| ▲ | orbital-decay 13 hours ago | |
Since you mentioned Windows, Microsoft made Ribbon which uses Vimperator-style navigation to make toolbars and buttons discoverable as long as you know one hotkey (Alt). It can also be hidden until triggered with a hotkey. This is miles ahead of most discoverability tricks in power user interfaces, including fuzzy command search which is not guaranteed to remain stable as new commands are added. | ||
| ▲ | xg15 13 hours ago | parent [-] | |
One downside to the ribbons that I see is that they somehow inverted the hierarchy between menus and toolbar buttons: Previously, menus were the slow but predictable way to find a command, and both toolbar buttons and keyboard shortcuts were just that - shortcuts. Menus were a sort of "ground truth" which commands existed. They also had a standard way to be navigable through the keyboard: You can press alt and then simply use the cursor keys. With ribbons, the menus were gone and the toolbar buttons became the "ground truth", but in a much more haphazard way. Fuzzy command search goes a bit back to menus, but as you say in a way that's much less guaranteed to be stable. | ||