Why does Outlook map Ctrl+F to Forward instead of Find?(blogs.msdn.com)
blogs.msdn.com
Why does Outlook map Ctrl+F to Forward instead of Find?
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2014/07/15/10542285.aspx
210 comments
Raymond also answered that question on his blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2006/05/23/60474...
WingDings mapped the 'J' character to smiley face; when the email goes to a client without that font installed, it just displays the original character in the default font.
Old New Thing is an awesome blog! J
WingDings mapped the 'J' character to smiley face; when the email goes to a client without that font installed, it just displays the original character in the default font.
Old New Thing is an awesome blog! J
The latest Unicode updates should fix this. All those glyphs are now mapped to Unicode points instead of ASCII, so if someone has an updated Wingdings font, it won't be a 'J' anymore.
(It will be a box with a question mark, probably.)
(It will be a box with a question mark, probably.)
If the sender has an ASCII Wingdings, and the receiver has a Unicode Wingdings, the receiver gets a J (at least if the receiver is using Apple Mail).
That makes so much sense! The people I correspond with at work now seem much less professional.
There's also a common sig about "Please think twice about printing this email" with a wingwings of a little tree. That turns into some plain character as well. Maybe G? I kept wondering why everyone was ending their emails with G.
I also wonder how much energy is collectively wasted sending that extra line in every email. It must add up to something from a storage, energy use, rendering, etc perspective. I wonder if it offsets any behavior changes that may help the environment by those who actually don't print. I doubt that little message is going to stop anyone from printing.
I also wonder how much energy is collectively wasted sending that extra line in every email. It must add up to something from a storage, energy use, rendering, etc perspective. I wonder if it offsets any behavior changes that may help the environment by those who actually don't print. I doubt that little message is going to stop anyone from printing.
The character is P - until recently I thought it was supposed to be an initial, since the sentence begins with "Please"
For reference: http://i.imgur.com/I1GET1w.png
For reference: http://i.imgur.com/I1GET1w.png
Whoa .. I had no idea.
Do you know how it looks to outlook users?
Do you know how it looks to outlook users?
I doubt that little message is going to stop anyone from printing
On at least one occasion I've printed an email and ended up using an extra page because of the extended "Please think twice" section.
On at least one occasion I've printed an email and ended up using an extra page because of the extended "Please think twice" section.
For months I thought my girlfriend was signing her emails with her initial. It wasn’t until I saw her typing an email to a friend that I realised what was going on.
Thunderbird users, there's an addon for that: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunderbird/addon/smiley-fi...
That's probably the worst possible fix. Why fix something that should not be there at all? MS broke comparability with other email clients by introducing such one-way conversion to graphics, a fix must be on their side.
Wow, I was wondering about that just yesterday. It seems to be common among realtors and mortgage company underlings - people that I don't normally have to deal with, but that are likely to use emoticons to end every paragraph.
I do deal with realtors every day... my god, never in my life have I met such an illiterate group of so-called professionals.
It isn't fair to call them illiterate any more than it would be illiterate for me to not understand all the intricacies of real estate law. At some point, we as technologists gave them this communications tool without actually engaging with them in its proper use, and they learned the lowest common denominator etiquette.
When my teenage kids text me, I make sure that they use complete sentences. I'm a bit of a bastard that way, but hopefully they'll be better off later on in life.
When my teenage kids text me, I make sure that they use complete sentences. I'm a bit of a bastard that way, but hopefully they'll be better off later on in life.
I think Kluny's point is the the emails were an incorrect use of the English language not an incorrect use of email.
It's one of the few potentially decent paying professions someone without a college degree can get into without insurmountable entry barriers, so perhaps you should go a bit easier on them.
College or not, anyone involved in deals involving hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of dollars should not be writing emails that look like a text message written by a 12 year old. Perhaps I'm selecting the wrong measure of quality, but if a realtor were to send me an email punctuated by a plethora of smiley faces and three periods at the end of sentences, I would find another realtor. I say this based on experience, and the one that communicates with email that appears to be written by an adult turns out to be the one that doesn't annoy me by not listening and showing me houses I have no interest in.
I was just displeased as you were I'm sure to find out that a billionaire used smiley faces too
http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/53358dd4ecad04e75a8...
http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/53358dd4ecad04e75a8...
It doesn't look to me like he's discriminating against realtors for not having gone to college; he's bashing them for actual demonstrated poor literacy, which is a lot harder to excuse than not going to college. (If you meant to instead make a more reasonable complaint about him painting with an overly-broad brush, you should have said so.)
I am a mortgage company underling and can confirm that almost everyone at my company, and the realtors we deal with, use tons of emoticons. I think it's the only way everyone manages to stay sane in this business.
I would not be able to stay sane if I had to look at tons of emoticons every day.
Another Raymond Chen (blog post author) on the that topic: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2006/05/23/60474...
I do hate software that auto replaces :) with a graphic emoticon.
You can disable this in Outlook: Outlook Options → Mail → Editor Options → AutoCorrect Options
Tom Scott touched on this in his Computerphile video -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tITwM5GDIAI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tITwM5GDIAI
Perhaps a better question to ask is why Outlook maps "alt+s" to send, which is how the "ś" diacritic in Polish is typed (also "ß" in German) resulting in all kinds of funny/awkward situations in which incomplete e-mails are sent.
Because Bill Gates doesn't speak Polish or German.
That gets worse if Outlook pops up an appointment reminder while you are typing a message. Such windows show (http://www.neurophys.wisc.edu/comp/blog/2007/figs/bbf2007061...) that alt-S does Snooze, but Outlook reacts to that key press, too (or eats it before the pop up can see it)
"ß" on the German keyboard is on the right to the "0" key and doesn't need any modifier.
And on qwerty US-International which is used throughout most countries that don't want to use their own specialized keyboards it's alt+s.
AltGr+S (or Ctrl+Alt+S).
