Even today for semi- or non-routine tasks I'll do weird stuff like copy text to Notepad to remove formatting then past it back into the same app/web page to enter information. I'll also do some weird things like instead of using an entire screen to read text on a long web page article I'll just keep my eyes near the top of the screen and scroll so my eyes don't have to move. Not sure what I'm trying to say but maybe there are entirely new ways of building existing app types out there that have an audience out there.
I wish we spent as much time on HCI in our field. I get a lot more value out of seeing how people I develop software for do their tasks and then thinking about how that could be improved. An implication of that is that I'm not building a fancy UI for my resume's sake; that I'm actually improving their day-to-day workflows. That takes some cost and time but in my projects nobody wants to pay for that.
> I'll do weird stuff like copy text to Notepad to remove formatting then past it back into the same app/web page to enter information.
I do that too! In fact, I do that so often that on Windows, I have the following workflow in my muscle memory:
CTRL+C ;; copy
Win+R ;; open "Run"
CTRL+V ;; paste
CTRL+A ;; select what I just pasted
CTRL+X ;; cut it out (disappearing text serves
;; as a visual proof of operation completion)
ESC ;; close the "Run" box, restoring focus
;; to original application
CTRL+V ;; paste cleaned-up text
I do that without thinking in under 2 seconds.
On Linux, I usually abuse the address bar of the browser.
I used to always have to do this as well (I work in graphic design and oftentimes I have to paste text from Word/PowerPoint into my layout/design apps -- it's a nightmare)
Then I discovered this handy little utility, PureText:
Wow sounds like a nightmare! Although I certainly have many muscle-memory-scripted tasks that I run like that :) On OSX command-shift-v is paste-without-formatting and seems to be fairly universal - I guess there's not a Windows equivalent? I thought that I recalled ctrl-shift-v working in most contexts on Linux to remove formatting as well but I've been using OSX for too long now and don't remember.
Same shortcut is convention in Windows, but it takes only one program you use regularly to not respect that to make you learn an alternative workflow, and then stick to it everywhere.
I also use the web browser for this, it's extremely efficient:
CMD+A,C,T,V,A,X,W,V
I don't even release the CMD key between presses and it's all done with one hand extremely quickly. I've often wondered if Chrome collects usage statistics on this and what it looks like from their perspective. "This user opens a lot of tabs, pastes stuff in the address bar, then gives up before the new tab page is even done loading."
I think software designers underestimate how powerful this sort of muscle memory is. Even if something isn't technically one action away, if you can get to it with a sequence of actions you can perform consistently right after each other, you quickly start to think of that sequence as "one action".
This is one reason why old-school, keyboard-shortcut-driven UI can feel so good to use (and why animations that block interaction are so frustrating).
I worked on a Windows Mobile (on the huge ruggedized devices) they were really slow, but the people who used them knew the screens so well, that they wouldn’t wait on the screen to refresh to navigate the screens and start typing. They would just take advantage of the keyboard buffering. I mistakenly changed the order of one field on the screen and it threw off all of the data entry. We could not reproduce the “bug” but we knew we shouldn’t be getting that many mistakes from the same people who were doing everything correctly. We actually sent the QA guy out in the field and he discovered the issue within an hour - the users weren’t looking at the screens, they were doing everything from muscle memory.
And which is why I abandoned both Windows and Linux for using Emacs as my OS :).
No, seriously. I try to port all my workflow to Emacs, because with all the power and consistency of that keyboard-driven platform, I can finally put my muscle memory to use.
Beyond that, I finally developed a habit of automating annoyances away. Today, if I do something frequently and find it annoying, I fix it with a script. Be it elisp (Emacs), CL (Linux - I use StumpWM as my WM), or AutoHotkey (Windows).
--
Actually, some random recent examples:
- I frequently deal with Lisp code that outputs large structured or semistructured blobs of text; at some point I decided I need a quick way to pipe such output to a separate Emacs buffer: https://gist.github.com/TeMPOraL/8715c9dd9837e0b601d1cdce059....
- At my previous workplace, I found myself pasting some strings to various communications channels quickly. Since I already used AutoHotkey to remap Caps Lock to CTRL, this is what I came with (and later expanded): https://gist.github.com/TeMPOraL/d330edccf8ba9a2b13d01b4e7f1....
