Slashdot Mirror
Keyboards are Good; Mouses are Dumb
An anonymous reader writes "Most emacs/vi users know this, but it seems the more I use the mouse, the less output I am making. The keyboard does seem to make much more of a mind-meld than the imprecise mouse. Paul Tyma hits it on the head."
Let the editor wars begin!
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
...when did opinions become news??
All this time I thought that it was more efficient to use the mouse to do everything.
Should have been "from the duhhhhh department"
Next thing you know, Timmy's going to break the news that the 'goto' is bad. And that having a big monitor is better than a small monitor.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
...Counterstrike.
I've tried it. Absolutely impossible.
Before you mod me funny, think, perhaps I was insightfully funny?
Imagine trying to use a CAD program, or even browse a web-forum without a mouse. The mouse still wins in some applications.
(Didn't RTFA).
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You can't take the sky from me...
Use Illustrator and only your keyboard. Go!
I agree completely. The mouse is imprecise and takes too long, requires very good hand/eye coordination. When I have to work on a repetitive task I can either write a macro or have the exact sequence of key-strokes down and do the job much faster.
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The mouse is better when the datasets that you are working on are not localized / scattered around the screen (it's like a cassette tape vs. cd-rom which can quickly access random parts of data without rewinding)
--
ahref=http://unk1911.blogspot.com/http://unk1911.
Can you imagine how many times I would have had to hit 'tab' just to get to this textarea if I only had a keyboard and was using w3m or something? I shudder at the prospect.
"Screw slashdot." -- Linus Torvalds
Seriously, you can get a lot of coding done with that middle mouse button...
Hits it on the head..
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..and apparently knocks it out.
air and light and time and space
They could read http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/Mouse_vs._k eyboard/index.html
for counter arguments. Ofcourse, as the tty/line based input interfaces on *nix, the mouse might do that much for applications such as vim/emacs as they are today.
"making outputs" are dumber ... but... putting a link to tyma.com on Slashdot is dumberer!
I'm impressed how those guys can use the keyboard to rotate around and zoom 3D graphics in realtime, and then apply some amazing pixel-sharpening processing algorithm, all by using keyboard commands.
I've often wondered how they could do this so quickly. Especially when they literally have to type everything they want into a text field on the screen. For example, "search for drivers license of all bad guys within last two days".
I mean, it's a search engine - you don't have to type "search" into the text field!!!
Articles : Mom, I think I'm a Cyborg
Posted by paul on 2005/5/20 9:24:00 (1328 reads)
Keyboards are good. Mouses are dumb.
If I was an alien looking to slowdown the technological advancement of the human race, I would have implanted into their society the things we call the keyboard and the mouse. In fact, the only personal proof I have that this was not the case is if aliens were involved they would have updated the pain by now. Like making the "shift" key a foot pedal or something.
Assuming mailicious aliens weren't involved, this isn't good news. It means we were silly enough to have invented these things ourselves. And then we were silly enough to let them "catch on". And we're silly enough to not personally diverge to a more efficient invention just in case we might later still need to know how to use this one. We humans follow a frighteningly simple herd mentality, God forbid someone jumps off a cliff and yells "free USB fobs!" - we'd be goners.
Truth is however, that with the keyboard at least - we have adapted. Our brains and fingers have optimized this abomination enough to actually get decent output. Obviously, the optimal tool would be one that can output words (actually, getting rid of words and going right to thoughts would be way better, but that is as of yet - out of scope) as fast as we can think them.
Now you might actually have been thinking the opposite. That the mouse is the more precise tool of the two. Well not for me it isn't. For artists and graphic manipulators the mouse is all that and a bag of chips - but for text people like myself, you can keep your seedy mice.
The problem with mice (which the nefarious aliens know all too well) is that its use removes your hand from the keyboard. To open a file in your favorite editor, chances are you grab the mouse, find the pointer with your eyes, move it to "file", click, move it down to "open" (hopefully not having to deal with any of those sub-menus that always seem to unpop off my screen as I'm moving down trying to get a lower entry) and once again click.
The alternative way to do this using just the keyboard (which I'm callously assuming is where your fingers already are) is to hold ALT, press F, let go of both, then hit O (thats as in "oh", not zero).
I have never written down all those operations before now and just looking at the two makes me feel stupid to have every used a mouse to open a file. The ALT-F method is no secret - why the heck don't we use it? ALT-F then O is even two different hands - it really is quite fast. My only explanation is that such keystrokes are cryptic and will require a bout or two of memorization whereas the peachy mouse-menu route hand-holds us right along the way. The mouse cursor gives us a constant bookmark of where our thought process is "I just clicked the file menu - now I'm moving to click open".
There is a nice book by Andy Clark called Natural Born Cyborgs. He makes an interesting observation that we all are already cyborgs (loosely defined as a fusion of humans and technology). His example is that if I am at your house, I may ask you "Do you know what the word poikilotherm means?". If you don't you would say "No, but we can look it up!". Upon consulting your house dictionary or your ubiquitous wifi connection, you can easily do that.
Now similarly, I might ask "Do you know what time it is?". And, at the very instant of me asking, you may not. However, the common response is to raise your wrist to your face and say "Yeah, its 4:30".
You liar. YOU did not know. Your watch knew but took credit for its perpetual temporal omniscience. I always know what time it is cuz dadburnit - I have a watch! In effect, we have extended our concept of self to include our watches - thus in Dr. Clark's claim we are cyborg. (Note that grammatically speaking, that sentence should end in "cyborgs", not "cyborg" - but if you ever watched Star Trek you'd know that cyborgs don't use contractions and often speak of th
I believe Fox News was founded in 1980.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I vote for vi and fully expect to get troll, flamebait, or redundant on this post :)
This is a man who thinks the plural of goose is sheep!
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Keyboards are good. Mouses are dumb.
If I was an alien looking to slowdown the technological advancement of the human race, I would have implanted into their society the things we call the keyboard and the mouse. In fact, the only personal proof I have that this was not the case is if aliens were involved they would have updated the pain by now. Like making the "shift" key a foot pedal or something.
Assuming mailicious aliens weren't involved, this isn't good news. It means we were silly enough to have invented these things ourselves. And then we were silly enough to let them "catch on". And we're silly enough to not personally diverge to a more efficient invention just in case we might later still need to know how to use this one. We humans follow a frighteningly simple herd mentality, God forbid someone jumps off a cliff and yells "free USB fobs!" - we'd be goners.
Truth is however, that with the keyboard at least - we have adapted. Our brains and fingers have optimized this abomination enough to actually get decent output. Obviously, the optimal tool would be one that can output words (actually, getting rid of words and going right to thoughts would be way better, but that is as of yet - out of scope) as fast as we can think them.
Now you might actually have been thinking the opposite. That the mouse is the more precise tool of the two. Well not for me it isn't. For artists and graphic manipulators the mouse is all that and a bag of chips - but for text people like myself, you can keep your seedy mice.
The problem with mice (which the nefarious aliens know all too well) is that its use removes your hand from the keyboard. To open a file in your favorite editor, chances are you grab the mouse, find the pointer with your eyes, move it to "file", click, move it down to "open" (hopefully not having to deal with any of those sub-menus that always seem to unpop off my screen as I'm moving down trying to get a lower entry) and once again click.
The alternative way to do this using just the keyboard (which I'm callously assuming is where your fingers already are) is to hold ALT, press F, let go of both, then hit O (thats as in "oh", not zero).
I have never written down all those operations before now and just looking at the two makes me feel stupid to have every used a mouse to open a file. The ALT-F method is no secret - why the heck don't we use it? ALT-F then O is even two different hands - it really is quite fast. My only explanation is that such keystrokes are cryptic and will require a bout or two of memorization whereas the peachy mouse-menu route hand-holds us right along the way. The mouse cursor gives us a constant bookmark of where our thought process is "I just clicked the file menu - now I'm moving to click open".
There is a nice book by Andy Clark called Natural Born Cyborgs. He makes an interesting observation that we all are already cyborgs (loosely defined as a fusion of humans and technology). His example is that if I am at your house, I may ask you "Do you know what the word poikilotherm means?". If you don't you would say "No, but we can look it up!". Upon consulting your house dictionary or your ubiquitous wifi connection, you can easily do that.