Then the Duden[0] gives the following rule:
"Fehlt das ß auf der Tastatur eines Computers oder einer Schreibmaschine, schreibt man dafür ss."
Translation: "If the ß is missing on a computer keyboard or typewriter, you have to write 'ss' instead".
[0] http://www.duden.de/sprachwissen/rechtschreibregeln/doppel-s...
"Fehlt das ß auf der Tastatur eines Computers oder einer Schreibmaschine, schreibt man dafür ss."
Translation: "If the ß is missing on a computer keyboard or typewriter, you have to write 'ss' instead".
[0] http://www.duden.de/sprachwissen/rechtschreibregeln/doppel-s...
But it's not missing. This is like saying capital s is missing because you have to press shift+s.
Hehe true. I guess they mean "if the (standalone) key is missing".
I'm pretty sure they refer to the inability to type ß. Which is a real concern for type writers, less so for most keyboards. I'm writing this using an American keyboard and I don't see why I shouldn't use "ß" just because it's a different key(-combination). I also wouldn't start writing "spaet" just because "ä" takes a bit more work (Alt+U, A).
The Duden abides. (sorry!)
I thought ß was being phased out. In fact, I heard that like 10 years ago at school during a German class.
Not entirely. The spelling reform (about 10 years ago) somewhat reduced the use of ß but you still use it frequently after a diphthong (as in "Straße" [street]).
That's just a long vowel, not a diphthong (literally "two sounds"; incidentally, "sounds" has a diphthong in it).
I started living in Germany right after it was adopted, and still cannot get the long vs short vowel history for ß.
They just sound the same to my hears, so I got around it by memorizing the respective use cases.
They just sound the same to my hears, so I got around it by memorizing the respective use cases.
I tend to still write in the old spelling (I didn't have to take exams in the reformed spelling yet so I never bothered to memorise all the braindeadness) and rely on Word/Outlook to correct me where necessary. That works quite well so far.
It might depend on where you live. I took a recent trip through Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and I noticed that Austrian street signs tended to use "Straße" while German and Swiss tended to use "Strasse".
OTOH it could also be just spending priorities of updating street signs vs. other things.
I knew nothing about the phasing-out of ß until reading the comments on this article.
OTOH it could also be just spending priorities of updating street signs vs. other things.
I knew nothing about the phasing-out of ß until reading the comments on this article.
> German and Swiss tended to use "Strasse".
In Switzerland, "ss" is standard (Duden says: "In der Schweiz kann das ß generell durch ss ersetzt werden <§ 25 E2>.") I haven't seen "Strasse" on signs in Germany, but there might be regional variation (since street signs are a local-government responsibility)
In Switzerland, "ss" is standard (Duden says: "In der Schweiz kann das ß generell durch ss ersetzt werden <§ 25 E2>.") I haven't seen "Strasse" on signs in Germany, but there might be regional variation (since street signs are a local-government responsibility)
That would've been too easy - instead it's now used in fewer places, but with new rules ;) When it's long-pronounced, ß is still used, like in Fuß or Stoß. In words like Fluss it's replaced with ss.
Isn't AltGr the usual key to get alternate characters instead of Alt which is for keyboard shortcuts? I've never seen a program mapping shortcuts to AltGr.
"ś" is input in Polish using AltGr+s (or Ctrl+Alt+s), but AltGr is not labeled as such on Polish keyboards (it's simply the right Alt key, and people will refer to it as such when asked).
I'd suggest the even more pertinent question to ask is: Who still voluntarily uses Outlook?
Microsoft arrogance aside: Gigantic, bloated, monolithic proprietary applications, written by a company known to be privacy-hostile and surveillance-friendly, handling your potentially sensitive communcations? I think not.
Microsoft arrogance aside: Gigantic, bloated, monolithic proprietary applications, written by a company known to be privacy-hostile and surveillance-friendly, handling your potentially sensitive communcations? I think not.
Best email/calendar/contacts integration?
Pretty much any Exchange shop that's standardized on Microsoft's tools. There are a lot of them out there.
Probably a sizable chunk of fortunate 500s.
A lot are using Zimbra now days. My company made the switch a few years back.
Lower TCO, has all the same features of Exchange (plus some collaboration features Exchange lacks), plus it's open source so you can hack on it or make your own custom modules if you desire.
Lower TCO, has all the same features of Exchange (plus some collaboration features Exchange lacks), plus it's open source so you can hack on it or make your own custom modules if you desire.
I do. It's nice. Super fast for power users compared to web mail apps, and probably the best native client for Windows in terms of functionality. I'm not even locked into Exchange.
> I'd suggest the even more pertinent question to ask is: Who still voluntarily uses Outlook?
In corporate environment Exchange/Outlook is an awesome tool for e-mail, instant messaging, calendar, contacts, booking resources, etc.
In corporate environment Exchange/Outlook is an awesome tool for e-mail, instant messaging, calendar, contacts, booking resources, etc.
I hope you're not referring to Microsoft Lync as "an awesome tool for IM", because I must disagree with you on that if you are.
I had to use Lync at my last job and to be honest it was one of the contributing factors to my leaving.
It breaks links, it breaks basic copy/paste functionality in clear and obvious ways, it wastes screen real estate like its going out of style, it's slow clunky and cumbersome... No Thankyou.
I had to use Lync at my last job and to be honest it was one of the contributing factors to my leaving.
It breaks links, it breaks basic copy/paste functionality in clear and obvious ways, it wastes screen real estate like its going out of style, it's slow clunky and cumbersome... No Thankyou.
I agree Lync has its drawbacks, but still is pretty useful in terms of sharing desktop, integration with calendar, etc.
Hm. Most Germans probably use the German keyboard layout which has a key for the ß character. I guess I'm pretty odd in that I use the "US English International" (or similar) keyboard layout which supports the German characters via dead keys. Except ß, which is the right Alt key plus s. (The left Alt key plus s is just a regular Alt+S. US Intl changes the semantics of the right Alt key.)
For Polish, does the left Alt key generate "ś"? Or the right Alt key? Or both?