The point of giving those examples, beyond obviously showing off :), is that this is what IMO good software enables. Improving your life on the fly, one simple binding or one simple script at a time. Scripting isn't only for shell commands. It's definitely useful for UI experience as well. I regret it took me that long to figure this out.
This is also why I try to port as much of my workflow as I can to Emacs. It's because Emacs makes such modifications seem trivial. If you need something to interoperate more, you can glue it with together with a little bit of Elisp. If you need something new, you can probably add it with a little bit of Elisp in no time. Emacs, being a runtime-modifiable, introspectable and tremendously well documented system with a decent REPL, makes this quick and relatively painless.
> On Linux, I usually abuse the address bar of the browser.
Same here. I used to disable “search suggestions” so I wouldn’t be sending all of that stuff to Google but at the same time search suggestions can actually be useful sometimes so now I have it enabled anyway, meaning that I send a lot of random stuff to Google.
However mostly it’s no big deal. The primary reason that I disabled search suggestions was that I used to type out the passwords for new accounts in the address bar first and copy them and then paste them twice into the password and confirm password fields respectively. Since then I’ve written a pass-phrase generator command line program that I named pgen [1] which I use instead, so because I no longer use the address bar for passwords there is rarely anything sensitive that I am typing.
If a website has password requirements that are incompatible with the passwords generated by pgen I have the terminal I just ran pgen in open already anyways so I paste back into it and modify the password to suit the requirements.
Ctrl-Alt-V for Office and its ilk. My tip is to always set to paste without formatting by default, and use the shortcut when you want to paste with formatting, because the fancy format you want is usually pre-selected on the menu, but the plain text format never is.
I use the Option+Shift+Command+V all the time, especially in emails - that text that I copied from SAP or a Word doc invariably has bizarre formatting and if I Command+V paste it into my email, now the rest of what I type after it is going to be screwed up. A four button shortcut sounds like a pain, but once you use it two or three times it comes pretty naturally. Similar to Command+Control+Shift+4 for setting up a screenshot that will grab straight to clipboard, it's easier than it sounds when doing it on the regular.
Yeah - seems like it would be one of those things that you could allow the user to configure and they'd set it once and never again. I suppose you could switch your client to plaintext composition, but would be nice if there was a setting like you describe "don't change formatting after pasting" and/or "always strip formatting when pasting".
A fast way to work around apps that can't strip formatting on paste: command+spacebar (open spotlight search), command-v (paste), command-a (select all), command-x (cut).
Maybe I'm pointing out the obvious for you guys here but most browsers have a "paste as plain-text" option. In Chrome it's CTRL+SHIFT+V and you can see it if you right click in an input field as well.
My Firefox doesn't show such option under right-click menu. But even if it's common in other browsers now, it wasn't when I needed it first, so I found an alternative and put the problem out of my mind. Thanks for pointing out that there is a solution in (some) browsers, though. Maybe it's time to abandon the alternative habits.
Setting up a shortcut to "paste as plain text" is a handy secondary capability. Being able to see/select your last n copied items is very helpful indeed. (Ctrl-Alt-H is my shortcut, and whenever I'm on a system that doesn't have it installed I become sad when that shortcut doesn't work...)
And if your browser is configured to use a predictive search engine you've just sent the contents of your clipboard to Google or Microsoft (or other search provider).
Doesn't that just bring up a dialog box where you have to search through the radial buttons for "Paste Without Formatting", select it with the mouse, and hit "Ok"?
An obscure keyboard shortcut (vs 4-5 common ones), finding your option, and switching to the mouse doesn't seem like a better solution. Plus it's not universal.
> I wish we spent as much time on HCI in our field.
So did I, but IME, time and effort spent on minor UX improvements are rarely justifiable to upper management, especially in the case of business software it won't generate more revenue, often because the people using the software are not the ones buying it.
I've had the fortune of working in a couple of places where the most hardcore users of our product were our own employees. So I often silently wandered into others desks and observed their workflows, it's amazing to see the little hacks they come up with because of their routine. Sometimes it's things we can easily fix but it's not prioritized. Quite often I've spent a couple hours of my free time hacking together some minor features to help these internal users and they are always amazingly grateful.
