

Mousers vs. Keyboardists - whalliburton
http://whydoeseverythingsuck.com/2008/08/mousers-vs-keyboardists.html

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biohacker42
Keyboards aren't just about memory, they are a lot slower then the mouse if
you don't have almost instinctive muscle memory. If you have to think what the
key combo is, use the mouse.

Every so often I'll start thinking that maybe a keyboard + mouse combo is the
fastest most efficient way to go... on Windows.

And then I see a windows developer for whom the keyboard has become an
extension of his hands and he never touches the mouse. It's crushing to see
that kind of speed and power.

The speed and efficiency of the keyboard isn't just a lot faster, it is so
much faster that it changes the way you work.

But it's hard to get there, you have to find the commands, practice them,
practice, practice, and all the while it would be easier to just reach for the
mouse.

And yet I've made it a goal of mine to always get better at using the
keyboard. A little bit a time, I figure I'll have no need for a mouse when I'm
80 or so.

~~~
ptn
_Keyboards aren't just about memory, they are a lot slower then the mouse if
you don't have almost instinctive muscle memory._

Muscle memory is always instinctive, it's hardwired in the human brain.
Everybody can teach his/her muscles to act "on their own" for a task as simple
as this without that much practice. (Remapping your keys in your keyboard
helps a lot for comfort.)

 _But it's hard to get there, you have to find the commands, practice them,
practice, practice, and all the while it would be easier to just reach for the
mouse._

I think the trick is to forget about "practising" and just do it. If the
command is really helpful, you'll end up using a lot anyway, but the mindset
is different (forced practise vs need).

~~~
felideon
_Muscle memory is always instinctive, it's hardwired in the human brain._

Indeed. It's like walking. You don't think you are walking, you just walk.

 _Everybody can teach his/her muscles to act "on their own" for a task as
simple as this without that much practice._

I'm not sure how you can teach one's muscles to act "on their own" without too
much practice. Maybe if one were trained by injection, Matrix style. :)

~~~
stcredzero
I remember when I was jockeying my Dad's Apple II+ in grade school. I got to
typing "catalog" very quickly. So quickly, that I doubt I was conscious of
placing each individual finger.

I wonder if mouse + keyboard input could be augmented by head gestures?
NaturalPoint sells an economic mouse that can be operated by placing a
reflective dot on a pair of glasses or a hat. What if instead of being a
mouse, this could be an entirely alternate input device? You could read head
gestures in the same way that the Wiimote detects different movements. These
gestures would likely become "muscle memory."

~~~
byrneseyeview
One thing that is pretty annoying about GUIs is the fuzzy factor: there are
often a few pixels that _could_ be the button, and _could_ be the background,
but you can't tell which it is for sure -- so they're effectively off limits.
A keyboard doesn't have this issue, so it's a lot easier to turn commands into
reflexes -- your reflexes are less likely to be wrong.

This is also why I switched from T9 to whatever the other alphabet-entering
system is for cell phones: it was just too frustrating not to know exactly
what the output would be if I typed quickly.

------
altano
The difference between keyboard friendliness on OSX and Windows has always
been fascinating to me. On OSX, even being able to tab between buttons in a
modal dialogue is off-by-default. Opening folders in the Finder is cmd+O
instead of just enter. I still have no idea to this day how to access the menu
bar from the keyboard.

Meanwhile on Windows, I spend 99% of my time on the keyboard, since both
Explorer, Visual Studio, and all the other apps I use couldn't possibly be
friendlier to shortcut keys. The consistency gets better with every release as
well.

~~~
bouncingsoul
Maybe helpful info:

With dialog boxes on OS X you tap Return to use the highlighted option and Esc
to select Cancel. (Notice how the keys' left-right position on the keyboard
matches the dialog?)

For the common "Don't Save | Cancel | Save..." dialog you can type Command-D
to choose Don't Save.

To get to the menu bar type Ctrl-F2.

I think OS X definitely directs you toward using the mouse, but I've found
that keyboard shortcuts do exist for most everything.

------
maxklein
The real problem with keyboarding is the TERRIBLE lack of consistency. Apart
from a very few commands, most applications seem to just randomly select
keyboard letters to map to tasks based on the first letter of the english
word. When I switch to a german keyboard, the key stroke commands change
again! I use my apple, and things are different again.

It does not work. A UI has to be consistent, and keyboard commands are
extremely inconsistent. Look at the vim style commands and compare them to the
windows style commands.

And another problem with keyboard commands is that there is no hint. How many
people have gotten stuck in vim because the interface is not acting as
expected?

Using a gui to shut down an App, I look for an X and press it. Using a
keyboard, it could be ctrl+q, ctrl+c, ESC, :q!, Alt+F4, Alt+B (German
Systems), Alt+Q (English Systems) or exit().

It's TERRIBLE user interface design to have so many different ways of
performing the same action on the same operating system.

F1 works because it's always Help. The arrow keys work because they always
mean the same thing. That's how keystroke commands should work: One
combination, one meaning - all the time and everywhere! So when you learn that
stuff, you know it.

I don't want to invest my time in learning app specific shortcuts for
applications that I don't use that often. And that are liable to change
anytime.

The state of keyboard control of software is broken, and has been broken for a
long time.

My suggestion for the fix - an OLED keyboard that switches to "command mode"
when a button is pressed. So the commands are always in the same position with
all apps, all layouts, all languages and stay consistent.