Now similarly, I might ask "Do you know what time it is?". And, at the very instant of me asking, you may not. However, the common response is to raise your wrist to your face and say "Yeah, its 4:30".
You liar. YOU did not know. Your watch knew but took credit for its perpetual temporal omniscience. I always know what time it is cuz dadburnit - I have a watch! In effect, we have extended our concept of self to include our watches - thus in Dr. Clark's claim we are cyborg. (Note that grammatically speaking, that sentence should end in "cyborgs", not "cyborg" - but if you ever watched Star Trek you'd know that cyborgs don't use contractions and often speak of themselves in a hive mentality - thus if we are them, no worries about speaking like them)
I may be creating a tenuous c
And you just confused the smurf out of every Mac zealot going to this story to denounce the heresy of the superiority of the keyboard.
"Screw slashdot." -- Linus Torvalds
On the
10th anniversary of PHP, there i
Google cache
Loose things are easy to lose. You're getting your hair cut. They're going there to see their aunt.
I got a computer to let my mouse surf the 'Net. What am I supposed to tell my mouse when he reads this article, you insensitive clod?
:wq
It must be Windows. It needs half a gig of RAM and a hardware-accelerated graphics card just to run Solitaire.
Try using photoshop without a mouse.
Or maybe, the correct answer here, like in every field, is USE THE PROPER TOOL FOR THE JOB.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
Most people feel that way, and I certainly do as well, but many usability studies have been done and for menu based commands the mouse is faster than arrow keys and drop menus.
If what we are talking about is hot keys, then there is some speed gain, but I have found that for most select cut and paste operations (even in text editors) the mouse/hot key combination seems to be fastest.
Oh and the article is already down.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
He is sinply assuming that all anybody ever does is navigate file menus and some word processing. Choosing icons from a desktop, clicking buttons, things like that are not just eye candy... they matter. And for the things I do, multimedia editing and stuff, the mouse is more than essential. I agree fully with the poster that pointed out this is a thinly veiled 3 emacs news item, and rather terrible news. HEY, GEE GUYS, KEYBOARDS ARE BETTER THAN MICE FOR WORD PROCESSING.
webpage
While I spent much time in Emacs and VI in my younger years, I really can't imagine going back to them. BBEdit and my Logitech MX1000 are just too wonderful together to ever go back.
A mouse is very useful in a text editor that was originally designed to use it. And, of course, the mx1000 kicks all kinds of ridiculous ass.
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
While both have cords, mice lend themselves to seconday use as garottes due to the small size of the mouse, espcially mini USB models for laptops. Keyboards meanwhile have a definite edge as a blunt instrument, able to focus the full power along one edge or to spread the impact across the face of the bottom, or even cause the embedding of key shrapnel.
Other than these thoughts, WTF? is definitely going through my mind as in "WTF is this article for anyhow? Should be kiss Gnome and KDE goodbye and go back to text where we can commune with our keyboards? Should we do everything by mouse in a gui to strike back? Does this article have any point to it?
Now... back to the real uses of keyboards and mice...
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
I do not wish vi to be seen so close to emacs lest someone think they are together. vi wouldn't be caught dead with the likes of emacs... the after prom party doesn't count there had been much drinking
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
Keyboards are good, yes. Mice are good too, that's true. They both are good... for what they're good at :-)
Example: use a word processor, and you can be sure it's worthwhile taking some time learning keyboard shortcuts, since you're already typing text as the main activity in that context. Use a web browser though, and the situation is reversed: you spend a lot more time clicking around in a browser than typing. In this case, switching to the keyboard often is a hindrance more than anything.
The only software I know (well, use) that requires you to use heavily both the mouse and the keyboard is AutoCAD: I spend a lot less time typing acad commands in the keyboard and select object with the mouse than doing everything with the mouse.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
This is pretty unlikely. There are a number of reasons why touch screens and eye input are inaccurate:
1. Your finger has very low resolution. You cannot position something very precisely with a finger on the screen no matter how sensitive the touch screen is.
2. Sticking your finger on the screen obscures your view of the very thing you are trying to point to thus making it harder.
3. Tracking your eyes suffers from a similar accuracy problem. Just try staring at a pixel on the screen and then move your eyes just enough to move exactly one pixel to the right.
The mouse is a good tool for precise positioning on screen because your hand can make very precise movements.
Next time you are undergoing surgery try asking the surgeon to direct the scalpel with his eyes.
John.
Not having to move my hand off the keyboard to do simple mouse tasks is immensely helpful and saves a whole lot of time when I'm coding or otherwise working in text. The sensitivity of the controller is also great for detail work in Photoshop.
I am Leviathant and I approve this message.
They're stupid. As a matter of fact, GUIs are stupid too. So are command lines. If you're a REAL geek, you'll do your computer work with a punch card. If it can't be done with that, well, it must not be worth doing.
Tluin natha Linux xxizzuss uriu olt bwael mon'tun.
when i started into the web back then i had to make a choice: either use the mouse or use the modem due to single COM port on that computer. so i had to surf via keyboard strenghtening my keyboardskillz. im pretty thankful over that nowadays :)
There are billions of web pages on the net. I have one of those. Therefore, my input to output ratio should be something like 10000000000:1
Well, with the current pace of neuroscience's advancement, you'll probably be able to quite precisely move the cursor with your mind in a few years. When this happens, it will be heralded as a huge advancement in the field of Darth Vader simulators...
"Screw slashdot." -- Linus Torvalds
That may be, but it took a few years to reach its stride.
This whole topic is so lame, I don't know where to begin. Must be a slow news day.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
That uses the keyboard almost religously. Tab-Tab-Tab-Space to submit for Slashdot articles too :)
:) I had actually written to Google to have them update Gmail to have some damn keyboard shortcuts, but I'm still waiting on that... :(
An interesting point for those of you who participate in online bulletin boards that use Invision Power or vBulletin... alt-s "submits" for you on almost any page
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
I thought this argument died in the 80's.
jfs
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
"Keyboards are Good; Mouses are Dumb" No comment :)
Because mice would have been the smart way.
Next time you are undergoing surgery try asking the surgeon to direct the scalpel with his eyes.
;)
Oh boy, and lets hope there's either 1. No females in the room and hes hetro, or 2. Females in the room and hes gay or else your gonna end up as ground beef.
So rather than being a general case study with broad applicability, Slashdot has just put on its front page an article that says, "I like keyboards!"
Somehow, "News for one particular nerd" just doesn't have the right ring.
Slow news day, here we come.
Goms demonstrates this. .2 seconds to tap a key. It takes a reletive 1.85 seconds to think about moving to the mouse, locating where to point the mouse, and moving it there.
It takes a reletive
There is an interface that works all this out to be as fast as the command line, easier to use then any current GUI or command line, and is matched up to what humans can do cognativly. It's text editor is Archy, and as a whole it's called The Humane Interface. It is Jef Raskin's design. The man behind the original Macintosh inteface, and pioneered a lot of earlier interface testing.
KDE, Gnome, MS Windows, and OS X take note: Please stop ripping each other off, and start designing from what a user can do. Also, start doing more both theoretical GOMS testing and real world user testing.
Archy link
Is there anything better than clicking through Microsoft ads on Slashdot?
http://www.laughnet.net/archive/compute/winedlin.h tm
:D
And since FreeDOS has an edlin-compatible edlin, it's possible to port it to *nix, use it in an xterm window, and middle-click paste into it. Of course, why one would want to go through something as painfully esoteric as that when vi and vim are so much better is beyond me, but still quite possible.
It must be Windows. It needs half a gig of RAM and a hardware-accelerated graphics card just to run Solitaire.
Let me lay it out for you nice and simple. If you choose to use tools that work best with a keyboard then the keyboard will be most efficient. If your tool works better with mouse input then a mouse will be more effiecient.
Try using a keyboard exclusively with Photoshop. Oops!
The tool you use dictates the hand action.
Using the best knowledge of today to create the problems of tomorrow.
