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February 11, 2004 12:58 AM
Broken: Caps Lock
Jan Jursa writes from Germany:
After years of suffering, trouble and pain I finally fixed my keyboard. I will never ever again touch the Caps Lock accidentally. The harassment's over.[Not only that, but on Windows PC's the all-important CTRL key is in the least accessible position: lower-left. Why not switch the positions of CTRL and Caps Lock? -mh]Isn't the Caps Lock key one of the most annoying things on every keyboard? I think I can honestly say I have NEVER used this key purposely in the past 15 or 20 years.
This is an ancient issue and I agree completely. In the early days, terminals (VC and DEC VT-XXX) had the control key where CAPS Lock is now. This was really important in Unix for things like VI and the Shell where everything was delimited by some control sequence. You could more easily use your left pinky to engage the control key.
I wonder if it was a deliberate change. I still try and do a CAPS-LOCK-C to end things (expecting I was typing Control-C).
Traditionally there have been differences between the way that caps lock works with the German and the English keyboard drivers.
One difference is the way that you turn caps lock off. On the english keyboard you hit caps lock a second time. On the german keyboard you use the shift key.
Under Windows 2000 you can modifiy this behaviour in the control panel.
The other difference is with regard to the number keys. Caps lock on an english keyboard does not affect the number keys, but on a german keyboard it does.
I am a native english speaker living in germany and I routinely switch between the english and german keyboard drivers. Usually I use the english driver, with which I can type blind, so it doesn't bother me if the labeling on the keys is wrong.
When I do need to use the german driver, the one thing that quickly drives me mad and gets me shouting at the PC is the different behaviour of the caps lock function.
This is and has been broken for a very long time.
You can always tell the keyboards I've adopted, because they have spaces where the caps lock, num lock, insert and scroll lock keys should be.
I think of these keys as being the keyboard equivalent of a human appendix. Except I keep the keys in a box somewhere, just in case...
I've pried off all the CTRL, ALT, and "windows" and "menu" keys from my work keyboard. I was sick of hitting ALT instead of space, or CTRL instead of shift.
Except, of course, for one CTRL key. After "fixing" my broken new keyboard, I discovered I needed CTRL to log in.
...
Hitting Shift to release Caps Lock is how an IBM Selectric III behaves, btw.
A handy feature in Windows is "Toggle Keys" which will play a beep to alert you when you accidentally press a key that toggles (like the CAPS-LOCK). You can find it in Control Panels / Accessibility Options / Keyboard.
There is also a setting in MS Word to ignore acceidental use of the CAPS-LOCK key. It's one of the few automation features I use in Word.
Older Macintosh keyboards had a much better caps lock design than most current keyboards I've used: when you activated CAPS lock, the key itself remained depressed so you could tell by touch that it was activated. Granted this solution costs more and is probably less reliable, but it offers a better experience to typists.
Also, I've never understood why Windows overrides caps lock if you have caps lock AND the shift key depressed - from a programming standpoint it makes sense, but in actual usage, I'm always confused when I press the shift key and get lowercase letters.
I, too, have been removing the CAPS-LOCK and INSERT keys from my keyboard for a few years now.
Don Norman has a lot of great comments about the evolution of the keyboard design in _The Design of Everyday Things_. Perhaps we can remember that ancient tool: the typewriter. Hitting the CAPS-LOCK key had significant feedback--the button could lift the levers so that the capital letters were aligned to strike the paper. I recall this button also be "heavy" (that is, harder to press than the other keys)--since it was connected to the mechanism that was lifting a significant part of the typewriter. This also LOCKED the SHIFT keys in the depressed position.
I like the comment about increasing your awareness of pressing the key by having it beep at you when you press it. But that is a momentary signal, and not a persistent source of feedback. The light on the keyboard is consistent, but not in the view of the touch typist who relies only on tactile cues.
So, here's one design idea I just thought of. Maybe instead of being a button, the CAPS-LOCK feature could be a switch. Picture a sideways light switch in place of your CAPS-LOCK key. You could switch it towards the keyboard to turn on all caps, and you could switch it away to turn caps off.
