News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Bring Back Idiomatic Design. Parent comment

Re:Bring Back Idiomatic Design by PaulDavisThe1st on Sunday April 12, 2026 @05:46PM (#47744896)
not just that ... plenty of web apps (and maybe desktop native ones too, though I don't notice it as much there) use "smart-delete" - if the cursor has a character after it, the delete key deletes it, but if not, it operates like backspace (which ought to be labelled "delete prev").
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Bring Back Idiomatic Design by no-name-here on Sunday April 12, 2026 @09:08PM (#47746335)
I haven’t happened to have seen that - which web apps do it?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Bring Back Idiomatic Design by PaulDavisThe1st on Sunday April 12, 2026 @11:29PM (#47747235)
Hmm, at this point I think I might be imagining it ... I'll let you know if I can find it ...
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Bring Back Idiomatic Design by QuantumNomad_ on Monday April 13, 2026 @02:14AM (#47748243)
Some older Apple keyboards had their backspace button labelled “delete” which to me made it sound like that was the “del” button and not the backspace button.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Bring Back Idiomatic Design by Findecanor on Monday April 13, 2026 @05:25AM (#47749665)
That was the convention on many older computing platforms.

A "Backspace" key on a typewriter did not actually delete: It merely moved the typing position back one space.

[ Parent | on HN ]