You can think about it like this:
When you use a keyboard you have a number of keys + 10 fingers (most people). This allows for:
1) lots of "parallelization" (as you are hitting A with your left pinky, your right index finger is hovering right above H, your brain is already lining up the other fingers, and so on)
2) multi-finger/multi-key -> multi-function combinations
On the other hand, when you have a mouse, you cannot type (most of the work is really typing), you have to make a roughly 10 inch lateral move every time you want to do something with the mouse, and your functionality is limited: you have but 3-4 keys to press at the most.
Simpy
What's all this mouse/keyboard stuff? I simply think what I want these machines to do and it does it. So much for "right click" this and "alt" that.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Yeah. Let's switch them to x86 first....
I was quoted out of context in my autobiography...
is MICE ... If you're going to criticize something, at least get the name right....
and THEN complain about them. Geesh. Get it straight!
TFA only uses typing as the example of interacting with the computer, in this case, with text editors and using the keyboard shortcut instead of using the mouse and clicking on File-Save. His article works great in this sense, because the keyboard is naturally the most effective tool for the task of typing.
However, it takes little to no tweaking of his "Cyborg" argument to say that mice are superior when using CAD and playing most computer games. After a certain duration at any of these activities, the mouse simply becomes an extension of the human body, and little to no thought is required for our brains to act immediately to what we want to do on the computer, be it dodging a rocket or designing an object.
Keyboards and mice are not inherently dumb or smart, each is simply more adept at different tasks.
Most input from human to computer is digital - selecting from a menu of items; selecting a particular window; clicking OK; entering text, etc.
Some input is analog - like drawing a picture. Some is analog but maybe gratuitously so - like dragging or resizing a window.
Mice are great for analog input, and not so great for digital.
So why are mice used so much? Because it is easy to train primates to whack the right paddles to perform certain well-defined tasks. Not because such an interface is most efficient for an adept user.
It is true that Windows has a hideous alternate digital input method using tab and enter. That's equivalent to unary.
It is not clear to me that *any* current keyboard input convention is as efficient as it might be. Certainly not Emacs, which makes you escape the ordinary thing you do (navigating) in order to facilitate something you do less often (inserting stuff at a new place).
All these ergonomic issues are amenable to evaluation by experiment, but the easy-to-implement experiments all involve short learning periods and previously unexposed subjects. Or, worse still, subjects who have already been exposed to a particular way of doing things. Such naive experiments will tend always to support "use a mouse, just like Windows."
We're comparing shovels to screwdrivers here, folks.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
You know, I think he might be on to something. When I click on the link in the article with my mouse, nothing happens!
I read Usenet for the articles.
... the plural of mouse was mice. ;-)
Crazy Cheap Domain Hosting!
To use that mouse...it doesn't matter what for really, but anything that will allow him a free moment to realize that "mice" is the correct word might have saved him the need to post a "news" article about something 99% of Slashdot readers probably don't care about ;).
:)
Using keyboard = not thinking
The mouse allows competent computer use without knowledge of esoteric keystroke combinations. An expert will always be faster with a keyboard, so why even argue that point?
A novice will close the efficiency gap more quickly with a mouse than a keyboard. It's getting them to move from the mouse (aka training wheels) completely to the keyboard that's difficult.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
My Logitech MX-1000 laser mouse disagrees.
MadOgre.com
This has been driving me nuts, off and on, for the last month or so: I remember reading an explanation of why one mouse move-click was equivalent to eighteen keystrokes from an experienced typist. It made impressive sense to me, and encouraged me to learn keyboard shortcuts even for most GUI applications.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Yeah, because that's all we do when we use the computer... search around menus and look for commands... Did you also find that Etch-a-Sketch an was awesome art tool and artists who work with paint brushes are "dummies"?
UNIX: A computer user is defined as a programmer. WINDOWS: A computer user is defined as a consumer.
I just use the mouse to "Insert Symbol" select the letter out of the table, and click away. keyboards are useless.
Its quicker to type in a command than to look thru a maze of menus. Isn't it? I do cad work all day and it couldn't be done faster than with a keyboard only. When it comes to moving around the system. The mouse is useless. If you look back at when companys went from Dos to windos they took a performance hit because a mouse is no where as fast as typing in the command that you need because they are not wasting time looking thru a ton of menus and pulldowns.
I mut have read that blurb like 3 times, and then I was only barely able to glean the gist of the story.
Then again, this might be a symptom of caffeine depletion, rathern than bad writing.
VOTE!
over Firefox to navigate the web?
Yeah I can see it now, he's in his dark office. The mouse is 2 meter away, unplugged in a cardboard box whispering to Paul, chattering with him
Mouse: plug me...... use me..... rub me"
Paul: be quiet! I don't need you anymore!
Mouse: Or do you?.... Mouahahahhauahauhauhauahauhaa
Paul: [DarthVaderMode] NNNNNNIIIIIIIOOOOOOOOOOO
No, out of the n00bs to the computer world who'd be confused by /.'s URL.
/.'s URL; who'd be confused by any URL.
no, the heck with
AC's modded -6. I don't see you, I don't mod you, anything you say is lost. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
"Hi. Here is an essay based entirely on personal anecdotes and conjecture that validates my own personal view, and also places me in an elite category of computer users. Have a nice day."
"To this end (again, I work 99% of the time in text, I fully understand my observations are irrelevant for more graphical professions)"
Not surprisingly, this is a text hacker that's writing this, so that's why he thinks these things.
What's surprising, is I'm finding myself agreeing with someone who uses Emacs.
VI FOREVER! :)
- - - -
KickingDragon
For vi and emacs...yeah, the keyboard is for sure the way to go - that's what it's designed for. On the other hand...it's also a huge barrier to people adopting these system because the mouse is a more natural thing for beginners to grasp.
I recently TA'd a beginner computer course at the university. We did a section on webpages, starting locally with notepad and then moving them to a server using pico. We figured pico was simple enough, and close enough to notepad that they would pick it up easily. But they were all terrified of it because they're not used to it, and they don't find it natural. In the end, they all ended up accepting it, but give them the choice and I'm almost certain they would go for notepad any day of the week.
For that matter, even I would give my right arm for a mouse some days...I've been using vi for a pretty long time now, so I don't even think about what key I need to press anymore...this can actually present a large problem for me, and here's why....
I'm working on a php project where the database was originally designed by someone else. All the table names are totally in caps. Because sql doens't care really about caps vs. no caps, we tend to write all teh sql calls totally in caps to avoid the having to switch. The problem? well, when you hit i, that's insert. When you hit I, that's insert at the start of the line. When you hit the i key before you remember that your caps lock is on, that's me writing at the start of the line and then cursing.
...no two people are not on fire.
not to mention the overhead the os has to use to facilitate the pretty gooouiy interface!!!! As Dr. Smith says, "Oh the pain"!
Hey, I never noticed that my LCD monitor fades out on the text there!
AC's modded -6. I don't see you, I don't mod you, anything you say is lost. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
...then we'll have something to debate.
Ruger
I love watching the newer, never been trained to use a keyboard, AutoCAD drafters struggle to keep up with me. These guys swear that they are fast when we hire em out of ITT or what have you, but when you get em to production it's an entirely different story.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
and thus input directly by firing my neurons in gross motor movement, instead of using the headset interface to communicate telepathically because I hate the fact that Big Uncle is watching.
Does that make it better? Or just different?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This kind of reminds me of WordPerfect 5.1, where you could do everything with one of Alt,Ctrl,Shift, and the function keys. Once you mastered all the functions, or all the common ones, operating in WordPerfect was very quick. I know my highschool had labels on the top of every keyboard that had all the shortcuts there. Made them a lot easier to memorize. You could probably still set up a word processor like this if you took the time, but who wants to do that.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
display -dither -despeckle -gamma 1.8 -sharpen 2 0.5 thisSecretImage.jpg
...and I'm essentially done. Takes less time to type that than opening the damn download program, and the "interface" is just as usable (at least it is to me).
I do that stuff all the time. I stopped using windows altogether about two years ago, every day I still find myself using the GUI less and less. Sure some things are irreplaceable, but for most stuff -- I want to download an image gallery? I can waste five minutes setting up a download in d4x or I can type something like
for ALL in `seq -w firstvar lastvar`;do wget http://somesite/gallery/DSC$ALL.jpg;done
And yes, I DO use my system for video editing and photography work. I still long for Gimp to have the keyboard-ability of the SGI/Wavefront system I learned to use more than a decade ago.
