So I hit "TAB" and Google mail sends the partially composed message?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5524528

by ColinWright • 13 years ago

7 18 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

So I'm using Google's compose window, I'm in the middle of composing the message, press "TAB" to, you know, like, insert a TAB character, and it sends the message.

So what's that about?

People, when you design an interface, don't put invisible, undiscoverable, irrecoverable actions in it.

protothomas• 13 years ago

Pressing tab will move the focus to the send button, hitting return will then send the message. Presumably this is what you did. Possibly not ideal, but I'd disagree it is an invisible, undiscoverable (tab to move focus is standard), and irrecoverable (you must also hit return).

lignuist• 13 years ago

For programmers it might feel odd, if pressing tab makes the textarea loosing the focus, instead of putting a tab character in the text.

mattstreet• 13 years ago

More counter-productive than odd. Since most of us are already used to using tab in browsers and forms.

But yeah, it sucks to write a real amount of text in a texbox that doesn't let you use tab. Of course you can always write in another editor and then put it in the textbox.

Even easier if you use something like this:https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/its-all-text/

capo2• 13 years ago

It does not do that, I just double checked, even when the focus is on the "Send" button a dialog box pops with "Send (Ctrl-Enter)" and no sending happens. Maybe what you encountered was the work of a browser extension or a labs feature left enabled, or most likely you just tapped return at the wrong moment.

ColinWright4• 13 years ago

It may not have done it for you, but it did it for me, and others in this thread have confirmed that it did it for them.

For reference, I don't have any browser extensions installed, and I haven't used any labs features, so neither of those suggestions is correct either.

And forgive me for being blunt, but your reply seems to be similar to what happens when a problem is reported to some "support" services where they say "Works for me!" The clear underlying text is "So you're an idiot, and don't matter."

So thank you for your suggestions, but they're wrong. And it did do it for me, and I double-checked.

edwinjm• 13 years ago

You are blamed just like you blame the interface designers. Don't be mad.

Fact is, most reported problems, in the end, are caused by the user him/herself, so his response is not that bad.

capo2• 13 years ago

I was honestly just trying to help. I tested the only way I know how, via my own Gmail account.

bradleyland3• 13 years ago

I think maybe you should take a step back and realize that the way you communicated your message initially isn't consistent with the defense you're making here. You didn't state your original issue as a bug, you called Google out as if this were some kind of feature:

"People, when you design an interface, don't put invisible, undiscoverable, irrecoverable actions in it."

This would only be a feature if it happened for everyone, and now you're using curt language with someone who is trying to help.

Troubleshooting is hard, and the communications involved are often polarizing. End users commonly feel defensive, and troubleshooters often fail to couch their language diplomatically.

The matter of reproducibility is the basic litmus test by which programmers classify issues as bugs versus environment issues. Bugs are problems in the software, and environment issues are problems in the user's specific configuration. Often times an issue is a combination of both. The willingness to engage in troubleshooting environment issues varies by developer, but if you're interested in receiving help, it's worth acknowledging that your problem falls somewhere on this continuum, which means you always bear some responsibility in remaining objective during the troubleshooting process. You seem convinced that this is some type of feature issue, rather than remaining open to other possibilities.

I think I might have an idea about what's happening in your case, but I'm reluctant to even posit the idea, because I fear you'll lash out as me as well.

j0hnsn0w• 13 years ago

I enable "Undo Send" to recover from accidental sends. I just hit tab here and it shifted me to "add comment" :D

ghgr• 13 years ago

It happened to me several times. To avoid that I always write the destination email address after having finished my message.

Also, the combination <TAB> + Space also sends messages here in Hacker Ne

rocky1138• 13 years ago

This is an excellent idea. It also brings up the question of why email UI hasn't been redesigned to show the To: field after the message box. It makes so much more sense that way.

A holdover from the old snail mail days?

makethetick• 13 years ago

When buttons are focused, enter and space both submit the button.

dwild• 13 years ago

I can't reproduce your situation on Google Chrome.

I do these exact steps: 1. Press Compose 2. Enter recipient 3. Press TAB 4. Enter subject 5. Press TAB 6. Enter message 7. Press TAB

At the end the focus is on Send, which is an expected behavior and it displays a tooltip that says "Send (Ctrl-Enter)". I'm able to send the message if I press SPACE or ENTER, but again, it's an expected behavior when you get the focus on a button (the tooltip can be misleading).

Do you have more information that could help finding the cause?

ColinWright4• 13 years ago

After re-reading, I freely admit that parts of this make me sound really angry, and to some extent I am. I'm finding the Google Mail interface, and Google products in general, just get in the way, and stop me from working. I have to change to work the way they want, and many times that removes from me facilities that I depend on. So just to let you know that I'm having a bad day, and I apologise in advance for some ranting.

And so, to reply to your point.

I'm no longer on the machine I was using, and I was using Firefox on Ubuntu, not Chrome. I won't be able to test your sequence on the original configuration until Friday at the earliest.

Plus, in trying to log in on the appropriate account, I'm told I'm already logged in with a different one, and do I want to link the accounts?

No.

How can I proceed? It appears I can't. I either have to log out the other account, which would be a pain, or link the accounts, which I can't do because of separation of concerns.

There are times I really, really hate Google. There's no link that says - no, just log me in, dammit.

So I reload the page and oh look! I'm logged in! That's obvious ...

So, now to proceed with what you say ... and yes, what you say has exactly the effect you describe, which is exactly the effect I expected.

Earlier today, however, on a different machine, with Firefox, I clicked Compose, clicked in the recipient box and type the address, clicked in the subject box and completed the subject, clicked in the text box and started composing. Part way through I was generating a plain-text style bullet list and hit return, then TAB.

The message was then sent, despite my expectation. That's as far as I can recall, but I did it a second time and it did the same thing. I'm pretty sure I didn't hit space or enter after hitting TAB, although I can't guarantee that now, several hours, much typing, and several tasks later.

So here's the point for other designers of user interfaces. When your use is in a text box, TAB might take them out without them realizing, and then hitting ENTER or SPACE might perform an action they really aren't expecting, and didn't want. perhaps you should design the interface so that the button they get to after the text box does not perform an irreversible action.

bradleyland3• 13 years ago

> So here's the point for other designers of user interfaces. When your use is in a text box, TAB might take them out without them realizing, and then hitting ENTER or SPACE might perform an action they really aren't expecting, and didn't want. perhaps you should design the interface so that the button they get to after the text box does not perform an irreversible action.

After typing my reply in the other thread, I read far enough down the page to get to this entry, and I have to say I agree 100% with what you've said here. The fact that pressing [TAB, space] sends the email irreversibly is dangerous, and can pretty easily happen by accident when typing quickly.

Having said that, the behavior of TAB moving between form elements is a long standing behavior. Many "power users" use it to great effect, but it's discoverability is very poor. The solution is a tough compromise though. In Gmail, many users rely on the [TAB, space] sequence to send email. I do the same thing on Hacker News. When I finish my comment, I use [TAB, space] to submit my comment. The people who write the software are loath to give that up.

My feeling is that within the rich text editing area of an email message, TAB ought to insert a tab character, but I'm not sure how difficult that is. The TAB keypress is handled by the browser, so if the Gmail devs were to go through the trouble of trapping TAB and inserting the tab character in to the text area, they'd be breaking the expected behavior of the web browser. In that way, this solution creates another problem. Which one is "right"?

It's a bit of a paradox. If nothing else, I hope this helps shed some light on why these design decisions aren't always as straight forward as they seem.

So I hit "TAB" and Google mail sends the partially composed message?

Related Stories