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Ask Slashdot: Why Is the Caps Lock Key Still So Prominent On Keyboards?

Posted by Soulskill on from the cruise-control-for-cool dept.

Esther Schindler writes: The developers at .io are into tracking things, I guess. In any case, a few weeks back they decided to track team performance in terms of keyboard and mouse activity during the working day. They installed a simple Chrome plugin on every Macbook and collected some statistics. For instance, developers have fewer keypresses than editors and managers—around 4k every day. Managers type more than 23k characters per day. And so on. Some pretty neat statistics.

But the piece that jumped out at me was this: "What's curious—the least popular keys are Capslock and Right Mouse Button. Somewhere around 0.1% of all keypresses together. It's time to make some changes to keyboards." I've been whining about this for years. Why is it that the least-used key on my keyboard is not just in a prominent position, but also bigger than most other keys? I can I invest in a real alternate keyboard with a different layout (my husband's a big fan of the Kinesis keyboards, initially to cope with carpal tunnel). But surely it's time to re-visit the standard key layout? What keys would you eliminate or re-arrange?

9 of 698 comments (clear)

  1. My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards) by shankarunni · · Score: 4, Insightful

    1. CapsLock. Grr.

    2. The numeric keypad on 15" laptops. Why? Why?! Why?!! It causes the rest of the keys to get scrunched up and moved to unnatural positions, and positions the trackpad offset left upto 3 or 4 inches, which makes for a horrible experience for a right-handed typist. The trackpad should ALWAYS be centered.

    3. But please bring back full-size Page Up/Down keys (with maybe a shift action to Begin/End). I'm looking at you, Macbook Pro! Don't run and hide..

    1. Re:My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards) by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's possible to have capslock functionality without giving it its own key. What about Alt-Numlock for that tiny subset of situations where it's necessary?

      Also https://xkcd.com/1172/

      (Yay I posted an XKCD at last! That means I automatically get +6 Insightful!)

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    2. Re:My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards) by darkain · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Pretty much any technical field requires capslock. I'm a software engineer in the automotive field. Tons of code from 3rd party libraries are all caps, as well as the part numbers I deal with in the automotive industry.

      Maybe the reason why capslock is used to little is because... think about it. If my entire post were entirely in caps? Count the number of key strokes. Capslock would be pressed once to enter all-caps mode, and once to leave it. To presses of that key vs countless presses of the letters and a few other formatting symbols. Caps lock shouldn't be counted by the number of key presses any more than scroll lock or number lock. Instead they should be counted by the number of other key presses that are modified while they are activated.

  2. The power button by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hey, I hardly ever press the power button, lets get rid of that one.

    Idiots

    --
    -1 Uncomfortable Truth
    1. Re:The power button by Fortran+IV · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Bingo. The whole point of the Caps Lock key is that you don't have to press it over and over. "...Around 0.1% of all keypresses" is a completely useless measurement. A measurement of how many other keys were pressed while the Caps Lock was on might actually mean something.

      That said, the size and placement of Caps Lock are simply a historical accident. If keyboard manufacturers wanted to halve the size and stick another key left of A, that would be fine with me. (The "context menu" key that's missing from so many keyboards these days would be a great choice.)

      --
      I figure by 2030 or so my 6-digit UID will be something to brag about.
  3. Really? by Dr.+Eggman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "They installed a simple Chrome plugin on every Macbook [...] the least popular keys are Capslock and Right Mouse Button"

    You don't say!

    --
    Demented But Determined.
  4. Where's "Scroll Lock"? by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I can't believe that "Scroll Lock" is used more often than "Caps Lock"

    >> least popular keys are...Right Mouse Button

    I'm guessing their "developers" don't actually use an IDE. Even on my Mac I use a two-button mouse just to get context-sensitive menus.

  5. Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever. by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Alas constants tend to also have a lot of digits in them, so you'd win on the underscores, but lose for the other non-alphas.

    Maybe it's time underscore was its own key anyway...

    --
    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  6. Re: Caps Lock used to power a huge lever. by Tomahawk · · Score: 3, Insightful

    On a UK and Irish layouts, certainly, and likely others too, the # key already has a more prominent space on the home row. For US users, it's Shift-3. For UK and Irish, Shift-3 is the pound symbol (as in £). # ("hash" for us, or "sharp", or "number" -- never "pound" or "octothorp") is a little-finger key located beside the bottom half of the enter key (which has a different shape for us than on US keyboards)

    My home row is
    capslock ASDFGHJKL;'# bottom_of_enter_key
    (the 3 keys after L with shift are :@~ )

    Putting it where caps-lock is now would be counter-productive for all most non-US keyboard users.