It's really very simple why sticking to the keyboard while editing is much better than half-mouse-half-keyboard editing.
... repeat a few hundred times ...
With a mouse, you're trading off complexity and size for a much thinner signal pipe. Think of the kinds of signals a mouse sends to the computer:
"move up a bit"
"up a bit more"
"left a little"
"up a bit more"
"right a little"
"click"
In terms of real bandwidth, mice use much more than keyboards since the rate of signals being generated is much higher. On the other hand, the amount of differentiation between these signals is low. At most 3 or 4 bits of information is transmitted per logical signal from the mouse (up, down, left, right, b1 down, b1 up, b2 down, b2 up, b3 down, b3 up, scroll down, scroll up).
Secondly, the primary method that humans use for encoding information into these signals is to chain a whole bunch of them together to identify a geometric point in a 2-dimensional plane (the screen). The point's location, however, is not specified in the most efficient representation (which would be to encode the point in terms of combinations of signals where each one augments the previous signals' bitcount with its own), but rather linearly, which is very inefficient with respect to bandwidth. If you want to move over X pixels in a direction, you're going to be sending on the order of X signals, whereas optimally, you should be sending on the order of log(X) signals.
Now, combine this with the fact that humans generally don't identify things by x/y coordinates, and we definitely don't communicate those identifications using linear signals. We much prefer to identify things by pulling logical identifiers from a huge space of well-known identifiers (names). We use context, construct logical categories and subcategories to deal with and communicate information.
Let's inspect how keyboards don't have any of these limitations.
First off, the number of bits per signal in a keyboard is about 7 or 8 (keys, along with chording with CTRL and ALT).
Secondly, we communicate information through keyboards not linearly, but combinatorially. We don't hit the 'a' key 50 times to get to the 50th word that starts with 'a'. Thus, the order of addressing some concept using a keyboard is much closer to O(log(N)) than it is to O(N).
Thirdly, the way in which we use keyboards to identify concepts map much better to the way our mind organizes itself: conceptual tags (in other words: words).
This is why mice suck at dealing with communication of abstract conceptual data, like prose, programming, filesystem traversal, etc.
On the other hand, when dealing with information that is inherently geometrical (images, plots, diagrams), suddenly a mouse becomes a much better tool than keyboards.
Anyway, this whole analysis should make one point very, very clear to the reader:
VI IS BETTER THAN EMACS. NUFF SAID.
-Laxitive
But mouses have four legs.
-Peter
1. Your finger has very low resolution. You cannot position something very precisely with a finger on the screen no matter how sensitive the touch screen is.
I'll tell all the people who have done needlepoint thruout the millenia that they don't exist then.
Just because you can't do it, doesn't mean it can't be done.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
WTF man, I've been using a mac for 5 years now and rarely use the keyboard. And it's gotten better and better as the OS has improved (I only spent a little time in OS9, but OSX has gotten more and more keyboard-nav friendly). Plus, considering you can script the manipulation of ANY user interface item, I'd say there's almost nothing you can't do using the keyboard on a Mac.
Though they are both important, the mouse kills...within a graphic standpoint or a normal user, the mouse is the most stylish, and you always press the correct button on a mac...
Go to the w3.org and put Slashdot.org through the validator.
"Use your words, Honey."
I challenge you to a game of any popular FPS or RTS. You use only a keyboard, while I use a mouse. If you insist, I will even play with only the mouse (as long as it's a 5-button with scroll wheel).
I'll put $10 on me winning.
Do YOU want to hold your hand up at your screen for extended periods of time? Or stare at one tiny spot? HA!
... won't someone think of the porn?
:)
I find it much to hard to tab around and use the arrows keys while indulging. The easy one-handed use of a mouse allows for a more efficient erotic experience
may have been: "Keyboards will always triumph, because mice are dumb." Sorry, had to do it..
Try keyboard-enabling your GUI.
"Keyboards good, mouses bad!"
This is unbelievable. How is this news?
I dunno, I guess being a Mac user (and truly realize that the ergonomics of the Mac key commands are much easier to use) this is known outright. Mac users worth a damn uses key commands as second nature, and for nearly everything. And the article is incorrect in saying that "For artists and graphic manipulators the mouse is all that and a bag of chips - but for text people like myself, you can keep your seedy mice." Every graphic professional I know (admin at design firms, and an old production person) uses key commands as if the mouse didn't exist, accept of course unless you are actually drawing something (Wacom?) or outlining something (Wacom?). That statement is so wrong that I have to take the rest of the article as BS.
Of course key commands are better, faster, easier, no hand-eye coordination gymnastics, etc... Yup, BS AND stupid.
Err... Interesting. This article is really neat. I'm a fan - the wiki isn't that great, but the information and arguments presented by the original Mac designer are much more cool. The only problem I see is that it's possible that computers have gotten faster enough since the source of that wiki that some of the points are mildly invalid. You never know.
My little site.
Now try and play games like CounterStrike without a mouse (let alone using a low grade mouse). You can set your nickname to "P0wn3d m3 pl3@s3"
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
The apple, option(alt) and control keys are used quite a bit in situations where a Windows user would be right-clicking.
I use the keyboard much more frequently when using a Mac than I do with Windows.
Albuquerque PC
*aims... aims.. fires... headshot*
Let's see a keyboard do that.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I gave up on mice years ago and switched over to a trackpoint (IBM makes keyboards with the trackpoint built in). I love it on laptops so I figured I would love it on the desktop. Like this:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/docume
It's great because I don't have to remove my fingers from the keyboard, don't have to find some mouse that has shifted who-knows-where, and with a bit of practice becomes extremely accurate. I also have a mouse attached to it for the normies.
On the down side, I have yet to find an ergonomic versionish keyboard with a trackpoint -- which would be great.
Plus it always takes me a few seconds if I use someone elses keyboard when I want to move the mouse. You can see me just staring at it for a few seconds until I grasp the fact I have to find a mouse to use.
And beware -- some of the trackpoint keyboards are
laptop keyboards with some packaging that doesn't give them that great of feel or depth. Others are full size (I even have an old-white ibm uber-click keyboard with a trackpoint) and work much, much better.
This story convinced me to throw away my mouse until the 64-electrode brainwave controlled beanie hits the shelves at Best Lie
I want to be retired when I grow up.
...what are people who call them mouses?
If you could type with a mouse, it would be a keyboard. A mouse isn't supposed to take the place of the kb, but that's how most people use it. It does a pretty fair selection of functions, enough to satify the needs of *most people who aren't trying to do work on a computer*, ie most of the online US if not the world.
Can't you?
What a bunch of lamerz! L337 types should be able to do eveything they need simply by flicking the toggle switches on the front of their wickedly overclocked, liquid cooled, and pimped-out Altair 8800's, just like me! This message, for example, only took me *three* hours to write and send...try and beat that with your lame "keyboards" and your wimpy "mice." /sarcasm
I hate the fact that a small ball rolls on my table which has nuthin to do with my coding. It takes up space and does nuthin except stare at me while i keep on using my keyboard. Wish graphics and art designing could be done with keyboards!! ;-)
Instead of being creative or expanding on anything, you've stranded yourself in the stone age, writing wasted counterintuitive code to draw a smiley face when three or four mouse clicks would accomplish the same thing.
You attain premature ejaculation in the technical sense, expending yourself before attaining anything for your effort.
This garbage is worse than useless, and actually a detriment to productivity. You contribute nothing. You fail. This is why you will die alone and be completely forgotten.
"This is the weapon of a Hacker. Not as clumsy or random as a mouse; an elegant weapon, from a more.... civilized day."
To Do: 1. Take over world 2. Pick up Milk and Bread on the way home
Why yes! I recently upgraded to one of those spiffy new keyboards with an 'enter' key. Hex keypads are out, I tell you! This is the wave of the future.
Come on mods, it was a joke.
Signature.
Both keyboard and mouse. As it turns out, being able to use a mouse while you're programming is great... when there's zero switch delay.