For Polish, does the left Alt key generate "ś"? Or the right Alt key? Or both?
Sadly, most cross-platform apps have a shortcut that gets triggered with altgr + key. I use US-International (a layout where almost every key has a symbol mapped to an altgr + key combination), and this is very frustrating, especially with accented vowels áéíóú and ñ (pretty common in Spanish).
This is why I always prefer dedicated windows apps over cross-platform apps.
This is why I always prefer dedicated windows apps over cross-platform apps.
Even dedicated Windows applications get that wrong on occasion, despite the UX guidelines stating that Ctrl+Alt should never be used for shortcuts for this very reason. Alas, people with a vanilla US keyboard layout won't ever notice ...
Most recent thing that bit me in that regard was ReSharper.
Most recent thing that bit me in that regard was ReSharper.
On Swedish versions of Word find is moved to Ctrl+b since the word for bold starts with an f. Can get very annoying when mixing versions.
In the Spanish version, I believe it's Ctl+N. Even as a native speaker it used to trow me off.
That would be a great question for Raymond Chen! I wonder whoever thought that was a good idea. Anyone who uses a localized Word version is likely to use an English one as well sometime, and the hot keys are completely messed up.
For bonus points, ask about the localized Excel formulas. And date formats! That is so brain freezingly stupid I can not for my life comprehend it. It causes no end of trouble when moving data between versions.
For bonus points, ask about the localized Excel formulas. And date formats! That is so brain freezingly stupid I can not for my life comprehend it. It causes no end of trouble when moving data between versions.
Or the localised CSV formats. Yes, they actually localised a file format. Insanity.
ALT+S is also save in XCode with default key mappings for a standard keyboard. I hit save habitually while coding. I've sent several incomplete emails hitting that. I've started typing up my emails in Vim and pasting into Outlook when I'm done.
I was going to ask why the downvotes but today I switched to a newer Dell keyboard, the kind that looks like an Apple ripoff. I had the Dell KB212-B before. My 'Modifier Key' settings have always been the default. Alt mapped to Command on my old keyboard, "Windows" maps to Command on this one. Searching seems to suggest Windows to Command is the norm. I sort of liked Alt to Command since it mimicked the Apple layout more closely. Hmmm, which to choose?
That's an awful reason to do that. It shouldn't matter who files a bug report, it should be handled the same way as all others. In this case, they broke convention to please Gates, probably against the wishes of the people actually working on the software. It doesn't matter if it was a regular user, Gates or the pope, a bug report carries equal value.
It's still better than the reason why modern browsers like Firefox and Chrome adopted the absolutely terrible backspace-for-back shortcut: because someone on the IE team decided to do it 20 years ago, probably because it was a shortcut in Windows' file Explorer as well.
https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/53176/why-does-backsp...
https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/53176/why-does-backsp...
This shortcut has cost me so much over the years. Heaven forbid you're typing out a long comment and accidental hit it when the focus is off the text box. Now you hit forward and your text is gone. It wasn't until fairly recently that the browsers kept text box content under these circumstances. In the past you'd just lose it all. Hell, maybe IE still does, but I know Chrome keeps it. So many long winded Metafilter and Slashdot posts lost to the bit bucket...
Other times, focus detection breaks randomly and you're in a text box but something happens and, whoops, off you go to the previous page. I don't know how often these early web guys thought we'd be going back, but mapping it to one of the largest and most frequently used keys is asinine.
Andreeson recently said that his team always thought of the front and back buttons as half-assed solutions until they could figure out something better. Guess that's probably never going to change.
Other times, focus detection breaks randomly and you're in a text box but something happens and, whoops, off you go to the previous page. I don't know how often these early web guys thought we'd be going back, but mapping it to one of the largest and most frequently used keys is asinine.
Andreeson recently said that his team always thought of the front and back buttons as half-assed solutions until they could figure out something better. Guess that's probably never going to change.
I feel your pain. For me it was losing many hours worth of written and rewritten letters to girlfriends and friends. Kids these days have no idea how hard we had it with their state captured forms.
Yes, that's one terrible shortcut. For those on Firefox: in about:config, set browser.backspace_action to 2 to disable it. Made my life better, though it also made me realize I used to use it to go back sometimes.
This would all be 100% true in an ideal world. Unfortunately, the world we live in is far from ideal.
I think the person paying you to do the work should have a strong say in how you do it, no matter how ridiculous.
I'm thankful that we're (very) slowly moving away from that idea. That's what they pay Product Owners for.
Good PO/PM's care about the integrity of the product enough to argue with a CEO, but developers intrinsically have extra motivation beyond just "product integrity is valued!": every additional iota of product crappiness is painful, every time they touch it.
In this case, isn't that ultimately the customer, who's now here wondering why Ctrl+F doesn't map to find?
That's irrelevant. The customer pays business (the owner). If the owner does something against his customer's interests, then the customer has the right to shop elsewhere.
It would professional to strongly argue if their opinion is not for the best of the company. By strongly, I would see an argument like "You're the boss, but what you're saying doesn't make any sense because X and Y and Z."
That person often has contradictory wishes. In this case, for example, it's likely that the person paying them to do the work wished for ^F to move to the next message and for them to build the best product for their customers.
Good management involves prioritizing these things in order to sort out the contradictions, and good employees help with this process by pushing back against directives that contradict what appear to be more important goals.
Good management involves prioritizing these things in order to sort out the contradictions, and good employees help with this process by pushing back against directives that contradict what appear to be more important goals.
Many times conventions are broken by some upper level person who isnt in touch with the reality around him. Projects I have been on have suffered because people dont understand technology or the conventions users have become accustomed to.
Absolutely, but if anyone understands technology, it's Bill Gates. I'm guessing the blame for this case resides with the middle management that forced the programmers to follow the wishes of the boss.
[deleted]
After reading comments implying that this is Bill's fault,
here is how I'm guessing this played out. I could be wrong, but I've seen it before.