Take the feedback one step further--when CAPS-LOCK is on, physically depress the shift keys to show that the SHIFT is on, just like the typewriters. That would give the touch typist tactical feedback that SHIFT was locked on.
I realize there would be additional costs, mechanisms that could break, and implementation issues to consider for this design...but I hope you enjoyed the thinking behind it.
The keyboard that Sun Microsystems provides with all of its workstations uses the convention of control being where caps lock is on traditional PC keyboards, and vice versa. This is convenient when you are used to it, for example working in a computer lab, but drives me nuts when I get home and start hitting caps lock instead of control. It would be nice if keyboards had been standardized at some point, and not to the way typewriters were. The keyboard layout for typewriters was designed to not jam the mechanism, not for speed or efficiency.
Macs also put the command key (the all-important key for keyboard shortcuts) right next to the spacebar, making it very convenient.
My iBook also has a light under the caps lock key, so I know if it's been depressed.
(BTW, caps lock is very useful for disabled people that can only type one letter at a time, it can be impossible for them to hold the shift key down and press another letter at the same time)
Not so sure this is broken as rather a problem with trying to design for a wide audience.
The "k" key came out of my laptop keyboard, do you know how i could fix this or where i could take it to be fixed?
caps lock and ctrl keys are not functioning in my keyboard all of a sudden - how to retrieve please ?
I use the Cap Locks key all the time. If you're trained to type the correct way, using the Cap Locks key is second nature when you need to get an acronym onto the page.
on an apple powerbook keyboard the capslock key is the 3rd largest key after space and shift. that's broken!
at least it's the only key with a led in it...
Since the early days of home computing, IBM-style keyboards have remained substantially the same.
So, in a bid to prevent the heartbreak of excessive familiarity, the twits at Microsoft have introduced a disaster known as the "Microsoft Multimedia Keyboard 1.0A".
OK, fair enough. Newer computers have more features. But what good having extra keys for DVD/CD operations if they don't work most of the time anyway?
Worse, these ignoramuses have decided to change the placement of the "Insert", "Delete", "Pageup", etc keys such that finger motions, which had become automatic, now are a problem as one has to adjust when going from regular keyboards (say at work) to these nightmares of bad design (say at home) and back.
Worse still, the standard "F" function keys are now an alternative function on that row and one much press a special "F lock" key to invoke them.
Whichever idiot thought these changes would be a good idea should have their engineering license revoked.
I am a screenwriter, and therefore need the caps lock key frequently (in typing character's names and such, which are always in capital letters). It's just easier for me to use the caps lock key as opposed to holding down shift.
If you put the control key were the caps lock key was, you are liable to push the control key equally as much. This would obviously have greater repercussions than typing a simple capital letter. For example, you could undo an entire paragraph or painstaking operation with a simple tap of CTRL-Z.
Ok, ***aside** from the person who pointed out that moving the delete, insert, etc keys was completely stupid and those of you who understand the key....
You are all idiots! The caps-lock key IS IN THE SAME FREAKIN PLACE EVERY TIME!! How hard is it to remember that?! How difficult is it to understand that the origins of that key date back to the mechanical typewriters and that because of the general stupidity of the population, engineers chose to keep the keyboard as close to the original designs as possible, BECAUSE PAVLOVIAN DOGS ARE SMARTER than the average PC user.
I use the caps-lock OFTEN at work when dealing with engineering tasks. How wonderful it must be for you, that in your little world, caps-lock is not needed and you are too narrow-minded to consider that there is a reason for the location and use of it.
And for those of you who can't figure out the ALT and CTRL keys. SOME people are bright enough to know what key combinations work with those keys and save time. Pity, you're busy reaching for the mouse all the time. All that engineering and planning... all the time some programmer took to make sure that there were key combinations available.... WASTED!!! WASTED ON MORONS!!!!!!!!!!!!! Morons who are too stupid to hit the biggest key on the freakin' keyboard instead of the little keys next to them.
I think I need a drink now... stupid friggin' morons. Yeah, I'm a disgruntled engineer... someone actually complained to me that SHE MADE A MISTAKE because I made things too simple for her. Yes, I made it so easy, that it couldn't possible be that easy, so she chose the more difficult route and screwed up the task.