Sadly the TouchStream company has been bought out... they're now selling on ebay for $500.
A system that does eye-tracking, with a few keys on the keyboard to replace the mouse buttons... as well as another button on the keyboard to toggle the cursor on and off so it doesn't interfere with reading. one could quickly just tap the appropriate button on the keyboard with one hand much as one might, for example, hit the caps lock key or an an arrow key, without interrupting the keyboard session for a moment.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
...with that friggin' one button mouse!
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
Actually, I disagree with both sides here. I think what TFA was trying to get to was that mice are inadequate input devices, with which I agree. The conclusion that keyboards are therefore better is however flawed. As *someone* once said, if aliens find the ruins of earth millions of years from now, they would dig up our laptops and imagine that we had 104 fingers.
Logitech to the rescue. I've been using the MX500 mouse for over three years now. The awesome thing about it is how well positioned its 8 buttons are. Before you run away and cry "I don't like 8 buttons, that's too many!", just listen.
You can assign keystrokes to buttons and I've got the multi-purpose buttons set up like this:
1 - [space]
2 - [ctrl+tab]
3 - [ctrl]
4 - [backspace]
5 - [enter]
6 - [quick switch]
1 through 4 allow for ULTRA-FAST navigation of websites using firefox. Just imagine ctrl-clicking on everything and then ctrl-tabbing through everything and then pressing backspace to back a page and space to page down through the page.
Also, I love GSView and I use space and backspace to navigate that. God, I love this mouse.
I'm also a developer and it's mighty handy to double click, drag and drop, press backspace, or insert spaces, or press enter all from your mouse while you're handling just about everything else on the keyboard. Ctrl-Tab is an awesome multi-purpose button to have as you can use it in any tabbed IDE and SQLQueryAnalyzer. QuickSwitch eliminates my need to alt-tab.
So what's my point? Listen to Confucius, go the middle way. We need more well designed keyboard-mouse combinations like the MX500. And getting some good text recognition wouldn't be half bad either.
Same surface for typing and mousing, gesture input, all trainable and modal for different apps. www.fingerworks.com The Keyboard and the Mouse are both archaic, this is one of the few devices that "feels" innovative and really improves my workflow.
Followed closely by dolphins, then humans.
Info taken from "The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
Statesmen serve to better the country and help the people.
Politicians serve to better themselves and help friends.
I didn't RTFA but
what I want is a touchscreen monitor - point and tap where you would mouse and qwerty for the rest.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
Screw all that and get a Touchstream
Same surface for typing and mousing, gesture input, all trainable and modal for different apps.
http://www.fingerworks.com
The Keyboard and the Mouse are both archaic, this is one of the few devices that "feels" innovative and really improves my workflow.
One example people seem to bring up again and again is using a browser without a mouse is obviously worse.
Why does that have to be so? I don't think that's fundamentally true, I think it's just how browsers have bee built to work with keyboard and mice that make it so.
As it is right now on most pages, I use the kyeboard to scroll. And on a lot of forms the cursor starts on the right place to just start typing, so you are pracitcally all the way there.
All that is left is some refinement. People have brought yup the exmaple of a page full of links. It might seem easier to use the mouse, but what if the browser had a search that would perhaps search just the five lines in the center of the screen for a link. Personally I think that would be faster than wandering over to the mouse and dragging around trying to hit the link.
I know Mozilla has link searches but I am talking about a narrowed sort of search that was in a tighter context to what you were looking at. I actually do think that could be faster and easier than using the mouse.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Awhile ago, I bought a Fingerworks Keyboard. These things use a heat-sensing technology to allow the same surface to detect gestures, button presses, and mousing without any "pushing" required. Contact is all it takes.
It's pretty slick, and it really helps me when I'm doing somethign that requires alot of transitioning from mouse to keyboard. It also adds gesturing to any application, which is pretty damn slick. Gestures can be even faster than keyboard input.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
What a nice opportunity to start a discussion about the one button mouse in a non-Apple topic!
;)
So... is this mouse extra delimiting?
Back in the days of WordPerfect 5.1 for UNIX, we did some research that showed each mouse click was worth 8 keystrokes. At the time, this convinced us even further that people wouldn't move to the new Microsoft 'Windows' since it would be more difficult to use a mouse than to continue to use well-known keystrokes and keyboard shortcuts. ...that mouse thing would never catch on - or so we thought...
Clearly you can do more Office-based (nonCAD/graphics work) faster with a keyboard - but just try to tell Office Worker A and Office Worker B that...
Basically the question of keyboard vs mouse comes down to analog vs. digital. We use a keyboard to type characters because, for a computer, they are digital; there's no ascii code for "C that's looks kinda like a G". We use a mouse to do graphic art because a brush stroke is not a simple line. We use the keyboard to go forward and strafe in a FPS because it's either full-on or not, but a mouse for aiming since rate of rotation is continuously variable.
If I hear one more person tell me how vastly superior a GUI is, or scoff that I would use the command line for ... anything, and sense that it is their fear of the unknown rather than substantive argument of any kind, I'm going to ..., but still, I end up getting hung out to dry by these damn GUI zealots. Like all the Mac people who are addicted to the eye candy.
What's the debate going to be about? :)
Less is more.
I had a long comment about "where and when," but I think this table is a better idea:
Mouse,trackball multi-avatar navigation Tablet Graphics Design/spatial data entry Keyboard All other forms of data entry Gamepad,joystick navigating when you have only one avatar(as in games)
I'd say that a mouse is seldom the right tool for the right job. You can't even really do all the browsing stuff with a mouse, as it often involves some other form of data entry. Further, since clicking is so very primitive in a web environment, the rudimentary clicking that a tablet is capable of makes it just about as good for exactly what mice are used for most (browsing).
It's a hybrid that'll get you by.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
P.S. Sorry about the previous premature post - somehow accidentally hitting CR whilst in the subject field submitted it, and then Slashdot seemed to disappear off the Internet, and then it wouldn't let me post, because I'd posted 11 minutes ago, which was less than 2 minutes!
My wrists are killing me after 15 years in this business. I can't imagine how much worse they're going to get over the next 15.
:-P
I need a brain implant
When Xerox invented the mouse and handed it over to IBM, IBM said something like "Do you want IBM to consider something that is called a mouse?"
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
Here is an extremely quick, and extremely dirty analysis of how much data each method can input.
Ignoring simulatneous key presses (trust me, the number will be enormous even without them), the average workplace typer can achieve 50 wpm (http://www.testedok.com/typingtest.html). At 5 characters per word (same site), that comes to 250 characters per minute, or 4.17 per second. With a set of characters including the alphabet (26), punctuation (11), numbers (10), we have
(26+11+10)^4.17 = 9,389,621 distinct inputs possible per second
The mouse input question is significantly more difficult. One possible approximation of data input is clicking on distinct points on the screen. Just by playing around with a mouse, I believe I can hit any point on a 250x250 grid on the screen each second. I can mark that point with, say, 1 of 3 distinct button presses.
(250*250*3)^1 = 187,500
Keyboard wins by 50 times, apparently.
One can pretty quickly see, though, that no human can possibly generate this much data. Typing words at that rate is using no where near the complete set of possible data, and I can't imagine any useful situation where a person could be click ing on one of 187,500 points every second...
I've met the Queen: the plural - in The Queen's English no less - of a computer mouse is 'mouses'. Fact.
This is why I used to use OctaMED on the Amiga all the time for writing music. Despite it not having the best features and the best MIDI support it was easier to be writing all the music using the keyboard and not touching the mouse.
Compare that to Cubase for example and you are pointing and clicking all the time, pressing the computer keyboard for shortcuts and then moving back to a MIDI keyboard and even a virtual mixer control panel (MIDI slider unit). Much more cumbersome and time consuming which is a shame since Cubase is more powerful.
Of course, that doesn't feed the ego like publishing an article stating the One True Way to use a computer.
Mod this up. It is amazing what a bit of research will reveal. No doubt for common tasks the keyboard is faster, but it quickly breaks down. For the example in the original article of File-Open, while the alt-f-o might be quick (or command-o on a mac), you still will have the problem of selecting the file you want, which will almost certainly be faster with the mouse. I actually find that when using the mac terminal, if I need to open a file not in my current directory, it is almost always faster for me to find a file in the finder and drag it to the terminal window (which conveniently pastes in the full path) than to navigate to the file by keyboard/tab completion. YMMV, but remember that YM is not always the same as YPM (your perceived mileage).