Bill says "Why isn't Ctrl+F mapped to forward?"
Developer hears "Bill wants this mapped to Ctrl+F. I'd better it do it or I'm fired."
Bill means "Please map this to forward, unless there is a really good reason otherwise, in which case I expect you not map it to forward, but tell me the reason why not."
Bill says "Why isn't Ctrl+F mapped to forward?"
Developer hears "Bill wants this mapped to Ctrl+F. I'd better it do it or I'm fired."
Bill means "Please map this to forward, unless there is a really good reason otherwise, in which case I expect you not map it to forward, but tell me the reason why not."
How optimistic.
No I believe that he meant exactly that and even then he wouldn't "have been convinced". The engineers never are (about usability issues)
No I believe that he meant exactly that and even then he wouldn't "have been convinced". The engineers never are (about usability issues)
So Crtl+F being mapped to the find command in every other application wasn't "a really good reason"?
No, it's a good reason. It's just that this particular user wasn't aware of that good reason, and because of sacred cow syndrome no one would tell him otherwise.
Or better yet, Bill Gates wanted user configurable keyboard shortcuts.
Users can't handle that. Better leave the Ctrl-Q [Quit without asking] shortcut immediately next to the Ctrl-W [Close tab]. Love, the Firefox devs.
Hmm. I'm on Firefox/latest on Windows, and Ctrl-Q does nothing.
Is this a Linux thing?
I do accidentally close Firefox from time to time, though: The problem is that Shift-Control-W is "close window" instead of "close tab". Which makes sense, but sometimes I hit it by mistake, typically when I mean to hit Shift-Control-T. Don't know there's anything they could do to fix that.
Is this a Linux thing?
I do accidentally close Firefox from time to time, though: The problem is that Shift-Control-W is "close window" instead of "close tab". Which makes sense, but sometimes I hit it by mistake, typically when I mean to hit Shift-Control-T. Don't know there's anything they could do to fix that.
I know I do hit Command-Q instead of Command-W almost every day on my Mac. I've installed a big keyboard macro application so that I can remap "Command-Q" to "nothing", I literally don't use it for anything else.
Sometimes this piss me off too.
But this is worse. Pressing Command+W in Skype chat asks if you want to remove person from your favourites. At one specific version it actually closed the window. Go figure.
But this is worse. Pressing Command+W in Skype chat asks if you want to remove person from your favourites. At one specific version it actually closed the window. Go figure.
Allow shortcut keys to be remapped.
Would be nice, but both shortcuts "make sense" to me, which makes them easier for me to remember.
Though considering "close window" is so disruptive when you hit it by accident, an optional "close the window?" dialog would be nice.
Though considering "close window" is so disruptive when you hit it by accident, an optional "close the window?" dialog would be nice.
Well then the project manager should have argued back and said, Hey Bill, I know you're the boss, but you're mistaken about this. This completely breaks the convention from the rest of our programs and therefore the expected behavior within our ecosystem. And then laid out several additional good reasons why Ctrl-F is logically Find, not Forward, and asked him to deal with the inconvenience.
Perhaps Bill would have fired them, but if he's as smart as people say he is he would've been convinced by a good counterargument.
Perhaps Bill would have fired them, but if he's as smart as people say he is he would've been convinced by a good counterargument.
As someone who writes a plugin for Outlook as his day job, I can think of many, many better questions than this.
For example, at the moment it's, "why is Outlook ruining my life?"
For example, at the moment it's, "why is Outlook ruining my life?"
I think you might need this link: https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs
On the contrary, I would believe. Outlook extensions is probably a great niche market, considering Outlook is the third most used client [1].
[1] - http://emailclientmarketshare.com/
[1] - http://emailclientmarketshare.com/
More for his mental health....
Ha. As someone who had written synchronization applications against Outlook and Exchange, I can totally relate.
Programmatically rescheduling an instance of a recurring meeting that has users on different timezones and daylight savings time adjustments. That's pain that I will never forget.
For bonus points be that guy who had to implement such things on Lotus Domino.
Programmatically rescheduling an instance of a recurring meeting that has users on different timezones and daylight savings time adjustments. That's pain that I will never forget.
For bonus points be that guy who had to implement such things on Lotus Domino.
I'd say it's giving you a job rather than ruining your life.
If it was perfect, people probably would not need plugins for it.
If it was perfect, people probably would not need plugins for it.
Getting a bit tired with all the downvoting going on at the moment. I also have downvoting rights, but I hardly ever use them unless I see something offensive.
Give it a rest, people.
Give it a rest, people.
[deleted]
I got fed up with this fairly recently, and remapped it so I can use ctrl-F for find, using AutoHotKey:
#IfWinActive, ahk_class rctrl_renwnd32
^f::Send, {F4}Outlook shortcuts are a complete bastard.
You have Ctrl-F as discussed which is completely different to the rest of windows.
You have alt-S for send as well which is used in some language for special characters.
And the most annoying is shift+enter. When you want a single line break in an HTMl email it sends it instead. This has a warning now.
No end of grief those have given me.
You have Ctrl-F as discussed which is completely different to the rest of windows.
You have alt-S for send as well which is used in some language for special characters.
And the most annoying is shift+enter. When you want a single line break in an HTMl email it sends it instead. This has a warning now.
No end of grief those have given me.
That last one is fixable.
I'm on Outlook 2007, so I don't know if the preference has moved in 2010 or 2013, but:
Tools > Options > E-mail Options > Advanced E-Mail Options > uncheck "Press CTRL+ENTER to send messages"
I'm on Outlook 2007, so I don't know if the preference has moved in 2010 or 2013, but:
Tools > Options > E-mail Options > Advanced E-Mail Options > uncheck "Press CTRL+ENTER to send messages"
> And the most annoying is shift+enter.
Ctrl-enter is send in at least the US version of Outlook, it has been for years (e.g. at least the last decade I think.)
Shift-enter is single new line, across all versions of Office apps.