I use the CAPS LOCK key all the time. The problem isn't the placement of the key, its the morons out there who don't know how to type.
Ya, anyone in a drafting, architectural, civil, engineering, graphics design, programming, word proccessing, legal, or many other careers/jobs will find the caps lock key quite usefull. You know, when you have to TYPE IN ALL CAPS FOR SOME REASON. I have to say, holding shift to type every single word on an architectural plan would really suck. The general notes can sometimes fill an entire 24" X 36" page, and while most of that is cut and paste, the first time you type those notes, you're going to want a caps lock.
I agree that typing out a sentence in caps is annoyiung if you hit caps lock by accident, but hey, that's what looking at the screen is for!
Hello, "duh".
I just wanted to point out that you are too entrenched in your alpha-geek superiority complex to understand the point of this website. If many people are complaining about the lack of usability in an everyday tool, then they are probably not "all idiots".
I understand that, as an engineer, you probably have a higher IQ than most of your fellow humans. Your brain is wired to surmount even the toughest interfaces and bend them to your super-dweeb will. I applaud you.
I'm an engineer, too. I design and create software for a living. I also have an above-average IQ. No, I don't feel the need to pop the keys off my keyboard (but that's not because I'm perfect -- I hit the wrong ones sometimes). But I don't berate others who have the creativity to improve a design that doesn't work for them.
Like me, you probably collect electronic gadgetry. This stuff has a never-ending parade of functions and features. I'll bet you don't use them all -- you just use the ones you care about. Yet, some developer worked hard to create those features you never touch. Does that make you a moron? (Quiet, everyone else -- I hear you chanting, "YES! HE'S A MORON!" But you're not helping.) No, "duh", that doesn't make you a moron. But it does make you a user. (Sorry if that's an insult.)
I'd be very interested to hear the story you alluded to in your final paragraph. You claim to have made something easier for your user, yet "she chose the more difficult route". Sorry, buddy, but that ain't her fault -- close off that route next time!
Someday you and others like you will start taking responsibility for your work, and stop blaming your users (ANGRILY!) for your defects. Then we won't need websites like this one. But for now, pointing out things that don't work correctly is the only way to get them fixed. I hope there are some designers and engineers out there that are not as hard-headed as you. The point of this site is to reach them and make them understand what they are doing wrong. Are you intelligent enough to realize that this site might be speaking to you as well?
OK, Awgeez (there meathead),
LOL... alpha-geek superiority.. that's good.
Whether my IQ is 150 or 75, it doesn't change the fact that the key is the same position since the Qwerty keyboard was designed. I'll admit, I looked it up... the Qwerty keyboard was patented in 1868. After a CENTURY, the basic layout is the same. That would be my point... the caps-lock key is the same place it's been in for a quite awhile. It's not that hard to avoid it and people being narrow-minded enough to never consider that because THEY never use it, it must be broken is what's irritating.
Since that design, "clever people", have rearranged the keys, but it never seems to catch on. I guess it's the designer's fault... and I guess that since removing a key is "creative".... gee, I don't know... removing a key being equal to creative is your logic, not mine. Perhaps you can tell me why people do not adapt well to different keyboard layouts? While you are at it, tell my why they don't adapt well and then tell me that the caps-lock key is broken. THEN, with your "above average IQ", tell me how to change the keyboard without expecting people to adapt to a different layout.
Being an "alpha-geek"... I never use the F1 (Help) key... that doesn't mean it's broken. Actually, I find the #$&*!! thing irritating because I often use F2 and miss, hitting F1. The computer grinds to a halt while it brings up the help file. Now, that is just my bad aim, NOT a broken keyboard. I don't blame the tool, I blame myself. I BLAME MYSELF, something that is severely lacking in society these days. "McDonald's made me fat!!"
Someone chops a finger off while chopping some onions.... who's the idiot- the knife designer or the guy without a finger? Or is it the onion, for needing to be chopped? No, I know... it's the guy who wrote the recipe. HE screwed up!! The fingerless moron was just a victim of an alpha-chef!!
