Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by animeweedlord 3682 days ago
I'm gonna be majorly pissed if they disable space bar scroll. I use that quite literally constantly while I'm browsing. It is the scrolling method I use 99% of the time.

Backspace to go back, OTOH, I was aware of, but I doubt I ever wanted. Alt-Left is easier to use because it's less modal. Still bothers me in general when devs screw with established defaults.
2 comments
shkkmo 3682 days ago
I think the backspace thing matters more than spacebar, because spacebar isn't going to cause you to lose (potentially hours of) work.

I do find the spacebar behavior isn't super predictable when I am trying to pause things, such as youtube .

link
OJFord 3682 days ago
The most confusing thing is that Youtube and Netflix seem to occasionally toggle pause when you press space; other times Youtube scrolls, and Netflix does nothing (there'd be nowhere to scroll).

I've never managed to consistently replicate it by having had the player in/out of focus already, not/scrolled, etc. odd.

link
ydant 3681 days ago
It's YouTube specific, but "k" is more reliable for me as a pause/unpause button on YouTube.
link
grapeshot 3682 days ago
Chrome is lately behaving even more unpredictably when scrolling with the spacebar, because now if you click on either the back or forward buttons it puts a focus rectangle on them and now pressing space will go back/forward again instead of scrolling down like I wanted.
link
dlitz 3682 days ago
Aside from it just being what you're used to, what's wrong with just having PgUp/PgDn for scrolling?
link
animeweedlord 3682 days ago
Right hand on mouse, left hand on WASD. The spacebar is always easy to hit your thumb, but you have to move your right hand away the mouse to hit Page Down. Plus it mixes well with Vimperator-like extensions, to the point that I can do 90% of my browsing with one hand.

EDIT: and before anyone points out that if I'm already using extensions I could easily add another, yes and I would if I had to, but it's not ideal, because 1. Extensions crash, fail to load, or aren't allowed by internal browser pages, and 2. You sometimes have to use other peoples' machines and it's annoying when basic functionality is locked away.

link
provemewrong 3681 days ago
All keyboards have a spacebar. Not all keyboards today have dedicated page up/page down keys. So potentially more keystrokes due to the function layer.
link