Ctrl-enter is send in at least the US version of Outlook, it has been for years (e.g. at least the last decade I think.)
Shift-enter is single new line, across all versions of Office apps.
Alt-S is used as "send" in many IM-applications.
Alt together some character is used as hotkey in ALL applications. Hold it down and you will see a small underline under (usually) the first character of most buttons, press this character on the keyboard and the button will be pressed. I think it would collide with S quite frequently. It is AltGr-S you are supposed to use for localized S-characters.
Alt together some character is used as hotkey in ALL applications. Hold it down and you will see a small underline under (usually) the first character of most buttons, press this character on the keyboard and the button will be pressed. I think it would collide with S quite frequently. It is AltGr-S you are supposed to use for localized S-characters.
For Alt-S, aren't AltGr and Alt different keys on your keyboard? I use the US-International keyboard layout and the right alt-key is AltGr and the left alt-key is Alt. Sending only happens with the left key.
This is Windows, you're supposed to just click the buttons with your mouse.
Raymond didn't answer the question; He answered a different question. The question actually asked was about why---almost 20 years later---Microsoft continues to ship new versions of Office with this inconsistency.
It's like if you discovered that your newly-built SF apartment building wasn't earthquake-resistant, and you asked an engineer from the construction company, "Why are you building new apartment buildings in San Francisco that aren't resistant to earthquakes?", and the engineer answered, "Well, we designed our first apartments 150 years ago when people didn't know very much about earthquakes." The answer is a non-answer, and the practice itself is unsustainable.
It's like if you discovered that your newly-built SF apartment building wasn't earthquake-resistant, and you asked an engineer from the construction company, "Why are you building new apartment buildings in San Francisco that aren't resistant to earthquakes?", and the engineer answered, "Well, we designed our first apartments 150 years ago when people didn't know very much about earthquakes." The answer is a non-answer, and the practice itself is unsustainable.
I bet the humanitarian work of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is his way of atoning.
Amusingly, I'm annoyed with browsers for not using C-s for "search." :) Seriously, I think I can count on one hand the number of times I've wanted to "save" a web page. And none of them ever worked.
I'd rather C-s was save, and C-f was find, consistently across all applications rather than the nightmare world you're proposing (which, to be fair, we're halfway in already). Unless you're distinguishing between search and find (even then, I'd rather not have a shortcut for whatever search does).
My problem with that is that it makes virtually zero sense to have a "save" option in the browser. Seriously, when is the only time that was what you wanted? :) Perhaps if it was remapped to "bookmark"? (C-d? Seriously?)
Though, I should say that it was a quick trip to firemacs to get the behavior I wanted.
Though, I should say that it was a quick trip to firemacs to get the behavior I wanted.
Yeah, bookmarking makes some sense, and is probably more useful than saving the page itself which, I agree, is almost entirely useless. To be honest, if it comes to it, I'd rather have no mapping at all for a shortcut whose standard command is out-of-place for a given app, than overload a shortcut that has a single specific meaning in every other.
I've used save several times when I wanted some information on the web page to be accessible offline. Commonly: ticket information. Or, all the information on some table on Wikipedia.
Yep :-) Working between Windows and OSX all with different application behaviour can be quite taxing on the muscle memory. Esp. for heavy users of emacs and I suppose of vi.
Countless times I have wished that there was an operating system level option to choose keymapping (emacs, vi, cua, whatever) and _all_ applications will respect that.
Countless times I have wished that there was an operating system level option to choose keymapping (emacs, vi, cua, whatever) and _all_ applications will respect that.
I'm mostly ok with variety. Helps keep me thinking about what I'm doing. Well, as long as the shortcuts they use actually make sense. As I said in a sibling, why is C-d bookmark?! At least C-f for "forward" makes sense.
It is surprising how "discoverable" many of the keyboard choices are/were in older editors. In emacs? C-c C-(first letter of what you want to do) probably works if you are in a minor mode. If not, try C-h b to see the bindings.
It is surprising how "discoverable" many of the keyboard choices are/were in older editors. In emacs? C-c C-(first letter of what you want to do) probably works if you are in a minor mode. If not, try C-h b to see the bindings.
My use case for very frequent saving is holding on to pages for later reading when I don't have an Internet connection (at home, as it happens; or, what may be a more common use case, on planes or (some) trains)).
My method for that is not closing the browser. Do you have a workflow where you save to a specific place to see when you are on the train?
> My method for that is not closing the browser.
The advantages of saving the file over not closing the browser are two:
1. it's persistent across reboots / power failure (a pressing concern on an old machine that sometimes decides it's time for an unannounced reboot);
2. it scales well with the number of articles I want to save—I'd rather have 100 files saved than 100 tabs open, and the former doesn't cause any slow-down.
> Do you have a workflow where you save to a specific place to see when you are on the train?
I'm not sure that I understand the question; sorry.
The advantages of saving the file over not closing the browser are two:
1. it's persistent across reboots / power failure (a pressing concern on an old machine that sometimes decides it's time for an unannounced reboot);
2. it scales well with the number of articles I want to save—I'd rather have 100 files saved than 100 tabs open, and the former doesn't cause any slow-down.
> Do you have a workflow where you save to a specific place to see when you are on the train?
I'm not sure that I understand the question; sorry.
Already the "bookmarks" for most folks is already a dumping ground that they never look at. For myself, I know that if I were saving pages to a spot, I would be in major trouble with just a massively growing pit of pages I'll never slog through.
So, I would think it would be great if you could "triage" pages you wanted to save for later. Even if I could move them from a "to read" to a "read" pile would be awesome. Didn't know if you had any pointers on making that happen.
Edit: I should say, btw, I actually do use my "don't close tabs" for the train. My commutes are typically small, so I don't do large readings.
So, I would think it would be great if you could "triage" pages you wanted to save for later. Even if I could move them from a "to read" to a "read" pile would be awesome. Didn't know if you had any pointers on making that happen.
