Hacker News Reader

Comment by munificent | Hacker News Reader

I hate the full-size left and right arrow keys because it means I can't easily use my sense of touch to find the arrow keys. I mistype them all the time now, even after months of use. That was never a problem with the previous inverted-T design.

View on HN

Seconded. I frequently mistype L/R as up/down, and this is infuriating when striking 'command' + arrow to go to the beginning/end of the line (an extremely common op for me), and instead going to the top/bottom of the file, completely losing my place.

(Of course that particular problem would be less of an issue if the keyboard had home/end/pgUp/pgDn, which I'm still sore about, years after they got rid of them).

Arrow keys are so important I might almost want them all full size, in a "+" configuration.

I wonder -- is this for a 13" or 15" laptop? I'm curious because after this thread I was checking on how I tend to find the arrow keys. I have a 13" model and finding the edge of the computer itself seems to help me find the appropriate keys.

15".

It's a good 1.5" from the right arrow key to the edge.

That’s what I was guessing. I’d bet most of the people who don’t like the current (I guess now, the old) arrow key arrangement also have a 15”.

It’s honestly not something that I ever really noticed with a 13”.

Sure, but it's still a maladaptation to a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place.

Many PC laptop keyboards have full-size keys for all four arrows. Tiny keys for a feature I use so frequently is user-hostile, whether it's 2 or 4 of them.

They also usually have an awful-looking extra row just for the arrow keys. And FWIW, I find that the inverted-T arrangement is even easier to quickly find by touch than full-height arrow keys.

It’s not about the size for me. Sure the full height inverted T is easy to use. The half height inverted T also works. But the one that isn’t inverted T is difficult.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com