Decaffeinated, Chris Clark’s defunct weblog

Short cuts

John Gruber flames Panther’s handling of customized keyboard shortcuts, and with good reason; frankly, it sucks. Personally, I’ve long preferred Unsanity’s Menu Master (where by “long” I mean “as long as it has been around… which isn’t that long”); but alas, that hasn’t been updated for 10.3 yet.

What really gets my goat, in a fashion far and away more stupefyingly enraging than fucked–up customization, is incredibly poor support of standard, documented keyboard shortcuts. If it weren’t for that small percentage of incredibly wrongheaded developers, I wouldn’t need to customize the “Preferences” shortcut from whatever key combination they pulled out of their hat. Part of the allure of the Mac is the consistency and predictability of the system; so lets get off our asses and make sure consistency is maintained! Check out the AHIG reference for keyboard shortcuts and tell me how many of those things are misimplemented or ignored by 90% of applications. Toggle the toolbar with Command–Option–T? Don’t see that too often. Close all Windows, Minimize all Windows… it requires one more modifier key, people: implement! How about Zoom Window? It doesn’t even have a standard keyboard shortcut.

With all that in mind, why is it that this kind of shortcut is implemented on an app–by–app basis by the developer? It is my bizarre though humble opinion that window controls such as this should be handled by the OS independent of the application to maintain system–wide consistency. Being realistic, I must concede that this is a pipe dream and suggest that perhaps keyboard shortcuts be better implemented in the standard Interface Builder application template. Better yet, developers should either educate themselves and actually care about their application’s UI, or hire a UI consultant to do it for them.

</rant>

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Staff parties

Given that it is the season to be jolly, I have no doubt that many of you have been to a staff party some time this month… and if not, yours is coming soon. I imagine you and a few dozen of your fellow coworkers thrown into a break room, sipping some punch, maybe drinking a little non–alcoholic egg nogg, and nibbling some of the cheapest looking snacks on the planet. I sympathize. I sympathize because I’ve been there before; somebody’s overworked assistant is given forty dollars and told to organize a party, and there’s no way it can turn out good. Thankfully, this year I had none of that; this year I’m working somewhere fun.

After closing early, the thirty or so “hospitality workers” (see: bartenders, barmaids, bottle shop staff, dish monkeys, chefs, managers and entertainers) of the Glengary Tavern, myself included, gathered in our lounge bar with free access to all the goodies we’re normally hawking to relative strangers. I’m sure our boss regrets it now, as it was possibly the most dangerous thing I’ve ever seen; fairly innocent at first, people sipping their beer and chatting happily… but then somebody started with the cocktails. After the cocktails came the shooters, and at one stage I recall being served four unidentifiable shots of liquor; being instructed gruffly not to ask, but to drink. Drink I did. Drink we all did. Many vomited wildly, several passed out, and a couple threw up while passed out (quite a feat of multitasking, if you ask me)… but a good time was had by all; even if we were a little hung over when we got to work today.

So that was my weekend, how was yours?

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