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Comment by thrower123 | Hacker News Reader

I hate this trend. Give me back menus and toolbars.

I avoid using VS Code for this reason.

These paradigms can be complementary. Menus and toolbars for when the user is browsing and they don't know what they want, command bars for when the user knows what they want but not how to get there, and shortcut keys for when they know what they want and how to get there.

I like a good command line, but the whole search box thing is annoying me to no end because it not predictable.

If I type three characters and press enter, it shouldn't matter if I wait 0.5 or 1.8 seconds before I press enter. But with this mechanic, it typically does. What is "set _rem_inder" one time is "_rem_ove all files" the next time.

> I hate this trend. Give me back menus and toolbars.

Everyone has their own preferences; personally, every time I open Word, I am confused and disoriented and have no idea where to look for what I want. I think it's best for no-one to try to impose their UI preference on everyone, and for all of us just to use the software with which we find it easiest to interact.

This is the way everyone not responsible for creating it has always viewed the Office Ribbon UI. Most cursed creation in software.

counterpoint: I'm an Excel power-user and I really like the ribbon UI. when you use the alt mode you can fly through it and opportunistically/incrementally learn the keyboard shortcuts.

Something that irks me a bit is that the UI (with it's animations) can't keep up with pressing keyboard shortcuts. For example in word to change font size you could just do Alt+h+fs+<number> but you can't just press it as a single chord, you kinda need to wait for the UI to focus on the correct fields to make sure you're at the correct place

I know UI is subjective, but when the Ribbon was introduced I thought it was the best UI idea I had ever seen. It made the Office apps interface much more discoverable and easy to use than without it. It's a shame that the Ribbon paradigm is patented.

I think LibreOffice did it quite well with the ability to change the UI layout.

One of the best features of OSX is that programs have menu bars. I didn't even know they had removed the menus from VS Code on other platforms. I still can't find anything in word, except on mac, where there is an actual menu.

Anyway, the removing of menus was not caused by the addition of command palettes. I think the history is that microsoft believed icons was easier than text, so they made the ribbons, and then for a while other removed menus in favor of ribbons, but then they realized ribbons sucks, so they removed those, and then there was nothing, maybe a hamburger menu if one of the UX's had done webdesign before.

VS code has menus on all platforms. All platforms also provide native menus. (Work on VSCode)

Parent said menus were gone and I just did a quick search for screen shots and saw one from windows without top menu and assumed parent to be correct.

Thanks for clarifying.

The problem is that there is nothing in the menus

I like to have both. AutoCAD is an example of a (very) complex application which has both.

Cod(e/ium) requires Ctrl+Shift+P to actively engage its command palette.

AutoCAD strikes me as a fundamentally different paradigm in that its command interface is "always active" so to speak, whereas menus/toolbars feel mostly like an optional overlay, at least to an experienced user.

Although AutoCAD is my preferred tool when drafting electrical architectures and wiring diagrams, the mouse as primary human interface is simply unavoidable in any sensible CAD, which makes constantly having to release the mouse to type the next command, or F3/F9 to toggle object/grid snaps (especially with shit modern keyboards without standard F-key separation e.g. MX Keys) admittedly annoying. I contrast this UX to SolidWorks which is overwhelmingly mouse+toolbar in a way that's comparatively trivial to navigate, or Altium which is driven by single hotkey sequencing that allows the other hand to stay fixed on mouse.

I've found AutoCAD can operate similar to how you describe Altium, in that pressing 'l' and enter gives you a line, typing 'str' gets you stretch, 'tr' gets you trim, shift-clicking with trim gets you the opposite of trim - extend. The command line has autocomplete. In this fashion, one hand operates the keyboard, and your other stays on the mouse.

I quickly fell in love with this interface and immediately switched to using the command line for the vast majority of functions.

AutoCAD is not like Altium in that the former requires either hitting Enter when the minimum command is entered, or more annoyingly, selecting from a slow-to-render autocomplete context menu with the mouse.

Some common commands can also be annoying when the required minimum characters don't cleanly map to a single hand, e.g. [E][X][P][L][Enter] to explode; or when they map to the other hand, e.g. [P][L][Enter] for polyline.

Altium's approach is literally single hotkey sequencing (i.e. no [Enter] after every command) which map directly to menus that underline each hotkey as a reminder, e.g. to [P]lace a [W]ire or [P]art in schematic capture, it's [P][W] or [P][P], respectively, while the menus change with ever key press. Yeah, your left hand is all over the keyboard, but every key press is a meaningful context switch.

I use Solidworks like you use Altium. Any key can act as a shortcut, with or without modifiers. For me, ctrl-s is save, ctrl-shift-s is save as pdf, ctrl-d is save as a STEP file. Pretty normal so far. But, c is for circle, u is for horizontal constraint, i is for vertical constraint. I have at least 40 1 or 2 key shortcuts and usually I never need my left hand to move from the keyboard or my right hand to move from the mouse. The exception is for types of modeling which I rarely do, like sheet metal.

The other day I used the Command Palette to symlink `code` as a command to open `vscode` without having to type `ln -s /path/to/vscode /usr/bin/vscode` which was quite nice because trying the symlink version gave me confusing errors.

I am unsure the UX is there to help make that discoverable in a menu; you'd be so deep that it'd be behind multiple sub-nests at a minimum. Seems much better to have a flat search for this.

For anybody else looking, that particular command is called Shell Command: Install 'code' command in PATH.

Toolbars for the stuff you don't use frequently and therefore don't know the keyboard shortcuts, but still need those functions now and than.

But menus? Nobody would need them if command palettes would have some discoverable hierarchic structure to them. That's the last missing part to make command palettes "perfect".

It's easier to type commands when you have to do it alot. It uses muscle memory rather than deplete your attention span. Might be difficult at first, but it's easier once you get used to it.

For the use cases you’re talking about, I prefer keyboard shortcuts.

No need to click search bar, or look at the search result list. One only needs to memorize, or setup, a keyboard shortcut like Ctrl+Shift+M, and with muscle memory it will consistently take well under 1 second. Search UX is slower, needs more clicks or key presses.

In vscode I press one set of keys and get fuzzy search access to every feature. I'd rather barely memorize the phrases to search with (several phrasing find the same settings for me) than to to memorize dozens of barely used hotkeys. Most of my day is scrolling through code and editing it occasionally, not doing actual commands from the menu or whatever.

To each their own, however I can see how it would be annoying when they don't include a menu for anything for folks who prefer that.

That is an interesting perspective. May I ask you what is you professional use of a computer and if it is programming - what kind of programming? I’m asking because I’m curious if environment drives habits/preferences.

I'm a Windows programmer, and I'm old enough to remember when UX was something people took seriously.

I expected something like that. Don't get me wrong, not in a bad way in "I know where you're coming from way". I personally don't care for icons, I like "the Apple way" - a menu with a search. A perfect Windows UI for me would be no icon panels, just a menu in a window and some shortcut to search through it and also each menu item would've a keyboard shortcut typed next to it.

VS Code has menus and toolbars

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