~~~
orib
That's nothing to do with the keyboard and everything to do with bad UI.

I could just as easily come up with a poorly thought out rant about how my
options panel moves from "tools->options" on Windows to "edit->preferences" on
Linux, how tab close buttons are placed wherever the user feels like, how
tooltips are haphazardly added to an app, how sometimes the close button exits
the app, other times it minimizes to the system tray, etc.

A badly designed user interface sucks. There are lots of them out there.

~~~
maxklein
So which of the examples above (with the exit keystroke) is well designed, and
which is not?

~~~
orib
<rhetorical question> So which of the tab button locations is well designed,
and which is not? </rhetorical question>

It doesn't matter _which_ one is used, so long as the application sticks to
the platform conventions, and for the actions that don't have platform
conventions, picks bindings that don't need you to be a finger contortionist.

It doesn't matter if the 'ok' button is to the left or right of the cancel
button, but if a UI designer swaps them around relative to what the platform
normally does, he's just designed the UI poorly. If 'q' exits a command line
app normally, but the developer makes 'esc' exit his app, then you just made a
poorly designed UI.

------
jcromartie
I was working on a project with another programmer, and there was this little
"test" window and an icon that only showed up when you alt-tabbed to our app
(it is a system-tray-only app). I simply assumed that the other guy knew about
it and was going to take it out before release. Well, it stayed there for a
long time, and the release got closer and closer. It finally got entered as a
bug, and I asked the other developer "so you weren't going to remove it?"

He said "I didn't know it was there. I don't really use alt-tab."

------
jond2062
Working in financial models all day in Excel, I can't imagine having to use
the mouse for any more than 10% of my work. Keyboard shortcuts are so much
faster that they basically render a mouse useless.

It takes some getting used to and a bit of practice, but once you get
comfortable with the keyboard, there's no turning back. I really only use the
mouse for casual web browsing and solitaire.

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thomasmallen
If you can't remember keyboard commands, programming idioms, etc. will be a
bear.

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silentbicycle
Where do mouse gestures fit in? It seems like they're in the "remembering lots
of stuff" category (though there is less possible variation to the mouse
signal, it only has so many buttons and relative movement/timing).

------
johnrob
Oddly enough, I find that I have to put my hands on the keyboard to figure out
what a particular emacs command is. My muscle memory has outlasted my 'brain'
memory.

------
edw519
Thanks, Hank, for bringing up a very important topic that we don't talk about
enough.

Interestingly, of all the things that retard adoption of new technologies, I
think that the mouse is still the biggest one.

I have customers with call centers and power users still on green screens and
command lines. The switch to GUI has always been too expensive. When you have
4000 users, the cost of average call times going from 2 to 4 minutes adds up
quickly.

Make no mistake about it, for repetitve tasks, the keyboard is always faster
than the mouse. "Alt" and "Ctrl" commands are cool and geeky, but like Hank
says, who can remember them all?

We need web apps with intuitive keyboard interfaces. Fkeys (they're on every
keyboard) and single letter commands are easily adoptable. (Oh, you mean "C"
brings up the Customer record, cool.)

The ability to do this is as old as javascript. Once we developers take the
GUI pain away from the power users, the big migrations can continue.

~~~
j2d2
_Fkeys (they're on every keyboard) and single letter commands are easily
adoptable._

I dig this one. On my mac, I always set it to let the F keys behave normally.
I hit fn + an F key to change volume, etc.

I map all my f keys in emacs to something useful and save plenty of time
because of it.

------
Hoff
The My Favorite Text Editor debate might change its spots, but it just never
gets old.

------
hs
as expertise goes, keyboard > mouse

------
time_management
I tend to go to the mouse as soon as I have to work with more than one window,
but I think keyboarding wins long-term.

In my opinion, the advantage of keyboarding is not due to its being faster,
but the fact that, once learned, it doesn't break flow. The time lost due to
mousing is trivial, but the compromise to flow is significant, at least for
me. This is why hackers and gamers alike prefer to keyboard.

~~~
Hexstream
"I tend to go to the mouse as soon as I have to work with more than one
window"

The particular window manager you're using might have something to do with
that. I'm looking forward to upgrading to a tiling window manager, myself.
When I'm done procrastinating.