Edit: I should say, btw, I actually do use my "don't close tabs" for the train. My commutes are typically small, so I don't do large readings.
> So, I would think it would be great if you could "triage" pages you wanted to save for later. Even if I could move them from a "to read" to a "read" pile would be awesome. Didn't know if you had any pointers on making that happen.
Not really; I do a first, basic sort when saving according to very crude topic (Math, CS, news, …). When I actually read, I treat it essentially as if I were reading online; unless I really enjoy the file, I delete it after reading. If I do enjoy it, I move it to a separate 'permanent' storage area.
One advantage of this over bookmarks for me is that I somehow spend more time looking at my directory tree than my bookmarks, and so am more bothered by an enormous (in the sense of number of files, not size) directory than by my bookmarks becoming, as you say, a massive dumping ground. Thus, having the files on disk somehow seems to cause me to deal with them, either sorting them more carefully or deleting them, much sooner (or, at least, before the end of time :-) ).
Not really; I do a first, basic sort when saving according to very crude topic (Math, CS, news, …). When I actually read, I treat it essentially as if I were reading online; unless I really enjoy the file, I delete it after reading. If I do enjoy it, I move it to a separate 'permanent' storage area.
One advantage of this over bookmarks for me is that I somehow spend more time looking at my directory tree than my bookmarks, and so am more bothered by an enormous (in the sense of number of files, not size) directory than by my bookmarks becoming, as you say, a massive dumping ground. Thus, having the files on disk somehow seems to cause me to deal with them, either sorting them more carefully or deleting them, much sooner (or, at least, before the end of time :-) ).
Would printing to a pdf be a better workflow? Lots of sites seem to break due to external css/js not working for an offline local copy.
> Would printing to a pdf be a better workflow?
It may be; I just have a foolish built-in mindset that "PDF is big, and HTML is small" (uncontaminated by anything silly like checking the sizes of PDF and HTML versions of the same page). Since I usually only use this to queue up casual reading, it's not very important to me that it be an extremely faithful copy; I just grab the "Print view" if there is one.
Firefox, with "Web page, complete", and Safari, with "Web archive", are both pretty good at grabbing dependencies. If I really want a good mirror, then I use wget.
It may be; I just have a foolish built-in mindset that "PDF is big, and HTML is small" (uncontaminated by anything silly like checking the sizes of PDF and HTML versions of the same page). Since I usually only use this to queue up casual reading, it's not very important to me that it be an extremely faithful copy; I just grab the "Print view" if there is one.
Firefox, with "Web page, complete", and Safari, with "Web archive", are both pretty good at grabbing dependencies. If I really want a good mirror, then I use wget.
Meh - no-one's perfect. Apple Mail treats cmd+r as reply; acting as an alias for 'get mail' would make a lot more sense as it's analogous to refresh. I'm forever switching between text editor and browser, then hitting cmd+r before I've realised Mail was in my 'switch chain' and inadvertedly starting a mail reply.
In an ideal world, there would be ~ 26 core commands that do (essentially) the same thing in each application. We're nearly there (cut,copy,paste,open,save,print,etc.) but actions like 'refresh' are poorly served.
In an ideal world, there would be ~ 26 core commands that do (essentially) the same thing in each application. We're nearly there (cut,copy,paste,open,save,print,etc.) but actions like 'refresh' are poorly served.
> Apple Mail treats cmd+r as reply; acting as an alias for 'get mail' would make a lot more sense as it's analogous to refresh.
However, Apple's poor shortcut choices are made much less egregious by a built-in way of (re)defining custom shortcuts (under System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts); Windows does not natively offer such an option, I think.
However, Apple's poor shortcut choices are made much less egregious by a built-in way of (re)defining custom shortcuts (under System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts); Windows does not natively offer such an option, I think.
OK, I must admit I hadn't fully appreciated the customisability before. App Shortcuts look pretty good, and I can, effectively, get the exact behaviour I want out of Mail. However, the method of assigning a shortcut must be one of the worst pieces of usability I've ever experienced from Apple. From [1]:
"Type the menu command for which you want to set a keyboard shortcut in the Menu Title field. You must type the command exactly as it appears in the Application menu, including ellipses and any other punctuation. An ellipsis is a special character that looks like three periods. To type an ellipsis, press Option-semicolon, or use the Character Viewer. It may be difficult to know whether the command is written in the menu with a real ellipsis or with three periods, so if one does not work, try the other."
[1] http://support.apple.com/kb/PH13916
"Type the menu command for which you want to set a keyboard shortcut in the Menu Title field. You must type the command exactly as it appears in the Application menu, including ellipses and any other punctuation. An ellipsis is a special character that looks like three periods. To type an ellipsis, press Option-semicolon, or use the Character Viewer. It may be difficult to know whether the command is written in the menu with a real ellipsis or with three periods, so if one does not work, try the other."
[1] http://support.apple.com/kb/PH13916
I agree that the instructions are pretty terrible! What might be a better way to do it? The best that I can think of is something like: "Click here to start recording, and click here to choose a running application. The first menu item on which you click will be chosen as the target."
(In fact, I seem to remember some sort of 'macro recorder' from back in the Tiger days that worked on the level of literal mouse motion (and was fully as fragile as it sounded, since it obviously relied heavily on the exact position of things on screen). Does anyone else remember something like that?)
(In fact, I seem to remember some sort of 'macro recorder' from back in the Tiger days that worked on the level of literal mouse motion (and was fully as fragile as it sounded, since it obviously relied heavily on the exact position of things on screen). Does anyone else remember something like that?)
I don't know about the inner workings of Mac applications, but isn't there a resources file that exposes menu items? Seems like this could be accessed via some kind of API.
> I don't know about the inner workings of Mac applications, but isn't there a resources file that exposes menu items?
I guess so, if one knows how to read NIB files (which I'm sure any OS X programmer does, but I don't):
$ cd /Applications/Safari.app; grep -r 'Show Top Sites' * Binary file Contents/Resources/English.lproj/ToolbarItems.nib matches
> Seems like this could be accessed via some kind of API.
