Interactivity with Prompts and Terminal Dashboards

One powerful way to increase usability for users is to integrate interactivity with either prompts or terminal dashboards. Prompts are useful because they create a conversational approach while requesting input. Dashboards are useful because they allow developers to create a graphical interface from ASCII characters. That graphical interface, via a dashboard, can create powerful visual cues to allow users to navigate through different commands.

This chapter will give you examples of how to build user surveys from a series of prompts, and a terminal dashboard – whether learning about the Termdash library, designing the mockup, or implementing it for the audio file CLI.

Interactivity is fun. It’s the more human and empathetic approach to a command-line interface. However, remember to disable interactivity if you are not outputting to a terminal. This chapter will cover the basics of surveys and dive deep into the...