User interfaces have continuously evolved over time. I remember my first steps with computers: orange text on a black background. Some control characters that were hard to memorize. Then the relief brought by a graphical interface and the use of the mouse. The development of MacOS and Windows. The legendary user interfaces in Kai Krause’s Photoshop plugins. Then the apps on smartphones and tablets, which introduced completely new interface concepts.
And now it’s 2019, and I’m trying to memorize control characters again.
How did I come to this? Through Haeme. A few days ago, he revealed to us the trick with the / in the Gutenberg editor of WordPress. And that reminded me that I’ve been encountering this slash more and more lately. Most recently, for example, in Slack, where I learned that you can quickly trigger a connected app with a slash. For instance, to insert a Giphy or to create a Trello card.
This is one of the fundamental operating concepts of Slack. And thus a counter-trend to the mouse- and touch-optimized user interfaces of recent years. Today, people want to work quickly and easily via the keyboard again. Keyboard shortcuts are back in!
I could imagine that the slash as a trigger will also establish itself in other applications. Just as two other characters have done in recent years:
- The @ is no longer just in email addresses but is generally used in apps to mention other people (so-called mentions)
- The #, in turn, has become the standard for tagging things and adding keywords. The hashtag was first found on Twitter and is now usable in practically all social channels.
Are there other control characters I should remember? Put them in the comments!
