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'I Stopped Using a Computer Mouse For a Week and It Was Amazing' (vice.com)
Slashdot reader dmoberhaus writes via Motherboard: Over the course of the next five days, I relied solely on my keyboard to navigate the web and my local hard drive. It was a limited form of digital detox, a way of trying to understand the way people used computers before the computer mouse became widely adopted for commercial machines in the 1980s. If I had to describe the experience of computing without a mouse in a word, I'd say it was fucking fantastic. It took about a day and a half before I had memorized all the shortcuts that I would be using on a regular basis. All the other important shortcuts I wrote down on a notepad I kept on my desk for reference. I also had to do a little set up for certain applications, such as Gmail, which doesn't have many of its most useful shortcuts turned on by default, such as the ability to select all unread messages or the ability to move between messages with only a single keystroke.
By the end of my week without a mouse, many of the shortcuts were already beginning to feel like second nature. I found that they saved me a ton of time, especially on tedious tasks like deleting emails. Indeed, one shortcut evangelist suggests that switching to keyboard shortcuts in Gmail saved him as much as 60 hours per year. If nothing else, it made the experience of using a laptop way less miserable because I didn't have to touch the touchpad. [...] Admittedly, not everything was rosy without a mouse. I haunt a number of forums and found it a little tedious to have to ctrl+f whatever item I wanted to "click" on. Similarly, doing anything that involved image editing in Photoshop was basically impossible. I don't game on my PC, but from what I hear, this would also be quite difficult without a mouse.
By the end of my week without a mouse, many of the shortcuts were already beginning to feel like second nature. I found that they saved me a ton of time, especially on tedious tasks like deleting emails. Indeed, one shortcut evangelist suggests that switching to keyboard shortcuts in Gmail saved him as much as 60 hours per year. If nothing else, it made the experience of using a laptop way less miserable because I didn't have to touch the touchpad. [...] Admittedly, not everything was rosy without a mouse. I haunt a number of forums and found it a little tedious to have to ctrl+f whatever item I wanted to "click" on. Similarly, doing anything that involved image editing in Photoshop was basically impossible. I don't game on my PC, but from what I hear, this would also be quite difficult without a mouse.
Good job, you've made things harder on yourself and decreased your efficiency, and now want to do one of those 'I don't even own a TV' type brags. I typed this comment with one hand, but I didn't write an article about it because no one cares.
The mouse is more intuitive for the person who is unskilled at the software they are using. The keyboard is more efficient for everyone else, sometimes substantially so. It's astonishing how much software intended for repetitive data entry is not designed better around the keyboard.
Why are people so bad at learning to use a product they spend so much money acquiring? Would you buy a car and then signal turns manually because you couldn't be bothered to learn to use the lever that operates the turn signals?
I grew up using computers before they had mouses.
I do think they serve a valuable purpose, chiefly for "random access" style selection and movement, such as in a modelling program, paint program, or other such things where a keyboard isn't the right tool for the job.
However, they are WAY overused by most people. I am always seeing people take actions in a program that are objectively much slower than can be done with a keyboard. Sometimes I feel like they approach 1/10th the speed they could. It's surprising to see this. Use the mouse when the mouse is better, but when it's dramatically slower and requires taking your hands off the keyboard for things that don't require or benefit from that, then don't!
Depends on your tasks. If you limit yourself to simple tasks, they can be accomplished simply.
Some tools require pointing devices. This is a hard requirement, not a superficial one. For instance, I do a significant amount of multimedia work. This would be impossible without a pointing device of some kind. Also, dealing with certain types of multi-tasking between multiple virtual environments would become an absolute pain in the ass.
Also, requiring having a cheat sheet on your desk just to list keyboard shortcuts? This goes to show just how insanely unintuitive they are to begin with. Yeah, programs started with keyboards and some shortcuts are actual shortcuts... But to the person that said they saved 60 hours a week in Gmail, I ask them this plain and simple: WHAT THEY FUCK ARE YOU EVEN DOING THAT TAKES 60 HOURS TO BEGIN WITH!?
A hybrid environment is best. I'm not saying keyboard shortcuts are terrible. I'm just saying they're absolutely terrible from a UX perspective, but used properly are good tools for power users, and power users only.
Congratulations, you've discovered the very reason that GUIs exist in the first place: not everyone is capable of memorizing all those necessary keyboard shortcuts. Memorizing things is my kryptonite. I struggled in those days, and I still struggle in instances where a UI designer fails at his job. Don't you DARE try to rewind the clock for the rest of us... I will discover your kryptonite and leave it under your pillow!
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a way of trying to understand the way people used computers before the computer mouse became widely adopted for commercial machines in the 1980s.
Only user interfaces in those days were designed for keyboard based operation, trying to use only a keyboard today will be a significantly worse experience than it was because most modern applications assume the use of a mouse or touchscreen.
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