Anyway, there are all kinds of keys that I don't use, all kinds of options on my cell phone, the ATM machine... options, options, options!! I applaud the person who was bright enough to design more options than I need, because he or she was thinking far enough ahead to design things that would fit more than one person's needs. Yeah, some things really are broken, but options that I do not use, simply because I do not use them, do not mean that there is a problem with the .
No, you're not sorry if calling me a user is an insult. An no, even though I do collect gadgets, I am not like you, so don't flatter yourself.
As for my last paragraph.... you assumed wrong. I am not a design engineer, I am a manufacturing engineer, which basically makes me an applications engineer. I change the over-complex drawings and thoughts of book smart, head-in-the-clouds, design engineers into simple instructions for people who don't share the talents that I do. Those people are in NO way idiots for not being able to understand the things I need to translate for them. No more of an idiot than someone who speaks English needs an interpreter to talk to someone who speaks Chinese.
The person I was referring to literally said to me, "You made it too easy." It was so easy that it couldn't possibly be that easy, so she picked a more difficult route and screwed it up. This is my fault?! Not that it matters much, but I made a color coded drawing and the colors matched everything that she needed to do. It didn't occur to her that since I made a BROWN wire on the drawing BROWN, that the wire needed to be BROWN. Nevermind that the description said BROWN, it just happened to be a coincidence that the BROWN wire was BROWN on the drawing. The blue, black and orange wires were a total coincidence, too!! Blame that one on me... I'd wet my pants with glee if you were clever enough to put that one on my shoulders.
OK, Awgeez (there meathead),
LOL... alpha-geek superiority.. that's good.
Whether my IQ is 150 or 75, it doesn't change the fact that the key is the same position since the Qwerty keyboard was designed. I'll admit, I looked it up... the Qwerty keyboard was patented in 1868. After a CENTURY, the basic layout is the same. That would be my point... the caps-lock key is the same place it's been in for a quite awhile. It's not that hard to avoid it and people being narrow-minded enough to never consider that because THEY never use it, it must be broken is what's irritating.
Since that design, "clever people", have rearranged the keys, but it never seems to catch on. I guess it's the designer's fault... and I guess that since removing a key is "creative".... gee, I don't know... removing a key being equal to creative is your logic, not mine. Perhaps you can tell me why people do not adapt well to different keyboard layouts? While you are at it, tell my why they don't adapt well and then tell me that the caps-lock key is broken. THEN, with your "above average IQ", tell me how to change the keyboard without expecting people to adapt to a different layout.
Being an "alpha-geek"... I never use the F1 (Help) key... that doesn't mean it's broken. Actually, I find the #$&*!! thing irritating because I often use F2 and miss, hitting F1. The computer grinds to a halt while it brings up the help file. Now, that is just my bad aim, NOT a broken keyboard. I don't blame the tool, I blame myself. I BLAME MYSELF, something that is severely lacking in society these days. "McDonald's made me fat!!"
Someone chops a finger off while chopping some onions.... who's the idiot- the knife designer or the guy without a finger? Or is it the onion, for needing to be chopped? No, I know... it's the guy who wrote the recipe. HE screwed up!! The fingerless moron was just a victim of an alpha-chef!!
Anyway, there are all kinds of keys that I don't use, all kinds of options on my cell phone, the ATM machine... options, options, options!! I applaud the person who was bright enough to design more options than I need, because he or she was thinking far enough ahead to design things that would fit more than one person's needs. Yeah, some things really are broken, but options that I do not use, simply because I do not use them, do not mean that there is a problem with the .
No, you're not sorry if calling me a user is an insult. An no, even though I do collect gadgets, I am not like you, so don't flatter yourself.
As for my last paragraph.... you assumed wrong. I am not a design engineer, I am a manufacturing engineer, which basically makes me an applications engineer. I change the over-complex drawings and thoughts of book smart, head-in-the-clouds, design engineers into simple instructions for people who don't share the talents that I do. Those people are in NO way idiots for not being able to understand the things I need to translate for them. No more of an idiot than someone who speaks English needs an interpreter to talk to someone who speaks Chinese.
