<story><title>Canistilluse.com</title><url>https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2021/canistilluse.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>swiley</author><text>If you&amp;#x27;re that worried &amp;quot;&amp;lt;p&amp;gt; hold shift to select more than one item.&amp;lt;&amp;#x2F;p&amp;gt;&amp;quot; isn&amp;#x27;t a whole lot extra to add and is something most people can handle.</text></item><item><author>cameronh90</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;borderline unusable&amp;quot; because the vast majority of people who use computers probably wouldn&amp;#x27;t know how to select more than one item. There are no affordances and virtually nothing uses it any more.&lt;p&gt;Even in the early desktop era when it was popular, many non-enthusiasts probably just didn&amp;#x27;t know how to use a UI control like that. It just didn&amp;#x27;t cause a problem because most people didn&amp;#x27;t use computers much.&lt;p&gt;I would bet that most internet users today have never even used a UI where that control is popular.</text></item><item><author>thristian</author><text>The browser select-multiple widget works like that because that&amp;#x27;s how it&amp;#x27;s worked in most desktop OSs since Macintosh System 1.0 in 1984 (at least). It&amp;#x27;s been simple and predictable and easily learned for decades, calling it &amp;quot;borderline unusable&amp;quot; is just hyperbole.&lt;p&gt;Now, if you wanted to say that HTML&amp;#x27;s standard widgets should be allowed to reflect the platform-native look-and-feel (for example, adding a &amp;quot;selected&amp;quot; checkbox on touch-screens, or supporting long-press to select items, or whatever) instead of being tied to Windows 95 appearance and behaviour by backwards-compatibility concerns, then yeah, I&amp;#x27;d agree with that.</text></item><item><author>deergomoo</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s a shame the UI elements built into HTML are so lacking, which I think is what ultimately drives people do things like this.&lt;p&gt;Look at &amp;lt;select multiple&amp;gt; for example—the browser built-in is borderline unusable. Anything that requires combining a click with the shift and ctrl&amp;#x2F;cmd keys is not going to go down well with the average user. Same goes for &amp;lt;select&amp;gt;s that need more advanced behaviour like filtering. There&amp;#x27;s &amp;lt;datalist&amp;gt;, but it&amp;#x27;s incredibly basic and pretty useless for most cases you&amp;#x27;d want that sort of input.&lt;p&gt;The web is an app platform whether we like it or not, and I&amp;#x27;d like to see a robust set of browser-native controls with mechanisms to customise styling and behaviour. It would improve accessibility, improve performance, reduce page sizes (because we wouldn&amp;#x27;t be re-implementing the whole world in JS), and it would at least go a little way to offsetting the slow erosion of quality desktop software that web technologies are bringing.</text></item><item><author>LAC-Tech</author><text>May be risking a lot of downvotes, but I really want to work for somewhere that cares about a11y for very selfish reasons - I want to use semantic html and not have to do stupid shit like using a package that re-implements the select element with divs</text></item><item><author>userbinator</author><text>Personally, I think the web&amp;#x2F;browsers has churned far too much, and if that stopped happening, perhaps we would get more accessible sites and browser diversity as people &amp;quot;stop looking for new dogs and start teaching new tricks to the old ones.&amp;quot; Of course, Google would try its hardest to never let that happen, since change is its weapon of monopoly.&lt;p&gt;Related: Stop Pushing the Web Forward (2015) &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=9961613&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=9961613&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cameronh90</author><text>You think people actually read what&amp;#x27;s on the screen...?&lt;p&gt;Never done tech support I take it!</text></comment>
<story><title>Canistilluse.com</title><url>https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2021/canistilluse.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>swiley</author><text>If you&amp;#x27;re that worried &amp;quot;&amp;lt;p&amp;gt; hold shift to select more than one item.&amp;lt;&amp;#x2F;p&amp;gt;&amp;quot; isn&amp;#x27;t a whole lot extra to add and is something most people can handle.</text></item><item><author>cameronh90</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;borderline unusable&amp;quot; because the vast majority of people who use computers probably wouldn&amp;#x27;t know how to select more than one item. There are no affordances and virtually nothing uses it any more.&lt;p&gt;Even in the early desktop era when it was popular, many non-enthusiasts probably just didn&amp;#x27;t know how to use a UI control like that. It just didn&amp;#x27;t cause a problem because most people didn&amp;#x27;t use computers much.&lt;p&gt;I would bet that most internet users today have never even used a UI where that control is popular.</text></item><item><author>thristian</author><text>The browser select-multiple widget works like that because that&amp;#x27;s how it&amp;#x27;s worked in most desktop OSs since Macintosh System 1.0 in 1984 (at least). It&amp;#x27;s been simple and predictable and easily learned for decades, calling it &amp;quot;borderline unusable&amp;quot; is just hyperbole.&lt;p&gt;Now, if you wanted to say that HTML&amp;#x27;s standard widgets should be allowed to reflect the platform-native look-and-feel (for example, adding a &amp;quot;selected&amp;quot; checkbox on touch-screens, or supporting long-press to select items, or whatever) instead of being tied to Windows 95 appearance and behaviour by backwards-compatibility concerns, then yeah, I&amp;#x27;d agree with that.</text></item><item><author>deergomoo</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s a shame the UI elements built into HTML are so lacking, which I think is what ultimately drives people do things like this.&lt;p&gt;Look at &amp;lt;select multiple&amp;gt; for example—the browser built-in is borderline unusable. Anything that requires combining a click with the shift and ctrl&amp;#x2F;cmd keys is not going to go down well with the average user. Same goes for &amp;lt;select&amp;gt;s that need more advanced behaviour like filtering. There&amp;#x27;s &amp;lt;datalist&amp;gt;, but it&amp;#x27;s incredibly basic and pretty useless for most cases you&amp;#x27;d want that sort of input.&lt;p&gt;The web is an app platform whether we like it or not, and I&amp;#x27;d like to see a robust set of browser-native controls with mechanisms to customise styling and behaviour. It would improve accessibility, improve performance, reduce page sizes (because we wouldn&amp;#x27;t be re-implementing the whole world in JS), and it would at least go a little way to offsetting the slow erosion of quality desktop software that web technologies are bringing.</text></item><item><author>LAC-Tech</author><text>May be risking a lot of downvotes, but I really want to work for somewhere that cares about a11y for very selfish reasons - I want to use semantic html and not have to do stupid shit like using a package that re-implements the select element with divs</text></item><item><author>userbinator</author><text>Personally, I think the web&amp;#x2F;browsers has churned far too much, and if that stopped happening, perhaps we would get more accessible sites and browser diversity as people &amp;quot;stop looking for new dogs and start teaching new tricks to the old ones.&amp;quot; Of course, Google would try its hardest to never let that happen, since change is its weapon of monopoly.&lt;p&gt;Related: Stop Pushing the Web Forward (2015) &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=9961613&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=9961613&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fermuch</author><text>Some users don&amp;#x27;t know what key &amp;quot;shift&amp;quot; refers to.</text></comment>