> > The idea that the 'dvorak' keyboard is somehow superior is a myth. > One thing that ISN'T a myth is that your fingers travel a fraction of the > distance typing on Dvorak than they do on QWERTY. That is a demonstrated fact.
Anyone who types a lot may know that qwerty is not a very good layout, it's merely the one everybody uses -- just like VHS.
I have used Dvorak since December 2004, and after a few days of adjustment I really like it. The biggest challenge, to be honest, was getting Windows to accept a third-party Norwegian Dvorak layout, but that's another story.
One really nifty page I came across shows the (standard US) qwerty and Dvorak layouts side-by-side. Feed it some text and it displays some statistics -- it very clearly shows how most hits on a qwerty keyboard are on the top row while Dvorak scores between half and two thirds of all hits on the home row:
Sure they did. My father did big iron programming in the 70s (may have had a few days in the 60s even). The flying toasters that got people to the moon (and back) had computers with loadable software.
(Tongue in cheek: heck, you could even look up miss Lady Ada Augusta of Lovelace...)
"When you say the 'real world', do you mean playing games on a console? o_0"
No, I mean the 'real world' as in Denmark (where did the console come from?).
We usually store loose-leaf documentation in 4-ring binders, and it's kinda hard to explain to (utter) novices the concept of having binders within binders.
There are still loads of people ("even in developed countries") that know very well what a pc is, but are as good as utterly clueless how to operate one themselves. This is for instance the 50+ year olds who do not, and have not, worked in paperwork-handling offices.
"What do you mean, when you write a letter and close Notepad, it's gone? What is this 'save'? I just typed it in, right?".... I'm not being an arse here, these (potential) users do exist. Similarly, windows, folders, close boxes and menus are in fact mighty abstract terms -- I don't think I've ever seen a 'folder' in the real world, only in american movies and on computers.
Luckily, it takes a bit more than walking by a flashing 1-square-foot display (or at least, that square foot has to be *really* funky) to trigger a seizure. Or so the experts tell me.
(I live by an oddly covered underpass where you get positively stroboscoped if you drive under it in sunny weather. I raised concerns, but apparently it was deemed safe.)
On the other hand, I shudder at the prospect of using advanced materials as disposable packaging (just as I did when I heard about disposable cell phones, etc) -- if anything. And this from a company that is otherwise quite environmentally conscious; using lead-free solder, they even opposed to using green plastic for the colour-coded PS2 mouse plugs (remember those?) because they can't be made without cadmium.
You and I are in the same boat. I must register my time on a weekly basis (ie. divide my work hours between lots of separate projects/tasks), but come Friday I've all but forgotten what I spent Monday doing!
The solution that I use now is a combination of an egg timer and a time log. I have entered the various projects that I work on, and when I start a task I select the appropriate line and start the clock ticking. Then, every so often it pops up, saying "are you still working on X?", or "You're not time tracking!", whatever the case may be. This last thing is really more useful than you'd think -- but being a developer, you know how easy it is to immerse yourself so deeply that you forget the time.
This is an in-house tool made as a standalone Windows app. Meaning that it doesn't integrate with the system I eventually need to register my hours in, but also that this is a loose thing that I just may be allowed to give to you, if you want it (I'll need to check first, though -- this is not a promise).
Alternatively, there are tons of similar tools on SourceForge, and for all platforms. Unfortunately, none manage to quite do the trick for me. I am in the first stages of developing my own (basically a remake of our in-house tool, fixing some annoyances and much-needed omissions, and doing it in Java so it's cross-platform).
"[What's] wrong with people who are anal about layouts. How does their attention to detail affect you in any negative way?"
It's just disrespectful. Despite what anyone says, the Web is at its core about *content* delivery. This user over here might need unnaturally large fonts to be able to read it, that user over there might want that special pink neon font purely because it matches his "leet" desktop skin (or whatever).
So you have a story to tell, a message to convey. And I want to listen. The best way to get the message across seems to be to make sure the listener is comfortable.
Example 1: The national public broadcasting company in Denmark just got a new layout on their site -- and for me that means 25% usability (overall, not decrease!) because articles are kept in tiny boxes and zooming causes the text to mesh into itself and disappear behind the non-expandnig frame borders.
Example 2: The newspaper that my wife subscribes to insists on an 800px wide page, regardless of the fact that modern monitors are nearly twice that (not that a fixed too-large margin is any better, in fact that woul be worse). Also, that newspaper uses a very small font, and increasing the font sive to a legible size results in about 20 characters per line in the now very narrow columns. Yuck!
Example 3: I have a good friend who makes a living by designing web sites. Big, flash-intesive things that don't scale and graphics that break apart if you try. But if you don't -- true, it looks just like the company's product brochure.