Most exciting phrase in science: not "Eureka!" but "Hmm... That's funny..." -Asimov (abridged for \. limits)
Not exactly so. CADKEY used the function keys to trigger numbered menu items.
Quick strings of F-Key inputs were easy to remember and quite fast when done with a Northgate style "fkeys on the left" keyboard.
As with all UI elements, it's the overall workflow that matters, not specific elements and their attributes.
Blogging because I can...
So apparently you're both equally wrong, or right, as your glass may be... (pl. mice) or (pl. also mouses) (but only wrt a group of computer mice).
It isn't just using the proper tool for the job, switching between the two can kill your productivity faster than anything.
Amen brother! If the alien mentioned abducts me and my desk he's going to count hands needed: "2 for the keyboard + 1 for the mouse, this guy is missing his 3rd hand" he will deduce (he already knows I'm missing my third leg from car pedals).
This fundamental flaw's effect is grately lessened by having multiple ways to do things. In the efford to make things simpler for new users keyboard commands are sometimes neglected, especially in new finctions that didn't evolve from older interfaces who relied more heavily on the keyboard. How can one unmount a usb drive in windows using the keyboard for example? Or why can't I select files based on a mask in windows explorer, while I could in Norton Commander all those years ago? What TFA objects to is the decline of the keyboard's role to "a device for entering text".
Or does he hate them to pieces?
You must think in Russian.
Mice are passe and hard to use, but those logitech marbles are fantastic! A friend talked me into trying one over 6 years ago and I'll never go back to a mouse!
Remember now, that most things in Plan 9, which the above discusses, has for the most parts a textual interface. It's radically different from the (Icon based) GUIs one knows from e.g. Mac which Pike & co. didn't have high regards for..
Keep both hands on the keyboard, and use your foot for the mouse. It works better than you'd think.
Better yet, grow a prehensile tail and use it to control the mouse like the monkey in Dilbert. It's the future of nerd evolution!
I said it back when mice became viable in the 80s, and I'll say it again:
Real men don't use Macs. Mice for for pussies.
(I'll be over here, hiding under this table if anyone needs me.)
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
Until you said "all intensive purposes", you probably meant to say "all intents and purposes".
In any case, I think you have the right idea, only the difference between typing letters and moving along a line is that a line is continuous but characters are discrete. You don't need analog control (a mouse, scroll wheel, etc) to make discrete changes.
WRONG. Mod Parent Down.
CNN was founded in 1980.
Fox News was not launched until October 7, 1996
Seems like the article might be mildly appropiate for general consumption. Someone would say mouse for everything i bet. Hell, if i gave em way to pick letters with the mouse they'd probably do it at work.
;p
However telling nerds that a keyboard works best for doing text stuff seems...ah....well....stupid.
I bet a yoke works best for controlling a flight sim, but i ain't writing an article about it.... unless i get a grant to do so perhaps
Heck that was as stupid for news as the tv stations showing that NOTHING is happening in the Jackson trial at the moment. Sad when nothing=news.
Are mice any smarter than mouses?
:q!
Regardless of what the mouse is used for today, it was invented to make it easy for non techy users to navigate the command and directory structures of the computer. Those of you who modded me down obviously don't know what you are talking about.
I'm reading a book at the moment called "About Face" by the guy that designed VB (don't laugh). Anyway, the simple idioms that are required to use a mouse make using a computer for beginners much easier that it used to be with a keyboard. User's don't want to be effective like programmers do.
:)
Funnily enough, he mentioned these as users' goals:
Don't look stupid
Don't make big mistakes
Get adequate work done
Don't get too bored
Think about that the next time you design an interface and decide which way to go
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
So, opinions on the relative productivity of mice and keyboards that aren't backed up with measurements are worthless.
/combdw
:0s/combinatorial//
-or-
-or (vim only)-
V:s/combinatorial//
I guess today is a passable day to die.
when you think about windows and shortcuts in windows, there are a few
things which could be done better if the user had a say in the matter.
I don't know if there is such a hack but heres what i think would be ideal
from a users perspective.
no 1 tab ordering.
more often than not users work on a subset of widgets within a window
what that subset will be is probably down to the task in hand.
if you could set the tab ordering to suit the work you had in hand.
so the six items out of 30 on a page you use if you could make them the first 6 tab items when needed.
2ndly list boxes user set defaults i spend all day scrolling up and down through multiple options that are usually aranged alphabetically if i could set default values on a page to what i usually require i would be a lot more productive.
user setting of shortcuts to buttons especially for buttons with no shortcut.
finally menus at the top of windows not on the line below. Shouldnt it be possible to hide the title bar and allow users to slam to the top of the screen for a menu instead of overshooting.
finally how about a user assignable copy and paste key hmm maybe caps lock one press to start to copy a block and one press to paste it else where.
how about just letting the function keys be assigned to particular options on a window F1 to F6 could bring in my default values to the items i want to change.
intelligent autocomplete for everything kinda like open office guessing your words for you imagine it for numbers too so when i am entering 5 numbers with the same area code then it would guess the next digit.
windows are only a mechanism to allow an application respond to a widget where the widget is its tab order pretty much unimportant to the application.
could make quite a difference to the users thou.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
CB radio and the WWW have in common that you only have one button to push, and you don't even have to read.
... navigating a web page with a keyboard? *tab* *tab* *tab* *tab* *tab* *tab* *tab* *tab* *return* Yay! I followed a link.
Seriously, mice and keyboards are for different tasks. This is kind of like saying, "gardening is way easier with a shovel than with a pair of tweasers."
Apple-raised interface theorist, Bruce Tognazzini, http://www.asktog.com/ believes (and claims to have tested and proved) that keyboard-based, chording shortcut users engage in a momentary lapse of consciousness in which they recall and then position their hands for the keystroke, and that although they *think* they're faster than a mouse, they're not. /V) result in solid productivity gains. ... delete that word." Or the other half of the joke, where people poke their head over a cubicle wall and shout a command like "format c: yes i am sure".
See his 1991 book "Tog on Interface", where he claims in the 80s Apple performed $50M in tests that showed that people consistently reported believing that keyboarding (using shortcuts, etc.) was faster than mousing, yet the stopwatch consistently showed that mousing was faster than keyboarding.
His explanation for this is that deciding among abstract symbols is a high-level cognitive function, and that this decision is not only boring, but that the user experiences near-amnesia in the approximately two seconds needed to remember the chord keystroke. On the other hand, Tog also argues that two-handed chords (think the handy cut-and-paste CTRL/C
Around page 180, where in fact he discusses Raskin's Cat interface and the decision to use a single dedicated key for operations such as "Find", Tog admits was actually fifty times faster than the Mac's mouse-move.
This reminds me of the old joke about voice interface word processors: "Up, up, up, left, left, left, left, no right, stop, yes, right
there
Want to learn something? Go Google "therbligs".
Curator of the Jefferson Computer Museum http://www.threedee.com/jcm
The keyboard requires the user to spend more time up front learning commands and shortcuts, but once those are learned the keyboard is faster. Mouse moves all that to the GUI making it easier to learn for the average user, with the tradeoff that commands take longer to execute. While power users may lament this, it has made computing much more accessible to the masses, and is probably therefore a worthy tradeoff, in the great scheme of things.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Get a nice new notebook machine with a bad quality touchpad - I haven't encountered a good touchpad yet, so this requirement is easily met.
You'll know all the keyboard shortcuts in no time flat...
Oh well, what the hell...
Oh why oh why did Fingerworks go away. They had the best keyboard on the planet and I was days from buying one when they went bye bye.
The above is not worth reading.
Win-R (even gods have to suffer at the hands of fools sometimes)
X.bat
ff
slash
TAB
CR
Tym
CR
Winner for the most obvious claim ever.
