This is a really interesting and complete writeup.

I have been helping someone who has little experience with Windows or Mac, but used DOS for years ( until pretty recently ) and I've set them up with a simple Debian Linux running XFCE4 as the desktop. I've found that I have to teach them and also document a lot of basic computer idioms -- Control-C / X / A / V to copy, cut, select all, paste; but also more basic things, like the fact there are two pointers on the screen -- one for the mouse and one for the keyboard -- if you slide the mouse pointer to a specific point and press a keyboard key, the new key will not appear where the arrow is, it will appear where the text cursor is.

A big one was tabs. I had to get a couple of manilla folders and show them the actual tabs, and hold it up next to the browser with several tabs, and suddenly it snapped with them what the interface was trying to represent.

Control-A will select all of a web page, unless you are in the text entry box of a form, then it selects just the things in that text entry box.

I started writing this up in a little manual, it got to a dozen pages fast, and I haven't put very much in it.

If anyone knows of a place where some portion of all of this is written down, post a link !

▲ hans_castorp 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

A friend of mine used to give computer courses back in the 90s (to people that had never used a computer before).

At one point he said "You need to move the mouse up" and one of the participants actually lifted the mouse physically from the desk - which was perfectly correct for someone not being used to computers.

I always remember this when I think "isn't this obvious?" with regards to usage patterns on computers.

▲ mixmastamyk an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Were they the old tabs that looked like tabs, or the newer tabs that look like buttons?

▲ somat 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In the obscure ui choices department, I am that weirdo who uses openbsd as a desktop system, At one point not thinking I did ctrl+a in a firefox textentry and much to my surprise it did the right thing and moved the cursor to the beginning of the line.

I had no idea using unix vs windows cursor movement was even an option, because linux never picks the correct method, Still have no clue how it is set(a gtk option? but qt apps are set the same.) But salutes to whatever obsd porter picked it, really made my day.

	▲	lloeki an hour ago \| parent [-]
		GNOME: `gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-key-theme-name 'Emacs'` or GTK: `~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini ~/.config/gtk-4.0/settings.ini [Settings] gtk-key-theme-name = Emacs` I have it enabled but it can be very confusing: depending on whether you're in a text field or not, in say a browser, ^W will mean delete word or close tab. And sure enough closing a tab will sometimes but not always focus the URL box of the previous tab. There used to be an obscure internal GTK setting to properly separate control plane from command plane like on (then named) Mac OS X but IIRC it's long gone / hardcoded to only GTK on macOS. EDIT: Found it, GTK up to 3 had proper <Primary> vs <Control>. In what I would consider to be a fatal regression, GTK 4 just aliases <Control> and <Primary>, leaving the apps to do the work. https://gaphor.org/2022/12/10/gtk4-macos-keybindings/

▲ californical 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don’t have any resources but this is fascinating to read about, thanks for sharing! So many things we just assume make sense which really don’t.

Their misunderstanding of not being able to hover their cursor over something and interact using the keyboard honestly has me wondering why I thought the real way was intuitive, their logic there makes sense