In a word, the key is a DYNAMIC layout. Fine, provide top banners and sidebars and menus, but for Pete's sake let me decide the size of the body text!//Sorry, not meant to be a flame or a rant, but apparently this topic animates me.
Reminds me of this interview (can't dig up a link, sorry) where a journalist asks one of the Star Trek script writers just how the gravity generators actually work. The reply was, I believe, the only sensible answer possible:
I am also using Dvorak, since last week of last year -- ie. very nearly one year now.
I like it a lot, but it really shows how many places are difficult or plainly impossible to reconfigure (user login screen (I managed to fix my WinXP at work, but not my KDE at home), bios, dos or flash based applications, etc). Those unconfigurable places really wreak havoc on my blind typing skills when I later return to Dvorak. I have not been able to retain my qwerty skills (but then, I have tried to avoid it).
Have you guys Dvorak keyboards, or just software-remapped qwerty keyboards? I used a bunch of self-made stickers for a while, but now all my keyboards look like qwerty (occasionally causing fun situations with guests).
The hardest thing to get used to is those "peck" situations where you mouse around and just need to hit a single key every now and then -- I am too easily distracted by the (lying) key caps.
Okay, it's like this: The population is 2M. 5% of those have intertet access from home. That would be 2M * 0.05 = 100k machines. Deploying 5.000 new Ubuntu machines *compares* to 5% of the internet-connected home computers.
I say "if you look at it one way" and "comparable" because we're not looking at the same pool of machines. But being school machines they are very likely to have an influence where it counts - in potential new computer users (as opposed to zombified corporate Windows users:-).
I RTA, and I I think this is very neat (if not elsewhere, this could at least be very useful in wheel-and-circle-deficient Lego builds!;o) ).
Still, I don't see it. Surely, if you keep the axle linkages, sand the wheels down, and merely rotate the motor 90 degrees so its drive shaft is parallel to the axles, that would also yield propulsion without right-angle gearing, no? Granted, you would need a chain drive or a (non-angled) set of gears to connect motor and axle, unless the axle IS the drive shaft.
"If you suffer from shrinking fonts, get better software."
You are ever so right -- and I have: at home I use FreeBSD. But (here) at work, I'm stuck with Windows and its "naive approach" (and no, virtual environs is not a realistic option for a number of reasons). But I have set it up to 124 DPI.
because when you start to zoom the text, the top&bottom lines are hidden by the clever column layout. I had to disable their css to read the article (thank you, bookmarklet css toggler).
What is it about web designers that insist on having text fixed at 9pt? This laptop of mine has huge resolution on a non-huge screen, so I *need* at least 12pt for comfort, and 16pt for leisure.
And furthermore, like those things we all did before we knew any better: Once "out there", our past actions are darn hard to take back (be it stealin' cars, or spamming the ether with political speeches).
IF we ever decide that spamming the ether will need to be controlled (so that other SETI projects will find us, err, civilized), all we can do short of time travel is to let bygones be bygones and commit to a better future (and we all know how good we are at that last bit...).
"Support for multi button mice is not recent. I'm not sure but, but I think it's been around at least ten years."
Um, I admit that I haven't had my Macs powered on for some time, but none of them knew of more than one button -- none. In other words, this feature is newer than System 7.3, at least. Could one attach a multi-button mouse to a Quadra, or a PowerMac? I'm sincerely asking, because I honestly don't know that you can -- just that I've never seen one.
"I'd pay thousands of dollars if I could get a modern notebook with a fairly normal keyboard and side-mounted trackball, like I had on my old 20MHz Compaq notebook."
I'm pretty sure you can still get a Mac Portable in excellent condition, and it might well cost you a fat wad. But modern? Well yes, compared to an older machine...
It's a problem because it needs that extra finger. I know it sounds like a small thing, but are you aware of the number of mouse clicks that go into an average work week? A lot.
For instance, when I read an online article, being able to load links in background tabs is a godsend. I do that using a middle click. Or, I highlight the occasional word and right click to call up a dictionary.
Had I only one mouse button, your argument is that I could simply use one extra finger to hit Command or Option. But that finger has got to be attached to the hand not holding the mouse, and thus it's more inconvenient.
Now that Apple have introduced multi-button support in their OS, we can use them. But on the laptop itself we still have only one button (and as far as I have experienced in shops, the pointer surface doesn't even have hotspots for scrolling - but I could (hopefully) be wrong). I guess if someone would give me an Apple laptop, I'd install some form of mouse gesture utility.
DISCLAIMER: In the olden days I was a Mac guy, I've had everything from the original Mac to a Colour Classic. After that, Windows (and more recently, KDE) has spoiled me.