This is huge in publishing. So many workflows are outdated or require so much copypasting and customized scripts, etc, that it’s pretty ridiculous.
I’m part of a team searching for an appropriate tool and the pickings are slim. Thankfully the people buying the software that may be in use for the next five years to a decade are taking it very seriously and working closely with a number of experts around the company and editorial teams. They’re also very familiar with the regular workflows, so they don’t fall prey to salesmanship.
My schedule’s kept fairly open lately to give me “free time” to develop something to help with a specific aspect of it (as upper leadership isn’t openly keen on any in house development). It’s been very interesting working closely with the people who will be using it just 3 floors away on a daily basis.
I’ve done similar projects in the past and some people were ...more grateful than others...
But the current situation is a little different, and the art and editorial teams this time through have been fantastic. I think it’s because they know exactly what they want to make their days and weeks easier, and they’re so grateful to even get close. And I’m happy to try and deliver as much relief as possible.
Because Apple rose to its success partly because of its UX philosophy.
But I don't think GP is going to achieve their goal with this. On the contrary, I bet their managers already read that book, and that's why the UX sucks in the first place. The managers want to follow Steve Jobs' footsteps, and treat UX as a sales driver, instead of something that should be designed to make the end user productive and happy.
Part of the reason that Apple found more success after 1998 was the “consumerization of technology” the end user was the buyer and not the corporate IT department. The UX is a sales driver for the buyer. In the corporate world, the buyer and the user are not the same person.
But the iPhone has a major presence in corporate America, has first class support for Exchange servers and their are plenty of MDM solutions deployed for iDevices.
And Firefox recently fixed it so this shortcut works! (Previously it was hijacked to show some toolbar or something—don't recall exactly what as I always just groaned and closed it, then opened notepad...)
To paste without leading white space you can paste into Chrome's address bar and recopy the from it. It stops out any formatting and surrounding white space.
I think so. It's very rare that I need to paste with formatting. The majority of time that I actually use normal paste is when the source content is either of the same format or has no format already.
Word at least lets you choose the default action and offers a little contextual toolbar on paste to change the behavior for that pasted snippet as well. The options are iirc: Paste with original formatting, paste with formatting adjusted to document styles, and paste without formatting.
>> instead of using an entire screen to read text on a long web page article I'll just keep my eyes near the top of the screen and scroll so my eyes don't have to move
Yes! I do exactly that. I use the window frame to act as a ruler so I don't lose my position when reading left to right.
I also do the copy to Notepad, but since moving to Mac, Notes keeps the formatting by default, so I'm conditioned now to use Ctrl+Shift+V - on the second attempt.
Other things are in Word or Google Docs to automatically backspace auto corrections, such as automatic links in the document. I do the same with auto complete on my iPhone to remove the trailing space.
If you open it up in Automator, it'll let you see the steps, and prompt you to install it [which really just moves the file into ~/Services]. This makes it show up in every app's Services menu.
Once installed, you can head to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services, to set a keyboard shortcut for it.
I'd love a utility that takes text from my clipboard, converts it to ASCII and strips all formatting, then pastes it. It would need to map Unicode (and other character set) characters to ASCII equivalents, but even if it covered only the common characters I would be very happy. Any tips?
On Windows, AutoHotkey has all the tools you need for this. The built-in `Clipboard` variable contains only the textual data, and the `OnClipboardChange` event allows you to watch the clipboard for changes. You could then use regular expressions to remove unwanted characters and formatting.
On macOS I use the fact that pasting in the console strips all formatting. `pbpaste | pbcopy` in my terminal pastes to plain text then copy it again. It doesn’t map Unicode to ASCII, though.
KDE's clipper lets you do actions, so provided you have a script to convert input text to unformatted or ASCII or what-have-you then it's 2 clicks to get it in to your clipboard ready to paste.
(shameless plug) I put together https://pastemagic.com exactly for that, except that I wanted to just preserve italics and links. Because for such a simple thing, there was no tool to do that.
I wish we spent as much time on HCI in our field. I get a lot more value out of seeing how people I develop software for do their tasks and then thinking about how that could be improved. An implication of that is that I'm not building a fancy UI for my resume's sake; that I'm actually improving their day-to-day workflows. That takes some cost and time but in my projects nobody wants to pay for that.