How to people feel about web apps that take over common keyboard shortcuts like command-S? We’ve added a handful of keyboard shortcuts to Micro.blog on the web, and I really like it, so I’d like to add a couple more.

@manton Personally, I prefer consistency. If cmd-S does one thing in one browser tab, and changes its function when I switch to a Micro.blog tab, that bothers me. Probably it’d be even worse for someone who is a heavy keyboard/muscle memory user.

@manton I usually prefer single-key shortcuts for web apps (e.g., the shortcuts you can enable in Gmail) vs. ones that overload shortcuts already used by the OS or native environment (Cmd/Ctrl + anything).

@manton when it’s a desktop app. in a browser or native, i like it to work like a good citizen and behave like an app on that platform should.

which is to say: heck yeah 👍 — go for it.

@manton Make them known and/or customizable I’d say

@manton Make them known and/or customizable I’d say

@manton I thought about the “make it configurable” option, but then I thought about the classic Choices essay. I suspect this is a spot to make a decision & stick with it. My guess is no one will leave over Cmd-S.

AI, now, that’s a different matter :)

@manton I think it depends on what shortcuts exactly. I never use cmd S wouldn’t mind that, but I often use cmd W, E, R, T, F, G, L, Z, X, C, V, N (which I realise is nearly half the alphabet) and it would be annoying for a website to take over any of these. This is in Safari on iPad/Mac.

@manton I think it makes sense in some instances. I don’t save webpages off the internet anymore. Still, I would be annoyed if command-L was mapped to something unexpected.

@manton when can we expect Vim key-bindings?

@manton Shortcuts to commands in web apps should not supersede normal browser shortcuts. There ought to be plenty of other command shortcut options available. If you nonetheless presume to impose them, then they should be opt-in. not opt-out, as it is the web app diverging from expected behavior.

@douglas I think I agree with all of those letters. Common actions in browsers shouldn’t be overridden.

@mandaris I would be annoyed with command-L too! Not going to touch that.

@manton I like them!

@manton.org I like them!

@manton I’m generally in favour of them if the shortcut makes sense in the context of the app. Using Cmd+S to save a blog post as a draft, for example, would be welcomed. I don’t need to the save the post HTML page.

@manton I think if it’s an option to disable it’s fine, but I generally go mad when web or electron apps conflict with OS shortcuts. Like when slack does not let you insert a link with CMD+K (though maybe that is not as universal as I thought… always worked for Mail and Adium and now pure chaos!)

@manton Hmm… so Cmd+S makes sense in most cases, since in those apps saving them as a page (the default browser action) is kinda pointless. Not sure about other shortcuts - what else are you thinking about?

@mackuba I shouldn’t have said “a couple more” because right now I’m only thinking about adding cmd-s. 🙂 We have cmd-return for the default button on some screens, and a few others like the number keys or cmd-b for bold in Markdown, etc.

@manton Yeah, I'd say Cmd+S is safe to add too.

Although make sure you've read this before if you haven't yet 🙃 https://medium.engineering/the-curious-case-of-disappearing-polish-s-fa398313d4df

@mackuba Ha, I remember that post! Will re-read.

@manton I don't mind for the most part. I actually prefer when web apps hijack ⌘-S for something else, because if I instinctually hit it the browser tries to save an HMTL file of the page - which is literally never what I want.

Not a web app, but in Obsidian, I've mapped ⌘-S to search, because there's no need to save files.

@bax I’m not sure when cmd-k rose to prominent but completely agree about it now, it’s as standard for me as cmd-c and friends.

@manton On the far end of the spectrum has to be godspeedapp.com that you can use without any mouse input at all. I think it does a good job of explaining the available hotkeys. I tend to use command palette’s in everything though–VS Code, Sublime Text, etc.

@manton Problem is it's hard for you to know what shortcuts people actually use in whatever browser they use. Microsoft Office overrides Cmd-Shift-L, which toggles the sidebar in Safari, a shortcut I use all the time.

Cmd-S is a funny one because the browser default is kind of useless in a web app and semantically probably makes sense to override.

@manton I love keyboard shortcuts, they’re an accessibility win for me but even bettor, an efficiency boon. That said, I also love consistency and having cmd+s do something in one tab and something else in another would potentially be frustrating. Even worse would be if you got cmd+s working with Safari, but not in other browsers, or if there were inconsistency between operating systems, especially iOS/iPad OS/Android and of course Mac OS/Windows. Ultimately, I don’t think there’s a perfect solution that will make everyone happy, probably the best thing to do would be to make sure it’s somehow easy to access the keyboard shortcut list somehow, and that you have an easy way to gather feedback. For example, cmd+? brings up a help modal with the keyboard shortcut list with a submit feedback button or similar.

@SteveSawczyn I like that idea with cmd-?. This is a downside for web apps compared to Mac apps where you can browse the menu bar to discover shortcuts. To start with, I’ll at least write a help page that has a good overview of all shortcuts.