New Standard Keyboard

An anonymous reader writes "There are two keyboard standards today - QWERTY and DVORAK. QWERTY, the one we usually have, was used on the first commercially produced typewriter in 1873. Ironically, QWERTY was actually designed to slow down the typist to prevent jamming the keys, and we've been stuck with that layout since. New Standard Keyboards offers new "alphabetical" keyboard. This keyboard has just 53-keys (instead of 101) and offers user-friendly benefits and quick data entry."

Comments

What is this, PR-Newswire-Blog?

[SuperBanana]

Why does the "Tech-Blog" have no author and read exactly like a corporate press release, trying to cram down my throat why I NEED this keyboard?

It's probably some of the most blatant advertising copy I've read in quite a while. At least have some subtlety to get your product "reviewed" by one of the tech magazines or something...

No thanks

[Skidge]

From the article: After 130 years of typing the same way the keyboard has finally grown up.

Alphabetizing the keys and giving it a garish Fisher-Price color scheme does not make a keyboard grown up. One of the benefits of a QWERTY keyboard is that a good deal of typing is done with keystrokes alternating between the hands, speeding things up quite a bit. Alphabetical keys may make it easier for "hunt and peck typists as well as senior citizens who have never had a computer because they are challenged by the difficult basic keyboard," but it is far from becoming a standard, since the layout is very inefficient for a touch typist.

This article really reads like a marketing press release.

Keyboard layout not slowing me down.

[shitdrummer]

I find it's not the keyboard layout that slows me down, but rather the speed of my fingers. I can type pretty fast, but until someone comes up with a keyboard layout that includes multiple letter keys (e.g. qu, the, to etc) then I can't see how I would be able to type any faster.

Even number entry is very quick and easy. I just can't see how a new keyboard layout would change typing speed dramatically.

Shitdrummer.

Re:Horrible, just horrible

[quacking duck]

But for some unfathomable reason the AT keyboard standard has transposed the top and bottom rows...

Unfathomable? Take one look at a calculator and it instantly becomes obvious. I can't say for certain since it predates my time, but I'll bet tape calculators used by accountants existed for some time before the numeric keypad was standard on keyboards.

Once that happened, it was far more logical to model the keypad after the calculator pad, since you're more likely to be punching in numbers in a spreadsheet, than punching in phone numbers into the computer.

wrong

[bani]

studies show neither dvorak nor qwerty have an advantage. in fact they show almost any random arrangement of keys appears to work equally well.

Re:wrong

[EnderWigginsXenocide]

I beg to differ, ever try using shortcuts on anything other than a QWERTY? A BIG problem with switching to Dvorak is most common keyboard shortcuts aren't convenient. Imagine stretching your fingers over the keyboard to do a Ctrl-C Ctrl-V (or Cmd-C Cmd-V for those folks using MACs). Most shortcuts are not remapable and were coded with QWERTY in mind. They would not make sense on a keyboard layout that is radically different from QWERTY.

Re:wrong

[jonadab]

The problem with Dvorak is that it makes the same mistakes as QWERTY.

Fundamentally, how you arrange the letters -- assuming you use some logical
arrangement that makes a bit of sense -- is not the only thing that matters.
QWERTY (in order to keep typewriters from jamming) arranges them so that it's
statistically less likely for adjascent letters to occur on the same finger
and more likely for them to occur on opposite hands. This does speed up
typing somewhat over, say, an alphabetical layout (once you are comfortably
familiar with the layout you are using, of course). Dvorak instead goes out
of its way to put the letters that are most frequently used in English on
the keys that are easiest to hit. This too speeds up typing somewhat over
an alphabetical layout.

