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Joel on Software

2000/04/22

by Joel Spolsky
Saturday, April 22, 2000

From the latest chapter on UI design:

Even if you think (as the Netscape 6.0 engineers clearly do) that Alt+Left is not a good shortcut key for "Back", there are literally millions of people out there who will try to use Alt+Left to go back, and if you refuse to do it on some general religious principle that Bill Gates is the evil Smurf Gargamel, then you are just gratuitously ruining your program so that you can feel smug and self-satisfied, and your users will not thank you for it.

User Interface Design for Programmers 5


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About the author.

I’m Joel Spolsky, founder of Fog Creek Software, a New York company that proves that you can treat programmers well and still be highly profitable. Programmers get private offices, free lunch, and work 40 hours a week. Customers only pay for software if they’re delighted. We make FogBugz, an enlightened project management system designed to help great teams develop brilliant software, and Fog Creek Copilot, which makes remote desktop access easy.

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