-without-saving is unlikely to exist in exactly those scenarios.
The consequences of opening an application by mistake can be completely arbitrary, and need not be overtly destructive to be undesirable.
Metadata absolutely will change. That can have consequences in the future depending on other processes running on the machine.

Waiting for the app is not an issue. Thanks to smooth Mac OS X multitasking, I simply put it in the background and it will have no effect on other processes unless some heavy processing is going on. Later, I can quit it from Application Switcher without even switching to it.

I see your points about metadata changes, but on the whole they're not significant. 90% of the time it will simply be the OS X "Last Opened" datestamp, which isn't something anyone wants to rely on anyway. Besides, if you put that risk next to the risks of accidentally renaming files, usually renaming files will cause more mayhem.

bastion, on 04 March 2011 - 04:07 PM, said:

There is no cost inherent in putting a file into rename mode, which is what "enter" does on the Mac. For any cost to manifest you have to type additional keys and then commit the edit before you realize you've done anything. How often does this actually happen to you? And seriously: Losing track of a file within its folder is "far worse" than outright destruction? I can't agree with that.

Let's remember that I wasn't the one to bring that up first. Many people have, in the "Return vs rename" debate over the years, so it isn't exactly rare. In the context of speed oriented keyboard work, where a string of shortcuts is pressed, a Return may be followed by more key presses. This is where a file may be renamed before you realize it happened, and as the other poster pointed out, before you overrun the (why, Apple?) one single Finder undo. And I don't know where you get the "outright destruction" thing since generally, opening a doc in an app is not a straight path into "outright destruction," where there is little difference between being unable to locate a file because you can't figure out what its new accidental name is, and the file being destroyed outright...

Obviously we just agree to disagree.

[bonesb]

winsmith1984, on 04 March 2011 - 11:55 AM, said:

Is there a quicker way to open a file than Command-O? Coming from Windows, I really miss the ability to open files just by pressing Enter.

Command-Down Arrow. One-hander - QED.

[PaulNikolasNakDownie]

I know I’m always using the ↗, ↖, ▲ and ▼ instead of the scroll wheel on my mouse. And use ⌃, ⌥, ⌘ and space to trigger adding text to iTunes as a spoken track.

Don’t know if that’s helpful … … … … … … 

[kenhare]

Is the Command ~ an American thing? On my Mac, here in the UK, I press Command ` to cycle between windows within an application.

[winsmith1984]

Thanks for the replies guys. I don't think I was nit-picking; the whole point of the initial article was to save time by using the keyboard, so if one of the most common things you want to do when browsing a file system (opening files and folders) takes twice as long as it could do, then it kind of defeats the purpose. Apple is famed for its nit-picking anyway - think Scott Forstall with his photographers loupe for checking pixels - and their attention to detail and desire to make things intuitive and easy to use is what sets them apart, which is what makes this issue seem so incongruous.

I also don't accept the 'saving you from yourself' argument. It's not much more difficult to accidentally double click on an item than it is to accidentally press Enter. If merely opening a file can cause such catastrophic damage, then there's a fundamental problem with the associated application, and the correct way of dealing with that problem is not simply to make it slightly more cumbersome to open all files and folders. Besides, if easily opening files was really an issue, presumably there'd be numerous people wanting to disable the feature in Windows (which is home to many more potentially dangerous applications than OS X), but I only found one person asking the question when searching with Google.

Anyway, I've now installed PresButan which has done the job nicely.

[bear90039]

I can not tell you how much I live this gem of an app http://www.ergonis.c...roducts/keycue/
If you ever question a shortcut, holding down the command key for more than a second brings up a list to remind you.

[bear90039]

Aryugaetu, on 04 March 2011 - 10:37 AM, said:

The qwerty keyboard has been around for so long and is so ubiquitous that its current ineffectiveness goes completely unnoticed. From its scattered key arrangement to prevent jamming within the typewriter to its poor portability to different languages and a tremendous obstacle to the millions with physical disabilities, it is an extraordinarily poor method of placing language on media and a sluggishly tedious way of communicating to a computer.

While a person's ability to navigate the computer keyboard can be as impressive as a concert pianist, humanity could be served far better by taking some of the billions of unused clock cycles per second, and diverting them to a more modern and human form of input so the isolated millions can more readily join the world's digital chorus.

I applaud Apple's efforts in giving Lion better text-to-speech abilities, I wish they would give the same attention to the OS for those requiring the opposite function, regardless how the user pronounces the words.

The internet will never be open and free as long as the antiquated keyboard is kept in place to prevent the millions (billions?) of people from accessing it effectively.

You do not have to use a querty keyboard. There are many others to choose from. You don't have to speak english either with so many languages in the world.