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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.
No keyboard next, and hopefully permanently so we don't read about this stupidity. Mouse exists for a reason.
You became a VI user and ditched Emacs?
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>"If I had to describe the experience of computing without a mouse in a word, I'd say it was fucking fantastic."
Well, it is not so fantastic for lots of things. I have used just about every interface- touchscreens, lightpens, digitizer tablets, voice, eye control, alternative keyboards, touchpads, joysticks, trackballs, VR, you name it (and yes, using computers before there were such things a mice). I find a combination of mouse AND keyboard for navigating and control to be the best, over just about any other combination, for the majority of uses. Only one or the only the other, not so much.
In any case, if you like keyboard use, you should try installing Claws as your Email client- it is extremely keyboard friendly (because it is designed that way) and yet works great with a mouse, too. It is nice that there are programs that let you work they way you want to work. https://www.claws-mail.org/
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.
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.
Wrong. Some things are infinitely better with a mouse (the author of the article even says so). Some things are infinitely better with keyboard shortcuts. I'd venture to say that most things are BEST with a healthy combination of the two.
The author is like a guy who has used a hammer as his only tool for his whole life. Suddenly he discover a screwdriver and realizes screws go in so much easier and cleaner than with a hammer, and suddenly says "get the fuck out of here, Mr Hammer" and proceeds living life with a screwdriver as his only tool.
I started on computers before the mouse and back then the popular word processor was Wordstar and it had it's own set of Ctrl- keys for navigation and many functions. Many of the app's of the day and games copied the Wordstar navigation keys and once you learned them you could move around faster than with a mouse. Even when GUI's started appearing many app's the key to working fast was knowing the keyboard commands, it's a lot faster leaving your hands on the keyboard than always having to grab a mouse especially for menu commands. Now all this touch screen stuff and even more time and moving about than even a mouse. Keeping your hands on the keyboard with app's putting keyboard equivalents of menu commands is fast way to work as far as I'm concerned.
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!
First off, the mouse (and touchpad) is overused. As you've discovered, you can interact much more efficiently with a keyboard. The worst possible interaction is having to continuously switch back and forth between input methods. There's a reason for that and I'll explain. I've written on this before (and I've never seen much discussion about it), but I'll go ahead and expound on it.
The mouse is a virtual representation INSIDE the computing environment. You control a virtual construct (the pointer) on the display using a device in our world. Because the representation is virtual, you have to synchronize your brain with the pointer every time you begin using it. That includes when you switch from the keyboard to the mouse. That's because it is a visual representation - you must see the pointer and watch it to control it. This is something subconscious, but each person has developed a "synchronization" pattern or habit for mouse use. It's a natural thing that has to occur to try and improve the inherit inefficiency. Most people will move the mouse pointer in some way to try to locate it visually - spotting a moving object is much more efficient than a static object (plus many programs hide mouse pointer when the user starts typing, and only show it again when it is moved). This synchronization has to happen before you can position the mouse on the widget you want to interact with. I suppose some people use other techniques, like parking the mouse somewhere relative to where they last used it. I notice that I do tend to park the mouse off of the thing I'm typing in automatically. However you will find you move the mouse in some typical way to locate it visually and connect with it.
Because visual processing is one of the most expensive senses that our brain deals with, having to constantly synchronize visually with a mouse pointer is a relatively "expensive" process in terms of the neurons firing to make use of it.
So now the keyboard... the computer keyboard is the exact opposite. It is a physical construct that represents the computer environment in the real world. There is a key labeled "A" that when pressed triggers the letter "A" in the computer environment. Because the keyboard exists in our physical world it is much more natural for us to interact with it - it is "real". We also do a subconscious synchronization every time we go to use the keyboard, however since it is a physical object, we use the sense of touch (and often vision, but peripherally). The great thing is this can occur without having to stare intently at the keyboard. So, if you pay close attention, you will find you do some synchronization pattern every time you go to type. Try it sometime. Take your hands off the keyboard, close your eyes, and go to type something. For me, I feel for the edge of my laptop with the outside edges of my palms (the little finger sides). I also notice I feel for the left side of the spacebar with my left thumb and the left edge of the keyboard with my left little finger. This all happens quickly and without thinking - we just know how our keyboards feel. That is because our brains are wired to interact with spatial objects, and the keyboard is exactly that.
So to sum it up - the mouse is a representation inside the virtual environment of the computer, the keyboard is a physical representation in the real world. We're better interacting with real things because we can apply more of our senses to it and it's something we do naturally.
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You're both wrong. It's the constant switching between using a mouse and using a keyboard for the same task that is the productivity killer. If you're writing a book, and are mostly typing into a word processor, switching between typing and mousing to select text and change formatting is what slows you down. Of course you don't want to use a keyboard for a drawing program: That's what a mouse would be best for.
Same here. I do pretty much everything with keyboard shortcuts, never have to take my hands off the keyboard. This isn't some magic thing, it's just a standard way to use a computer for some.
I don't use a MOUSE I use a POINTING DEVICE.
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> The mouse is more intuitive for the person who is unskilled at the software they are using.
Bullshit.
You are ignoring Context.
Try playing a RTS (Real Time Strategy) or FPS (First Person Shooter) games without a mouse on a desktop computer. In an RTS using the keyboard to move your troops is slow and inefficient compared to a mouse. Likewise in an FPS while you can move your character with WASD aiming with the keyboard is LESS PRECISE. Turning an arbitrary numbers of degrees with a mouse is trivial.
A mouse allows for non-linear spatial manipulation such as aiming or panning.
Text editing is usually more of a linear process so a keyboard is usually far faster in that _context._
> It's astonishing how much software intended for repetitive data entry is not designed better around the keyboard.
That's true. Hotkeys and Shortcut keys have been deprecated for years by clueless designers.
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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"Some people are just bent on making more work for themselves."
Somebody got a keyboard-shortcuts poster for their birthday.
If you're writing a book, and are mostly typing into a word processor, switching between typing and mousing to select text and change formatting is what slows you down.
If you're writing a book, you're doing *a lot* of writing, with that much experience you're probably used to not let the keyboard go and use [SHIFT] + maybe [CTRL] + [arrow keys] for selection (maybe word selection), and the various [CTRL] + [B, I, U, etc.]
If you're a professional writer (e.g.: not merely a book but multiple books), you've probably even completely ditched Microsoft's piece of crap, and are using some professional software that dissociate content writing and typesetting and don't even care about formatting anymore, you're just signaling which parts are what (title, chapter, etc .) and letting the typesetting system do everything else for you.
(e.g.: If you happen to be a scientific writer, those tools are probably some derivative of LaTeX. Though some students are having fun using markdown instead).
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