Comment by chrismorgan
2 hours ago
Using keyup makes no sense and is inconsistent with user expectations. For triggering actions (which includes normal typing), you only ever use keydown. (Well, there’s one exception for reasons unclear to me: activating a button by pressing Space. That triggers on keyup like how clicks are on release, while Enter triggers on keydown.) Keyup is limited to things where you’re constantly reacting to the state of a key, as is common in games.
This affects the functionality, too. It is in fact introducing latency by using keyup instead of keydown. Feels bad.
As a user, I’ve not thought too much about this before now. I agree with you mostly, but the keyup on space behaviour actually feels so innate I’d hate any change to it. Keydown on space is “jump”; nothing else.
I’d just like to hear an explanation of why it is. Because if you handled “is key currently pressed” events with polling rather than events (which is how people almost always consume them logically), it would be the only thing in the entire world that I can think of that would/should use keyup.
Edit: I think people are misunderstanding me. I’m asking for an explanation of why, when you have a button focused, pressing Space activates on key up, rather than key down like literally everything else on the keyboard, including Enter on a focused button. (Mouse activates on release.)
Because in those contexts, the Space key is being used as a physical mirror of the on-screen button, and on-screen buttons are UX'd to perform action when released.
These two interactions should behave identically:
- Hover over a button, press mouse button 1, release button 1.
- Tab over to a button, press spacebar, release spacebar.
Why on-screen buttons are UX'd to behave this way is a logical follow-up question. I'd wager that it gives a means to bail out of the clicking (e.g. by moving the mouse out of the on-screen button before releasing mousebutton 1, or by pressing Esc while having spacebar still depressed).
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It just matches real life. What about lmb to shoot? You don't fire a gun on trigger release, you fire it on trigger down. Walking? Would be weird moving only on keyup.
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Jump is keydown because many games let you adjust your jump height based on how long you hold down space after the jump starts.