Fingers don’t look around

Buttondown, a newsletter publisher, has a pretty standard CSS editor in its web app. You can edit the code and whenever you make any change, you can then press the Save button to make it go live: The view also thoughtfully supports pressing ⌘S to do the same thing: However, if there is nothing to save, ⌘S is ignored by the CSS editor, and falls back to the browser’s handling: It feels logical: ⌘S only takes effect when the button is visible, otherwise why would a user press it? In a front-end sense, it might even seem thoughtful. We all witnessed web apps that greedily took over some interaction, and broke things in the process. Hell, I did that myself. In theory, you – the user – take a careful look at the state of things, notice the button, and then press ⌘S. But in practice? It’s none of the above. Fingers don’t look around. You might press ⌘S twice in a row. Or after an undo to an already saved state. Or after pressing another key so light it didn’t register. Or after just sitting…