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One Week: No Mouse, Just Keyboard
jfruhlinger writes "Anyone in tech has heard from grousing old-timers who believe the GUI was the beginning of the end of civilization and that EMacs keyboard shortcuts are all the interface anyone should need. But can someone use a modern consumer OS without laying hands on a mouse? Kevin Purdy gave it a week-long try."
If you aren't on friendly terms with your mouse I would recommend the conkeror web browser. This has saved me quite some hazzle in situations where I either don't have a mouse (my TV computer) or when the mouse is awkward to use (my laptop with a substandard trackpad).
For those who don't know, conkeror is a web browser based on xulrunner which is designed to be used in an effective manner without a mouse. If you happen to like emacs, you'll probably feel right at home since the keybindings (by default) are inspired by emacs. If you are not familiar with emacs you will probably need some more time to get used to conkeror. However, since conkeror allows you to use a mouse as well if you want to you can adapt to the browser without feeling too handicapped.
If this seems interesting you can find more information about conkeror at http://conkeror.org/.
Windows is actually mostly OK w/o mouse. Most MSFT applications are quite keyboard friendly. Ditto Mac OS X. The OSs give impression that they were at least somehow tested for the occasional mouse failure. (Safari with keyboard only is very functional.)
Can't say the same for the modern Linuxes, Ubuntu 11.04 in particular (IIRC previous versions, based on GNOME 2.x are not better). Recently my trackball dyed and I had to get around with only keyboard. It was abysmal. Essentially, it went like Alt-F2, xterm, sync, etc, shutdown -h how. From GUI, trying to eject the USB drive properly without the mouse to me proved to be impossible.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Winkey-R, logoff /s /t 0 /r /t 0
Winkey-R, shutdown
Winkey-R, shutdown
If you are using Firefox, try the Pentadactyl nightly or Vimperator.
I liked the Amiga's solution: Holding down one of the Amiga keyboard buttons turned the cursor keys into a virtual mouse.
In Linux you can press SHIFT + NUMLOCK.
This toggles numpad-keys-as-virtual-mouse behaviour.
If I clone myself, can I call it a thread?
If a girl winks to us, can I call it a race condition?
[winkey] [right arrow] selects the shutdown button
Who still wants a keyboard with a numpad?
Every scientist, engineer, businessperson, or individual who thinks quantitatively and likes to do math in real life.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)