Wed, 08 Apr 2009
Muscle Memory is a Good Thing (and why gratuitous UI changes are bad)
Muscle memory is a wonderful thing. I do things on my computers on a daily basis that I don't even think about doing. The movements are just ingrained into my muscles. Office 2007 has broken that (yes, I still use Windows for a bit of work). My muscles know that 'alt-e x' means "cut" but apparently that is no longer the case. I don't know why they decided to get rid of this, but it is very painful to me because I highlight a bunch of stuff I want to cut out and I hit 'alt-e x' and end up replacing the entire selection with the letter 'x.' It is annoying beyond belief.
Think how bad it would be if 'yy' in vi suddenly did something else. A LOT of people would have to change something which has been burned into their muscles for longer than I care to think about. If Microsoft suddenly changed 'alt-space n' to do something other than minimize I would likely flip out and call my friends who work there and scream until they put it back. Some of my muscle memory things for Windows actually go all the way back to my early DOS days! If 'alt-f x' does anything other than exit I'd go insane.
posted at: 19:00 | tags: office, rant | path: /entries/rant | permanent link to this entry
