Ask HN: Why is spacebar still Page Down in browsers

[krizan]

Pardon my ignorance, but spacebar was next page on msdos systems while enter was next line, that still hasn't made much sense to me since we had PgDown key on keyboard. I always use PgDown and PgUp keys in browsers. When i want to pause videos (they have to be in focus in order to pause) i get the same result as if i pressed PgDown. I've got used to using spacebar as "space" in text editors and pause in video players. The question is what made developers do this? Kiosks? EDIT: Shouldn't there be a standard that defines keybinds in apps? End users do get confused-

[leepowers]

* Not every keyboard has Page Up/Down keys. As an application designer you can't rely on their presence.

* The spacebar is the largest key. For an application, it makes sense to attach commonly used functionality to this key. For media players this is pause/play. For web browsers this is "scroll down a page", as you'll need to scroll down when viewing pretty much any web page.

[krizan]

Actually your answer makes the most sense. But It's confusing for the most users (people ARE the creatures of habits after all) I'm a business owner and customers asked me: "Why i can't do the same thing i do in VLC player!?" So i was curious.

[JoshTriplett]

Those uses of space/enter date back to pagers such as "more" long before DOS. In browsers, it's a conveniently huge target to use for one of the most frequent operations.

[krizan]

Well I'm 28 years old i never used pagers. What made it stick except being a huge target? EDIT: Being a huge target does not sound as a best explanation to me.

[JoshTriplett]

The earliest pagers had only one function, to page through text, and they would advance a full page when you hit any key. Space being the biggest key on the keyboard, people would commonly hit space to advance. As pagers became more sophisticated and grew additional functions (see http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/less.1.html for an example), such as search, line-based motion, horizontal motion, backward motion, multiple files, and so on, "press any key to advance by a page" became "press space to advance by a page" to make room for other keys. (PgDn was typically a much smaller and further-flung target, on keyboards where it existed at all.)

The oldest (text-based) web browsers had a surprising amount in common with pagers, plus the ability to follow links. Graphical web browsers evolved from there.

[krizan]

Thanks for your time (you've made some things clear). What i can't understand from your explanation is: Why isn't backspace a PgUp then?

[nbevans]

My guess is that because its the biggest and most ergonomic key to access on a keyboard, that it made sense to assign it to the primary UI function on a web browser: to scroll down.

[krizan]

That shouldn't be the reasoning behind the key that's just there lying being the 'biggest'.