Sure, and there's no need even for it to be a public API, since it's Apple software that sets the shortcut. My question wasn't how the program should handle it, but what would be the best way to present the choice to a (non-programmer) user.
I guess so, if one knows how to read NIB files (which I'm sure any OS X programmer does, but I don't):
$ cd /Applications/Safari.app; grep -r 'Show Top Sites' * Binary file Contents/Resources/English.lproj/ToolbarItems.nib matches
> Seems like this could be accessed via some kind of API.
Sure, and there's no need even for it to be a public API, since it's Apple software that sets the shortcut. My question wasn't how the program should handle it, but what would be the best way to present the choice to a (non-programmer) user.
As a Gmail user it annoys me when people attach Outlook emails to messages in a format that is readable only in Outlook. Come on Microsoft, play nicely. You're not the only player anymore.
No worse than Gmail having in compose ctrl+Enter, sending the mail... When the intent is to start a new line, without starting a new paragraph..
I actually like the ctrl+Enter shortcut for sending mail. It's used in a lot of other software too and I automatically try ctrl+Enter when submitting any text.
Thank you for sharing this! I am guessing that they borrowed Outlook shortcut where Ctrl + Enter sends the email.
Try Shift + Enter to start a newline.
Try Shift + Enter to start a newline.
I seem to have 5 thumbs, as I often press the wrong key when using different keyboards.
I couldn't agree more. Who needs a shortcut to send an email anyways?
Have you tried shift+enter?
I hate that Microsoft translates stuff like that.
Ctrl+h is find on Swedish Microsoft stuff.
And forget about finding useful excel functions online cause the are all English functions.
If might sound like a good idea until you try it. Working just becomes really inconsistent, and hard.
The thing that the first letter is the keyboard shortcut helps a bit when trying to remember but it does not help initially when looking for the shortcut.
And forget about finding useful excel functions online cause the are all English functions.
If might sound like a good idea until you try it. Working just becomes really inconsistent, and hard.
The thing that the first letter is the keyboard shortcut helps a bit when trying to remember but it does not help initially when looking for the shortcut.
Outlook is pretty good at everything else but email
Unfortunately that always happens when someone has the dominant market position. If you look at last generation's email leader (Lotus Notes) they were lazy and terrible until someone else came along who did it better (namely Microsoft).
Now Lotus Notes is dead. Exchange/Outlook at the current front runners, and they are producing really lazy email clients and not really pushing email forward at all.
What can be done? No clue. The only organisation seemingly able to compete with Microsoft in this arena is Google with their Google Apps for business/education offering. But that has its own issues.
At least Microsoft has made "Outlook Online" a lot better in recent years thanks to their push for Office 365 Subscriptions.
PS - Search in Outlook is shockingly terrible. For some reason during the Vista era someone at Microsoft said: "Let's make search terrible in all of our products." So Vista's search was junk (read: replace a nice Windows 95 search sidebar with hidden obscure magic keywords which didn't work, and only index "known" file types (which is none)) and that filtered down to Outlook which got a huge bloated indexer which is inconsistent, slow, and still relies on magic keywords to accomplish anything. PPS - Thunderbird also has a terrible search indexer, however it also offers simple filtering which is wonderful. You can disable what they call their "global indexer" (which you should, it sucks) and then just use the "quick search" box within each folder, it is insanely quick, and the filtering options offered a huge efficiency gain.
Now Lotus Notes is dead. Exchange/Outlook at the current front runners, and they are producing really lazy email clients and not really pushing email forward at all.
What can be done? No clue. The only organisation seemingly able to compete with Microsoft in this arena is Google with their Google Apps for business/education offering. But that has its own issues.
At least Microsoft has made "Outlook Online" a lot better in recent years thanks to their push for Office 365 Subscriptions.
PS - Search in Outlook is shockingly terrible. For some reason during the Vista era someone at Microsoft said: "Let's make search terrible in all of our products." So Vista's search was junk (read: replace a nice Windows 95 search sidebar with hidden obscure magic keywords which didn't work, and only index "known" file types (which is none)) and that filtered down to Outlook which got a huge bloated indexer which is inconsistent, slow, and still relies on magic keywords to accomplish anything. PPS - Thunderbird also has a terrible search indexer, however it also offers simple filtering which is wonderful. You can disable what they call their "global indexer" (which you should, it sucks) and then just use the "quick search" box within each folder, it is insanely quick, and the filtering options offered a huge efficiency gain.
Yea, I read that Windows Search 3.0 was part of why Vista was so slow. 4.0 improved the performance though.
I actually find the search plenty fast, and I'm always very happy with the incredibly low memory requirements for Outlook...
Win 7 & 8, Outlook 2007 & 2010, respectively. FWIW.
Win 7 & 8, Outlook 2007 & 2010, respectively. FWIW.
Outlook search really is awful. I find it easer to find items by visual inspection.
Outlook is really great at (Exchange) email. I just started at a place with Notes. In the 18 years since the last time I'd had to suffer with Notes for email, I cannot identify a single improvement.
It's a terrible email client but it's better than the rest of them.
The PST file fuckery is the one thing I wish it handled differntly. After that it would be the mess of things caused by 'borrowing' from Word/IE when it comes to composing and viewing emails.
The PST file fuckery is the one thing I wish it handled differntly. After that it would be the mess of things caused by 'borrowing' from Word/IE when it comes to composing and viewing emails.
I used to use an old Windows program some time ago. That was the best email client, I ever used. It was never topped by any other. To sad, that it is no longer supported and runs only on Windows.
It seems to me, that nobody really can write a real good eMail clients.
It seems to me, that nobody really can write a real good eMail clients.
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Its shit at those things as well. Months of VSTO and Outlook forms will make you realise it's a pile of crap.
I believe Outlook is still using Word to render HTML content in emails as well.