But they both have serious flaws, and it's not in how they lay out the letters.
It's in how they handle the other keys, which they do virtually the same way.
The numbers across the top are okay, and the spacebar is okay -- well, the
spacebar would be okay if it didn't waste one whole thumb. The thumb is
unique among the hand's fingers in that it can easily operate independently
from the other fingers. This makes it ideal for the spacebar, because space
is statistically more likely than any other character to be typed right
before or right after any other character. However, the thumb is *also*
ideal for a bucky key, the most important being shift, for a similar reason:
you can hold a key down with the thumb, and all your other fingers can still
hit any key they could hit before. Try that with the shift key where it is
now: it doesn't work, which is the main reason we have two shift keys,
which is wasteful and makes the layout larger than it needs to be. A second
thumb bar for shift would be much more efficient, in terms of typing speed,
and as an added bonus it reduces by one the number of keys needed. *Plus*,
it substantially reduces the frequency with which you hyperextend your pinky.
If your pinkies hurt after a long bout of typing, this is the answer.

There are other mistakes both layouts make. Ctrl is similarly poorly
positioned and should definitely be put where it's easier to hit. On the
other hand, the window key is in a bad place. It's effect is much more
drastic than ctrl, in that it takes keyboard focus completely away from the
application or window that had it and thoroughly disrupts whatever was being
done, so it should be out of the way more. Where the traditional layouts
have put it, it gets hit mostly by mistake and becomes an annoyance -- quite
needlessly, because there are plenty of out of the way places where it could
be put such that it would not be hit by mistake while the user is typing.
Right next to Print Screen, for example, would be a great place for it.

I could go on and on, but basically it comes down to this: QWERTY and Dvorak
both took great care when arranging the letters, and it shows: they're both
pretty decent arrangements for that (for different reasons). But they appear
to have put no thought whatsoever into the arrangment of the other keys
(except the spacebar), and that shows too: the arrangement of the other
keys *sucks* on these layouts. That is where the next round of improvements
needs to be made.

I'd start by putting shift and ctrl below the spacebar, where they can be
hit or held with the left and right thumb, respectively, with no impact on
where the other fingers can be. (This makes *one* combination hard --
Shift-Ctrl-Space -- but that's a rather unusual combination, and it makes
every other shift and ctrl combination much faster and easier. Care would
have to be taken so that normal hitting of the spacebar with either thumb
would not hit these keys by mistake, but that's easily possible if a gap
the size of a single key is left between them and the spacebar.) Then I'd
proceed by putting as much thought into the placement of every other key
as was put into the placement of the letters.

Re:Ironically, that story isn't true

[GreyWolf3000]

Much of the arguments about dvorak versus qwerty have to do with typing speed--as a dvorak user, I must contend that the greatest advantage is that my fingers don't hurt after 30 minutes of solid typing.

Crap!

[erikharrison]

I can't get to the article, but an alphabetic keyboard is just plain dumb.

1) The QWERTY keyboard is established tech
2) I see no empirical evidence that alphabetic is easier to learn or use
3) Alphabetic keyboards overwork one area of the keyboard
4) It would be difficult, if not impossible, to arrange keys to allow alternating of hands, which speeds typing.

Can anyone list any real reason that this is better? Other than the reduced number of keys, of course.

Re:Ironically, that story isn't true

[PaulBu]

There are many studies comparing wpm speeds of people proficient in both Qwerty and Dvorak that show the clear advantage of the latter.

Sorry, did not have time to read through all three linked articles, but did read the Reason one (due to the fact that I do trust the sourse) and one of its main punches was the UN-SCIENTIFIC ways those studies were conducted. And, unfortunately, in your comment you do show the same attitude of referencing "numerous studies" without considering what could go wrong with them.

Think about it in programmer's terms: ok, there is
this language called, say, "BigBigSea" which noone spends proper time to learn, but most everyone knows a bit and can handle (some can get really good at it). And then there is this new language called "Tea", and you did learn it, one of the early adopters... Would not you swear that since you've learned it your productivity increased 10-fold? Even when people would try to put a bit of a study together, you would sub-consciously give your old skill a disadvantage to provide advantage to your new skill, which can move you up in the food chain?

Paul B.