Well that's one way of looking at it. Another take is that it's 2024, and Windows probably had first-letter navigation in Explorer (plus list views in general) in 1995.

@jscholes Wait, what? Sorry, I meant on the web specifically. I think the implementation is quite a bit different but, most importantly here IMHO, is the courage to take this paradigm to the web. It’s been successfully proven to work on the desktop, but we have not seen it on the web, did we? :)

I've helped clients implement it on the web, personally. But I was commenting more on the fact that Google Drive has existed for 12 years, which is an inexcusably long time to go without a basic feature that's been known to be useful (some would say essential) since the 1990s.

@jscholes I think it’s fairly excusable given the fact that the code base had to mature and the appetite had to be there. Let’s be realistic! This is not a critical business feature! :) :)

It's a business-critical feature for me to use a file manager effectively. The web is full of UIs where basic productivity features like this are never implemented, which in turn has lead to a generation of designers and developers who have no idea that they exist. And that's how we end up with modern Microsoft Windows as an example, which fails to provide a baseline level of efficiency across much of its newer controls.

@jscholes agree with James here. I have literally, no exageration, declined a quite prestigious job offer because they used google as their office productivity solution. And when I told that story to one of the most well known accessibility consultants in the UK, his comment was, "yep we've seen loads of people do that and they're right to, because access isn't there."

@miki @bermudianbrit @jscholes If you don’t use jaws with Microsoft Office, you’re asking for pain. Unfortunate, but that’s reality.