The compose window of Outlook is WinWord. Outlook (up to 2003) used Trident (Internet Explorer engine) to show HTML-mails. Nowadays Outlook HTML view is powered by Word layout engine as well (for security reasons, as MS said). It cannot handle many CSS style elements, background color and is stuck with HTML 4.
The compose window of Outlook is WinWord.
I believe up to 2003 this was an option that was not enabled by default too.
I believe up to 2003 this was an option that was not enabled by default too.
Outlook 97-2013 use Word for the compose window. It's not an option, it's how it works behind the scene (Win32 COM components).
e.g. an known Outlook 2010 bug (with Exchange 2013) crash the Outlook client on startup. But you can still open *.msg files, it opens the mail in a window and one can edit the mail.
It's all about Bill Gates vision "information at your fingertips" from the early nineties and the Cairo operating system.
Watch this video from Bill Gates Comdex '90: http://youtu.be/kL8zoQVJaD8?t=19m26s
Cairo '91-'96: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_operating_system
e.g. an known Outlook 2010 bug (with Exchange 2013) crash the Outlook client on startup. But you can still open *.msg files, it opens the mail in a window and one can edit the mail.
It's all about Bill Gates vision "information at your fingertips" from the early nineties and the Cairo operating system.
Watch this video from Bill Gates Comdex '90: http://youtu.be/kL8zoQVJaD8?t=19m26s
Cairo '91-'96: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_operating_system
Outlook 97-2003 has it as an option, 2007+ don't. And BTW the Outlook 97-2003 and 2007+ implementations of this feature are different too (MS split most of Word into wwlib.dll in Word 2007).
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Which is ridiculous but strikes me to be done so as to ensure that emails prepared in MS Word render correctly in Outlook?
Of course they could fix MS Word's HTML output and fix Outlook to use MSIE's rendering engine ... but that'd only reduce lockin by allowing Outlook users emails to be read properly in other MUA. Never going to happen.
Of course they could fix MS Word's HTML output and fix Outlook to use MSIE's rendering engine ... but that'd only reduce lockin by allowing Outlook users emails to be read properly in other MUA. Never going to happen.
What is funny is that Word 2013 can be configured to generate pages that even MS's own IE10 won't render properly by default.
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HTML content in emails is the real WTF. I wonder why no-one ever invented a nice markup format for email? Probably because the only type of person qualified to do that wouldn't be seen dead sending non-plain-text email.
Like text/enriched[0]? Though I guess it might not count as "nice"
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enriched_text
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enriched_text
The influence of Emacs.
Slightly realted, I like the fact that rarely I accidentally type complex keystrokes like say C-x C-e C-m, triggering an undesired action. #genius
I pretty much always accidentally type the Emacs commands first, often in MS Word this means I delete everything then save, rather than just saving, and I end up saving a lot of webpages.
Sure. And C-w being `close window or tab` in many GUI I often `cut` my windows away to heaven.
Also I dream of GUI textfields with emacs keybindings. I can't fathom Ctrl-$arrow in Windows for instance. I need my home row.
Also I dream of GUI textfields with emacs keybindings. I can't fathom Ctrl-$arrow in Windows for instance. I need my home row.
It forwards the email to another recipient, it doesn't move the cursor forward a character like Emacs.
A perfect example of an awful decision. Preference of one person (who happened to be the boss) were taken in account disregarding the common (i.e. most expected) option.
Usability for the boss improved. Usability for most users degraded.
Usability for the boss improved. Usability for most users degraded.
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Microsoft doesn't follow the 'standard' for shortcut mapping or behavior most of the time. Why would any of this give pause to anyone who's used their products for any amount of time?
Yep. This pains me no end. At least to search the inbox there is always a search box in the upper right. I could never figure out how to search the text in an opened email.
F4 for simple search & ctrl+shift+F for advanced search.
tl;dr: Because that's what Bill Gates was used to.
Do you really think people here have such a short attention span that they need a 100-word article to be summarised?
Yes, that was my conclusion after reading one of the other comments (which was perhaps intended as tongue-in-cheek, but since I'm a literal-minded humourless troll with a penchant for helping out, I thought I'd tl;dr just in case).
(Hey, if I save most of us from clicking on link-baity headlines that could just have easily contained the answer to the question, we all win, right? Right.)
(Hey, if I save most of us from clicking on link-baity headlines that could just have easily contained the answer to the question, we all win, right? Right.)
This post glosses over the fact that F3 is also a standard Windows key command for find. Does that work in Outlook?
No.
As far as I can tell, there is no ctrl+f/F3 style find function in Outlook. You have the search feature, but that behaves differently from ctrl+f.
I've taken to copying email threads and pasting them into Word or Notepad if I need to do a proper find.
^^edit^^
I went out of my way to find out how to do a "find" in Outlook:
ctrl+shift+F for an "advanced" find
F4 for a simple find
As far as I can tell, there is no ctrl+f/F3 style find function in Outlook. You have the search feature, but that behaves differently from ctrl+f.
I've taken to copying email threads and pasting them into Word or Notepad if I need to do a proper find.
^^edit^^
I went out of my way to find out how to do a "find" in Outlook:
ctrl+shift+F for an "advanced" find
F4 for a simple find
CTRL+E for simple find
F3 and CTRL-E both work as FIND for me in Outlook 2010.
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The same reason Outlook knows best when dealing with line endings. (Not!)
mutt also maps 'f' to forward and uses the vimish '/' for search. maybe there is a common ancestor here?
because outlook's find feature is horrible and they hoped to hide it so you won't notice
And that's one of many reasons why you should always allow users to configure their shortcuts. Thanks Chrome.
How? The closest thing I can find is configuring a couple of shortcuts for a tiny number of extensions that support it.
This annoys me endlessly.
isnt this the story of pretty much every Apple product?
And this is why Microsoft customers can't have nice things.
Took me a while to figure out this is some kind of autoreplace thing in Outlook that switches out emoticons with characters from the wingdings font, and J is a smiley face.