Comment by spearfish

4 hours ago

This has always been a bit of a drag, but the way we/I used to do websites and the way I still like to do them, was to focus on content, then apply a style and javascript layer as decoration. The keyboard navigation and accessibility considerations come more naturally then. For those that don't see this as important it feels like a case of cart before the horse.

I ended up stuck on my back, bed-bound in 2005, with a keyboard on my thighs. Using OSX (probably Tiger) and mostly native apps it was possible to get by with just the keyboard. It was the only platform that I could use without a pointer and I was hardly pushing boundaries.

These days just doing simple things like setting up a computer for the first time, I often can't be arsed with a mouse, or I am in places where there isn't room to use a mouse. I have to resort sometimes to a trackball out of necessity, but it's always a hassle and I frequently hit brick walls. Simple file managers can be nightmare enough. I remember just trying to navigate to a taskbar on some desktops being impossible. I couldn't get to something like the network manager applet. Thankfully there's a CLI for that now.

On the flip side, I also love the idea that you can do most things with a simple pointer.

I was trying Batocera linux recently on a laptop, the touchpad wasn't recognised, it's a gamepad driven OS (I think a layer on retro-arch), and navigating with a gamepad (once you RTM and figure it out) is actually quite nice. Kodi, has always been a bit of a faff on the keyboard, and that works well with the gamepad. Kodi was born on the Xbox so this of course should be a given. The UI for me with a keyboard has always been a bit clumsy.