I have no idea why some think it's a good idea to 'supplement' the browser's built in navigation by overriding yet more of its standard keys. On pressing left arrow, I expect it to behave uniformly, not navigate to some other page. If you insist on doing this, then at least use accesskeys= attribute. Instead I'm left reeling, hands off, staring at my keyboard as if it is an unknown enemy preparing to attack.
Really don't care about presentation (serve your blog in text/plain all I care), but some things are unforgivable. Didn't get reading past the first few lines.
Is it really unfair to assume someone who makes this mistake could not hold any kind of useful, complex, technically valid opinion that would teach me something new?
"I have no idea why some think it's a good idea to 'supplement' the browser's built in navigation by overriding yet more of its standard keys."
Because they can. I have yet to meet a 'web designer' or an 'user interface designer' who doesn't redesign all buttons, scrollbars and text fields for every design they do: as if the standard built-in ones aren't good enough. Or perhaps they're afraid they won't be judged as having done a good enough job on the design?
Jakob Nielsen writes about this phenomenon, and I agree with him:
"Many Flash designers introduce their own nonstandard GUI controls. How many scrollbar designs do we need? [...] The specification of a new GUI widget is a major human-factors exercise. The current Macintosh and Windows scrollbars emerged after the world's best interaction designers worked for years testing numerous design alternatives. A new scrollbar designed over the weekend is likely to get many details wrong. And, even if the new design was workable, it would still reduce a site's overall usability because users would have to figure out how it worked. They know how to operate the standard widget. When you use standards, users can focus on content and their reasons for visiting your site. Deviate, and you reduce their feeling of environmental mastery."
The disadvantage of this approach is that my apps use only the standard GUI components, which makes some people say that "they're not of this time" and that I should give the app a "fresh new look with a contemporary skin". Maybe their taste and expectations are already numbed beyond repair by the chaos in designs and visual overkill we encounter each day on the web.
Really don't care about presentation (serve your blog in text/plain all I care), but some things are unforgivable. Didn't get reading past the first few lines.
Is it really unfair to assume someone who makes this mistake could not hold any kind of useful, complex, technically valid opinion that would teach me something new?