OF COURSE the keyboard is faster than the mouse. Ever see a poweruser look up or set hotkeys for every possible action he ever does? It's because hitting ctrl-s is about 20x faster than moving the mouse to the file menu, hunting to find the right location, clicking, examining the pop-down menu to see if it is the full menu or condensed menu, hunting for the save option, moving down, and clicking it.
Of course, a competent user can do this all fairly quickly, but it's still an operation on the order of 2-3 seconds, versus about a 10th of a second to hit ctrl-s.
When I write code, I never touch the mouse at all. If I do, I know there's something wrong going on, and I look for the shortcut that will let me bypass it.
Actually a good read. He's got a point, mice aren't exactly the best tool for the job. I mean, from a programmer's perspective it doesn't make sense to have anything BUT a keyboard, but he got me thinking...
We're getting closer and closer to 3D window managers, and once they do actually spread, a mouse won't be enough...
We'll need a peripheral that'll be able to control not only distance in 2 dimensions, but also distance in the 3rd, and rotations in all 3 axes!
So what's the idea, you might ask. Well, think about a gamepad like any of the latest gen consoles... I'm not saying something that uses both hands, but we need a mix of keyboard and gamepad to somehow achieve the most productivity.
I like the 105 keyboard layout, at least the QWERTY layout lets programmers access all programming essential characters as well as alphanumeric characters fairly easily and with some logic (that of slowing down typing, for typewriters at the time). I don't want to get rid of something this useful, but There's also the new "holographic style" keyboard I saw somewhere, where the "keyboard" is actually projecting the keyboard layout on a flat surface, and has an optical read on where the letters are.
Now mix that holo-keyboard with a dimensional input, for both hands, and an easily accessible button that allows to switch between both modes.
This would ultimately lead to a control of the computer far more precise and faster than what we have at the moment. Of course, there's also going to be a hybrid mode for FPS players. I have a hard time imagining them switching between modes... they'd get neurastenic pretty quickly.
So I'm wondering when we're going to see things in the style of Final Fantasy... Since MIT has a working prototype of a 2D holographic projector.
Other than that, he's obviously never tried to use a program like Blender, where keyboard AND mouse are required for input. I personally like trackballs better (the finger kind, not the thumb ones, those are just confusing).
Anyway, just my $.02 worth.
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
This entire set of comments is the sort of fruitless discussion that makes me wish we could just mod the original submission as a troll and get it over with.
I figure by 2030 or so my 6-digit UID will be something to brag about.
Executive Summary: The mouse is faster than the keyboard.
Or not.
Here is the article where Tognazzini describes his test. Tognazzini writes:
Note, "cursor keys", not "keyboard".
Never mind the absurdity of reporting the times to four significant digits. He said, again, "cursor keys", not "keyboard". He had the users move the text cursor with the arrow keys alone, from one "|" to the next.
Here's another way to do it, using the keyboard. Got your stopwatch?
?^$?;//s/|/e/gSix seconds, independent of the length of the paragraph or number of changes. (That's ed(1); "ed is the standard text editor".)
Even if you constrain the user to move the cursor to each "|", one by one, the keyboard is faster: for instance, in vi(1), "{/|^[re" and then repeat "n." But why would you make the user do that? That's not just ignoring the utility of the keyboard, but of the computer itself. So the mouse is faster than the arrow keys at performing task X forty-two times? If you use the computer as a fucking computer instead of crippling it to the level of a typewriter, then you don't do it forty-two times; you do it once. Tognazzini's test suffers from Mac System 6 tunnel vision.
It might be argued that automated repetition defeats the true purpose of the test -- that it isn't about replacing "|" with "e" forty-two times, that that isn't a real-world editing task but just a stand-in for forty-two different tasks.
Better for the keyboard! A keyboard does have keys other than arrow keys -- it has keys that bear the very same characters that appear in text. There is an obvious correspondence between a character on the keyboard and a character in the document, one about as "intuitive" as you can get. This lets the user press the keys to locate the corresponding character in the document, either individually, or sequentially to magically form composites we call "words" that have meaning within the user's task.
Using the keyboard, the user can have the computer find the correct location, rather than being forced to do it himself, visually, with the possibility of error. What if Tognazzini's test had not involved finding the vertical bars, which are visually distinctive in text, but, say, replacing "blue" with "green" throughout a ten-page document? How many instances would have been missed? Do you want to cut the blue wire, or the green one? Are you sure?
(Oh, I'm sorry. Did I say "|" was visually distinctive? Here you are, user: take your mouse and change every "|" in this Helvetica paragraph. Don't touch any "I" or "l" or "1", though.)
The mouse ignores the semantic content of the characters and symbols, words and keywords, blocks and sentences.... It even ignores the symbols themselves; it wanders haphazardly over a picture of the document (a static picture, if you're lucky; ever try using a mouse to select something that doesn't hold still because the window is being written to?)
Revised Executive Summary: The mouse is faster than the keyboard that has nothing but four arrow keys, when errors don't matter.
The mouse was invented as a visual user-interface tool for a new sort of visual GUI in computers. You're clearly confusing using a mouse for operating system functionalities and using it for application functionalities. I doubt that the original creators of the mouse cared as much about interfacing with the underlying operating system as they did about giving users a new way to interact with never-before-seen visual applications that a computer would be used for. And, thanks to their foresight, that's exactly why most of us enjoy this tool.
UNIX: A computer user is defined as a programmer. WINDOWS: A computer user is defined as a consumer.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
As someone who hasn't had the time to actually learn a modern programming language, Apple's new Automator makes it very easy for me to make simple programs (scripts/macros) without even touching the keyboard except when I have to type in the name of the .. uhm.. automatron .. when saving it. It's certainly much more productive for me currently than having to sit down and figure out AppleScript.
For word processing I tend to prefer a keyboard though...
Against the grain
-Alfred North Whitehead
Using short keyboard sequences gives you lots of operations that can easily become unconscious.
If you look at the 1st filmed demo of a mouse in action, all they are talking about is choosing commands from menus. As a rabid Unreal Tournament player, I am very fond of my mouse, but I do not believe the creator saw his invention being used to fire three rockets in a tight corkscrew pattern.
I used to use a mouse for the Gimp, Inkscape, or whatever; then recently I got a tablet PC with a Wacom tablet built in; it's amazing. It's not the same as paper; it's better in some ways, and worse in others, but it's much nicer than a mouse.
OK, so mice suck as an input device to our computers. The question then is: When do we get the cool screens where you can move stuff around, zoom in/out, etc. all "on screen" like Tom Cruise did in Minority Report? I know that would certainly improve MY productivity at work. (I usually have several spreadsheets, databases, and documents open all at once, and FREQUENTLY am jumping back and forth between many of them.)
Or, you could get Dasher and get rid of your keyboard.
what sig?
I'd much rather be a modern guy and use elinks instead of lynx.
Ah ha! But if you were using Firefox (like any self-respecting Slashdotter) you would know that your browser will take you directly to a link simply by typing the first few letters of the link text. Read all about it.
Granted, many sites implement links as images which brings us right back to square one, but there are enough situations in which the Find As You Type feature works that it's worthwhile to know about.
You have complete control, from a crawl to a full run. You are not just moving or still. Essential for games like Splinter Cell, Metal Gear, etc.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
There was no mention of the word "backspace" in that article.
71% of /. readers say that 87% of /. "news" is not news.
Just yesterday I spent a whole day learning how to use a new windows version of an accounting report generation program which is a module in the most popular client accounting app in Australia for public accountants. And there are whole sections of the program where there are NO keyboard commands available only icons which are impossible to get to without the mouse. [except AltF4]. And its not a graphics intensive program but there is a lot of text input needed in many areas. Even the company trainer expressed frustration at the lack of keyboard navigation.
This brilliant organization also has a program for pension funds that is even worse. It's got things like drop down boxes where on one screen the up/down arrows move you through the list and on the next its the right/left arrows. They have one particular screen where a lot of info is input and they trumpet the usability and say you can keyboard enter all the particular screen and in fact you can move from field to field using the tab or the enter button but only as far as the second hidden field in the middle of the form where enter just doesn't work and tab is the only thing that will get you back to the screen [except a mouse of course]
Oh and if you do manage to get to the Next button and use the space bar to get to the next screen the focus goes for some godunknown reason to the Back button. If you're silly enough to tab forward to the top of the page the client details in the top part of the input screen blank out as if you were going to select another client. If you do this you should try to do it on the second of the 5 screens because you just lost all your input so far. You could back tab up the entire screen to get to the start [below the client details section] but am I the oly person who thinks it would make sense to just have focus go to the first blank text input box. This is their implementation of the "Wizard".
