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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."
I had an adviser who was blind, the only was he could access his computer was a combination screen reader + keyboard. I cannot imagine the number of things he is cut-off from due to a lack of support for keyboards.
One of our students is blind and he doesn't use a mouse on his computer as it really wouldn't be so useful. He's got a keyboard, a braille output device, and screen reading software. He moves about the system (Windows XP) using only the keyboard. It works, it is just slower than using a mouse.
I've operated Windows systems without mice occasionally because there was some problem, and again, works just fine. Even though I do it rarely, I can still do it just fine.
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 FAR better than Linux in the run-the-GUI-with-keyboard-only department. Sure, Linux has a better console environment, but these keyboard jockeys utterly failed at keyboard jockeying their graphical programs.
I liked the Amiga's solution: Holding down one of the Amiga keyboard buttons turned the cursor keys into a virtual mouse, with Enter or Space or something representing the mouse buttons. A very simple solution when some program didn't have a keyboard shortcut and it wasn't worth grabbing the rodent.
On Win7, how the F*** do you log off, shutdown, or restart without a mouse?
On XP, it was {CTRL+ESC|WinKey}, U, {L|R|S}
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
A worse case: on n900, a device with a keyboard, Nokia in their infinite wisdom decided that to set an alarm you need to swipe a number of times to scroll to the hour and minute you want.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
For many folks it's a more than an entertaining jaunt into the wild west of accessibility, it's a way of life.
In soviet linux the keyboard is the mouse:
http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/movecursor.html
Here you have keyboard commands that millions of people have memorized
certainly not millions.
thousands for sure.
maybe 10s of thousands.
why the hell did they change it?
Because opening the start menu puts you in the search bar. Pressing "U" in the search bar puts a U in the search bar. It can't really be used for a hotkey unless nobody is allowed to search for things that start with 'u'.
And for what its worth, putting search in the start bar was a GOOD thing. I rarely ever have to go digging through the start menu hierarchy any more.
Search is better than the run dialog as well because it works for documents, as well.
So why they hell did they change it? Because they made it better, and millions of users (this time actual millions) benefitted.
It's almost as if Microsoft doesn't give a damn about their customers
Or maybe its you that doesn't? Because having everyone else have to push an extra key to get the search box just so people like you could still press U instead of right-arrow would be asinine.
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?
A WM isn't the whole story. You could end up still fighting the GUI toolkit all the way down if the application isn't built with foresight. Even something as simple as bad tab order between fields.
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I did this from time to time (lets just say in the lab i find it enough if every oscilloscope or auxiliary control computer has a keyboard flying around without a mandatory mouse.
The gnome desktop was hard to navigate, Windows for sure possible and more consistent across applications.
The mouse is useful to select windows, do edge-scroll between virtual desktops and select text regions. (fvwm2, obviously)
Other than that, I use it for gaming and that is it.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
It's also possible to use a computer soully with a refreshable braille display device, though it gets aggrivating, and there's no way in hell I'd do it for a week.
On the Linux side of things, the accessibility is far worse than in Windows, but Gnome provides a lot of the same types of keyboard navigation mechanisms as Windows (Orca doesn't work on KDE, sadly).
You must not have full keyboard navigation turned on.
Control-F7, or turn it on in the System Preferences pane.
Then you can keyboard navigate virtually everything.
Someone else mentioned the default key for keyboard navigating the menubar, but I have mine customized (also in the Keyboard pref)... since I have the control key where it belongs ("Apple Keyboard" with an ADBUSB converter), it makes things easier to type. ^1 goes to the menubar, ^2 goes to the Dock, ^4 goes to the window toolbar.. I have a few more set up, but mostly the menubar & dock are the ones I use frequently.
Many may already know this, but I thought I would post anyways... if you want to make greater use of gestures while browsing, and use Firefox, see the article here...
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=737074
There are assignable gestures hidden in about:config, and browsing is so much better once you find some customized combinations that you like. Here are the ones that I have altered and find helpful:
Swipe down: new tab
Swipe up: go home
Pinch in: close tab
Pinch out: toggle between full screen/not full screen
Rotate right: reload
Rotate left: undo close tab (for those times you accidentally pinch in)
Name: Mr. Anon E Mouse; SSN: 555-55-5555
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)
Kevin is a wimp. Next week I go 1 week with just a keyboard and mouse. No monitor or computer.
My new laptop has no NUMLOCK key, you insensitive clod!
Yes, seriously. Weird, eh?
Well, yeah. He used a mainstream OS instead of an obscure 1% market share OS. What so strange in that?
How is that possible? "Programs" are always listed in the search results above "Documents," so calc.exe should always come before calculon.jpg.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.