The person I was referring to literally said to me, "You made it too easy." It was so easy that it couldn't possibly be that easy, so she picked a more difficult route and screwed it up. This is my fault?! Not that it matters much, but I made a color coded drawing and the colors matched everything that she needed to do. It didn't occur to her that since I made a BROWN wire on the drawing BROWN, that the wire needed to be BROWN. Nevermind that the description said BROWN, it just happened to be a coincidence that the BROWN wire was BROWN on the drawing. The blue, black and orange wires were a total coincidence, too!! Blame that one on me... I'd wet my pants with glee if you were clever enough to put that one on my shoulders.
Double posting....is this site broken, or....
Unfortunately, until someone writes a voice recognition program that recognizes all manner of speech and inflection, we are stuck with keyboards. My fingers are larger than my laptop's keys, making typing rather challenging. Fortunately, I don't use it for word processing, just for PLC programming.
Now what's REALLY broken is the touchpad that requires two or three passes to get all the way across the screen.
Admittedly, I am probably the world's worst typist. When my fudge fingers hit the wrong key I don't blame they key for being there.
OMG you people will moan about the slightest inperfections, key boards are fine the way they are and no ones going to make a programme that reconizea peoples voices because there are no operating systems that would dedicate them selves to that or even bother...
i only found this site by typing Bose into a search engine...
Really folks,
The Caps-Lock/Shift issue is annoying for me.
In short, the SHIFT-KEY does not automatically turn off Caps-Lock when the SHIFT key is pressed.
Hitting Shift which also releases the Caps-Lock is how most mechanical or electronic typewriters have done it, and still do (if you can find one).
So, it's not placement, not its function, its behavior in conjunction with the SHIFT-KEY.
It is frustrating to look at the screen after typing only to find that it came out something like:
==========
Good Morning,
nOW THAT ALL OF YOU HAVE READ THE POSTING, mR. ROBERTS WILL BE TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ...
aS SUCH, YOU WILL NOTICE THAT WHEN THE shift-KEY IS PRESSED, THE cAPS-lOCK "should" uN-lOCK.
=========
Then having to erase all the text just to re-type it.
Most often, the reason the Caps-Lock get pressed, for me, is I pressed the Caps-Lock when I wanted the TAB-key.
It funny that Windows 2K has the OPTION to correct this problem (not by default), but Windows-XP, or any others MS OS do not yet. Why?
This has been a problem ever since MS came out with DOS. Some 30+ years ago and counting, and they still have not fixed this simple problem for their current OS.
Many of the DOS Word processors at the time, "DID" fix in in their software, because their customers complained about it.
And yes, I've been using computers before DOS was even available.
Some of you may have never have used a mechanical or electronic typewriter before, but some of us have.
It seems to me, that many of the current word processors don't have an INVERT-CAPS function. Or if they do, it hidden someplace difficult to find, or hard to remember.
(Many DOS editing programs did)
BUT... the good news... it can be fixed.
The Program link for the CTL2CAPS can be made into a SHIFT-UnLock.
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/ctrl2cap.shtml
Why is it fixed for other Language keyboards but not English? this is strange too.
I'm new to thisisbroken.com and I have to say that I personally did this a long time ago. I used some sticky goop (stick tack if you will) to put something where the key once sat. Now when I accidentally hit it, nothing happens!
Perfect solutions.
Jake
I love this!!! I just discovered this website today... I love the drama.
For all of you arguing about whether to take your capslock key off your keyboard or to reassign/remap your kayboard key, it dont matter. Some of us, such as me, found a program that disables the caps lock key unless you press shift-capslock at the same time. I tend to hit capslock just about everytime I use the "A" key. (I am not a classically trained keyboardist LOL)
Anyways, the program is called CapsUnlock. I downloaded it free from CNET.com.
I left a post without insulting anyone that I know of...imagine that.
Comments on this entry are closed
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Physically removing the key seems like a waste of a perfectly good key.
There are plenty of software tools out there that can remap the caps lock key to something else (such as left-control).
Posted by: James at February 11, 2004 03:09 AM