Is It Time To End Our Love Affair With the QWERTY Keyboard?

Master Moose writes "Brisbane-based entrepreneur John Lambie currently has in beta an alternative to what he calls the 'dysfunctional' QWERTY keyboard. Given the way the world is abandoning their keyboards for smartphones he sees now as the perfect time to introduce a new layout. He calls his new keyboard Dextr and believes it is the natural progression from using a number pad to enter text — This is especially so in developing countries where users have not grown up with QWERTYs on thier phones. While he is not the first to ever propose an alternate or alphabetical keyboard — Are we locked into QWERTY for familiarity's sake, or as we shift to smaller, more mobile and new devices, is Mr. Lambie's project coming at the right time?"

Comments

Chorded Keyboards

[LordLucless]

If there's one thing that deserves to make a comeback in this mobile world, it's chorded keyboards. QWERTY sucks on mobile devices because it takes up too much space, especially a physical board. On the other hand, you could probably put enough keys (say, three for each hand) on the back of a mobile device to make them practical physical keyboards without taking up valuable real estate that could be used for the screen.

Re:Amazing how he has the only solution!

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Alternate hands is much, much, much more common on Dvorak than QWERTY. I know this because it was one of my major frustrations with the Dvorak layout--all sorts of things I used to be able to type one-handed, I no longer could. I've used Dvorak every day for almost 10 years now, and I still don't have any one-handed combos unless you count "ls", which I don't, because I never need to type that one-handed, and it uses the mouse hand anyway.

Try it out--just take random words, and see if they're typable one-handed on each layout. Tally the results, stop when you're satisfied.

Actually, screw it, here:

# Words typable with left hand only, Dvorak:
# aspell dump master | grep -E '^[pyaoeuiqjkx]+$' | wc -l
144

# Words typable with right hand only, Dvorak:
aspell dump master | grep -E '^[fgcrldhtnsbmwvz]+$' | wc -l
95

# Words typable with left hand only, QWERTY:
aspell dump master | grep -E '^[qwertasdfgzxcvb]+$' | wc -l
2192

# Words typable with right hand only, QWERTY:
aspell dump master | grep -E '^[yuiophjklnm]+$' | wc -l
292

Re:Inertia

[jawtheshark]

Hey, I used to be a Belgian... I was born in Antwerp. My native language is Flemish. However, isn't saying "The Dutch language, spoken by most Belgians" is quite a bit misleading? Now, there may be more Flemish people than Walloon people, but saying "most Belgians" is really an exaggeration.

Furthermore, to answer your question why "azerty" is the Belgian keyboard, you have to simply look at your own history. When keyboards got in widespread use, Flanders wasn't the economic powerhouse of Belgium. Back then, it was Wallony with it's coal mines. French was the most important language and was used in business as well as by the bourgeoisie. Sure, now Wallony is the poorer part and Flanders the richer part, but that wasn't always so.

Funnily enough, this is exactly on topic because it's pure history and inertia that makes "azerty" the Belgian layout.