Ban the CAPS LOCK key?!?

Engad­get reports on a Dutch user’s cam­paign to remove the CAPS LOCK key from the stan­dard key­board lay­out. You can read his blog at http://capsoff.blogspot.com/

This is a fine xam­ple of a usabil­ity issue. Mac OS and Win­dows will prompt a user if CAPS LOCK is on while they are in a pass­word field.

I do use CAPS LOCK once in a while to leave quick com­ments or reminders for myself as I’m writ­ing a long document.

But the CAPS LOCK key is a neces­sity for some users. Remov­ing the key seems like an extreme solu­tion. Remap­ping the key­board is easy, and we’ve been doing this for years to sup­port mul­ti­ple languages.

I remem­ber when Microsoft added the Win­dows and prop­erty keys to the stan­dard key­board in 1995. It took a cou­ple of years, but most man­u­fac­tur­ers added these keys to the left and right of the space bar.

I still see lap­top key­boards that place these two keys in odd cor­ners. Again, it’s a usabil­ity issue for me. For­tu­nately, Hon­olulu has a cou­ple of well-stocked com­puter stores, so I can check out com­put­ers and their key­boards before I rec­om­mend prod­ucts to clients and friends.

Tagged as: hardware, keyboard, Microsoft, usability, Windows