They are also the people who consider it easier for the user to remember a 7 digit code number for a listed company investment [such as 744-0141] than a three alpha Stock Exchange code [such as BHP} when selecting accounts to allocate income.
Forgive my rant but I'll say again; its not about the best tool; it's about usable tools. For transaction input and simple selection tasks [a lot of the work that a lot of people do on computers] the mouse is the worst thing invented. It makes lazy programmers.
Maybe the mouse is the modern equivalent of the qwerty keyboard; designed to slow down input so the cpu doesn't jam up or something.
"Mouses" you say ?
And they don't use a lot of hotkeys and find-as-you-type junk. Most of the keyboarding is typing in the equations in their heads, but the occasional use of the mouse sure saves a lot of typing in search phrases trying to get at stuff that is already on screen.
I used to play Descent using just the keboard, and when I would go online I would find that I was doing just as well at 90% of the other people on the server; they would also be amazed when I told them that I was using nothing but a keyboard.
:P
When I started using the WASD + mouse combination for regualar FPS games, though, my speed got much better. I still can't use a mouse for Descent, though
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
I hate the imprecision of MSWindows. Linux is improving and Mac OS X almost has the precision of the old Classic, but they've had to de-tune it for the switchers who get upset when the mouse follows their hand motions too well.
There are limits, though. That's why some drafting-type software let's shift modes and nudge.
I think we need two mice, myself.
Surely you mean the COSMAC Elf.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
You can see that without having to shift and "aim" the mouse you will get slightly more information into the computer. But since when did we listen to peoples' opinions that are less intelligent then Jessica Simpson?
There is a wealth, nay, a crapload, nay, a truck full of craploads of applications that are extremely poorly designed because of the ability to click on things. I don't know how many times I've used a program, let's use the music examples of Finale and ProTools, where there is an enormous amount of mousing that must be done in a very repetitive manner that could very easily have sensible keyboard navigation.
The problem is even worse in games. PC ports of console games are especially guilty of this. Here you have a game with an intuitive, elegant gamepad-based interface, e.g. Knights of the Old Republic. A handful of buttons and a directional wheel or two. The hands never move position. It is then ported to the PC. Lo and behold, look at all these things that can be clicked on! Instead of maintaining quick-access buttons and supporting gamepads, it is forced into mouse-navigated, carpal-tunnel-inducing tedium.
A reduced control set is also perfectly reasonable for even the most unlikely of games. My first exposure to both Sim City and Civilization was on the Super Nintendo. Not only were the games incredibly fun on that system, they also were very elegantly designed and intuitive, perhaps even more so than their native PC counterparts, because they had to make do with a more restrictive interface, and so cut down on the unnecessary fluff.
My point, I suppose, is that in too many applications, the mouse interface is designed first, with keyboard input as a "bonus to make things go quicker." This mentality can lead to worlds of tunnel-clicking tedium under the guise of "easy-to-see functionality," defeating the art of interface design and its effect on a fluid, non-aggravating user experience.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
For all you guys thinking that the keyboard is the way to go: are you still referring to qwerty?
;-)
True, compared to the mouse the keyboard is an insanely precise HCI device, mainly because (once you have learned the dimensions of your specific keyboard) you 'just know' where everything is, and your muscle memory will outperform any positionally non-absolute device (mouse/trackpoint/touchpad/joystick).
But don't think that's as good as it gets.
Even for the much-celebrated keyboard, improvements are possible. Case in point: the actual layout of the keys. Yes, I am a qwerty-to-Dvorak convert, and let me tell you it's an improvement. Granted, a few key combos (such as Ctrl-ZXCV) are blasted from a nice row to all over the keyboard (but for historic reasons personally I prefer the "Ctl-Insert" style anyway, in spite of my Macintosh heritage).
Typing plain text (such as this) is not only faster, it is noticeably more comfortable. Plus, as a nerd/geek I gotta appreciate the amount of exercise it saves me, even if it's just af the ten-finger variety.
Compare for yourself:
Dvorak and qwerty layouts side-by-side
This post is two-thirds of the finger movement in Dvorak, with more than 61% of all hits on the home row, compared to just some 30% using qwerty.
"Good news, everyone!"
it seems the more I use the mouse, the less output I am making
Not at all - using my mouse extensively, I spent last night making a large pile of severed limbs, shrapnel and assorted body parts, both human and alien. Yay UT2K4!
It's Mice, not mouses.
I installed the mouse-gestures plugin for firefox, and after learning the most usefull moves, I wouldn't want to browse without it anymore. You have the advantages of navigating with the mouse (browsing with keyboard, bah...) but you don't need to aim for all the tiny buttons on top for reloading, closing tabs, going back and forward... So navigation is now for a great deal intuitive, you need to find the exact location of the pointer only when you really need to click something (still outwins pressing tab 37 times) and also the pointer stays in the center region of the browser, so "mouse-distance" travelled goes down tremendously (can never hurt against repetitive stress disorder and such...)
int main(void) {while(1) fork(); return 0;}
The best way to look at is this: The keyboard is best for discreet actions (eg. starting any sort of process), and the mouse for analog (yes I know it's not truly analog, but it is analog in how the user perceives it's use), eg. drawing lines, controlling movement, etc.
The problem arises when the mouse is used for discreet actions, like pushing buttons and selecting menu options and what not, or when the keyboard is used to draw lines and control a plane's flight.
It's not any more complicated than this folks. End of discussion.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Anyone who has spent the formative years of their life sitting in front of a computer will no doubt agree that the keyboard is the master tool for interacting with most well designed programs. But in these days of programs being designed for use by everyone - including technophobes - who can argue that it doesnt benefit the greater good?
... to the opinions of people who use words like 'mouses' ?
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
Use vi and only the mouse. Go!
And think before you post, stupid!!
> Yeah, I mean pure text/command line/keyboard only is great if you're a programmer. But I need a mouse for doing art/graphics
You can edit SVG in jEdit (yep, it's a text editor)
> much easier than having to tab 30 times till the correct hyperlink is selected in my browser
I find MUCH easier to type "/" and then the link text. i don't have to scroll or look for the link, the browser does it for me. (unless you use IE or other mac crap. stay with mozilla and opera)
As late as the early nineties, many managers were keyboard-phobic. "Besides, that's what we have secretaries for!". IM(never humble)O, they were invented for management, who couldn't find the keys.
mark "I hates meeces to pieces!"
Where did I claim I only use the mouse or only the keyboard? Have you ever tried using Illustrator with only a mouse and no keyboard? Does your keyboard come with an "Oops!" key?
Since no one else has, I feel I should post on behalf of all those poor souls who cut their teeth on CP/M and can't get the WordStar keys out of our heads.
For us, joe will always be the One True Editor.
It's a keyboard, a weapon from a more civilized age. Not as random as a mouse, a true weapon of the Coder.
Or something like that. I'm not enough of a SW fan to remember the exact quote.
-- "This world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel."
AC: of, relating to, or being a mechanism in which data is represented by continuously variable physical quantities
AC: That sounds suspiciously like a mechanical mouse or a joystick.
No. Absolutely wrong. Can't you even read the definition you people keep on pasting? "Data represented by continuously variable physical quantities" is not how a modern DIGITAL mouse works. If the voltage level on the wire were proportional to mouse movement, that would be analog. But instead, the wires send out bursts of bits at a fixed rate which can be decoded as discrete units and combined arithmatically to become DIGITS of a number.
Any physical therapist will tell you how bad standard mouses are. I, unfortunately, suffer a good deal of pain when using one. They may be the best tool for many jobs, but there is no escaping their hazards. Not to offend Apple fans, but I would like Macs a lot better if there were more ways to avoid the mouse for common tasks. In fact, if you would like to suggest tools that let me set up keyboard shortcuts in place of mousing, please do.