You might want to use "want" in place of "wan't". As an example, "can't" is short for "can not" and "won't" is short for "will not", but want is a word in its own right.
Remember, I'm not trying to bash you, just letting you improve your english.
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> > The idea that the 'dvorak' keyboard is somehow superior is a myth.
t ml
> One thing that ISN'T a myth is that your fingers travel a fraction of the
> distance typing on Dvorak than they do on QWERTY. That is a demonstrated fact.
Anyone who types a lot may know that qwerty is not a very good layout, it's merely the one everybody uses -- just like VHS.
I have used Dvorak since December 2004, and after a few days of adjustment I really like it. The biggest challenge, to be honest, was getting Windows to accept a third-party Norwegian Dvorak layout, but that's another story.
One really nifty page I came across shows the (standard US) qwerty and Dvorak layouts side-by-side. Feed it some text and it displays some statistics -- it very clearly shows how most hits on a qwerty keyboard are on the top row while Dvorak scores between half and two thirds of all hits on the home row:
http://www.acm.vt.edu/~jmaxwell/dvorak/keyboard.h
Try it. Myth or not, the Dvorak layout does mean much less finger movement. Having tried it myself, I can say it really is noticeable.
Sure they did. My father did big iron programming in the 70s (may have had a few days in the 60s even). The flying toasters that got people to the moon (and back) had computers with loadable software.
(Tongue in cheek: heck, you could even look up miss Lady Ada Augusta of Lovelace...)
"There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots."
"When you say the 'real world', do you mean playing games on a console? o_0"
No, I mean the 'real world' as in Denmark (where did the console come from?).
We usually store loose-leaf documentation in 4-ring binders, and it's kinda hard to explain to (utter) novices the concept of having binders within binders.
There are still loads of people ("even in developed countries") that know very well what a pc is, but are as good as utterly clueless how to operate one themselves. This is for instance the 50+ year olds who do not, and have not, worked in paperwork-handling offices.
.... I'm not being an arse here, these (potential) users do exist. Similarly, windows, folders, close boxes and menus are in fact mighty abstract terms -- I don't think I've ever seen a 'folder' in the real world, only in american movies and on computers.
"What do you mean, when you write a letter and close Notepad, it's gone? What is this 'save'? I just typed it in, right?"
Just my 0.02
Luckily, it takes a bit more than walking by a flashing 1-square-foot display (or at least, that square foot has to be *really* funky) to trigger a seizure. Or so the experts tell me.
(I live by an oddly covered underpass where you get positively stroboscoped if you drive under it in sunny weather. I raised concerns, but apparently it was deemed safe.)
On the other hand, I shudder at the prospect of using advanced materials as disposable packaging (just as I did when I heard about disposable cell phones, etc) -- if anything. And this from a company that is otherwise quite environmentally conscious; using lead-free solder, they even opposed to using green plastic for the colour-coded PS2 mouse plugs (remember those?) because they can't be made without cadmium.
You and I are in the same boat. I must register my time on a weekly basis (ie. divide my work hours between lots of separate projects/tasks), but come Friday I've all but forgotten what I spent Monday doing!
The solution that I use now is a combination of an egg timer and a time log. I have entered the various projects that I work on, and when I start a task I select the appropriate line and start the clock ticking. Then, every so often it pops up, saying "are you still working on X?", or "You're not time tracking!", whatever the case may be. This last thing is really more useful than you'd think -- but being a developer, you know how easy it is to immerse yourself so deeply that you forget the time.
This is an in-house tool made as a standalone Windows app. Meaning that it doesn't integrate with the system I eventually need to register my hours in, but also that this is a loose thing that I just may be allowed to give to you, if you want it (I'll need to check first, though -- this is not a promise).
Alternatively, there are tons of similar tools on SourceForge, and for all platforms. Unfortunately, none manage to quite do the trick for me. I am in the first stages of developing my own (basically a remake of our in-house tool, fixing some annoyances and much-needed omissions, and doing it in Java so it's cross-platform).
"[What's] wrong with people who are anal about layouts. How does their attention to detail affect you in any negative way?"
//Sorry, not meant to be a flame or a rant, but apparently this topic animates me.
It's just disrespectful. Despite what anyone says, the Web is at its core about *content* delivery. This user over here might need unnaturally large fonts to be able to read it, that user over there might want that special pink neon font purely because it matches his "leet" desktop skin (or whatever).
So you have a story to tell, a message to convey. And I want to listen. The best way to get the message across seems to be to make sure the listener is comfortable.
Example 1:
The national public broadcasting company in Denmark just got a new layout on their site -- and for me that means 25% usability (overall, not decrease!) because articles are kept in tiny boxes and zooming causes the text to mesh into itself and disappear behind the non-expandnig frame borders.
Example 2:
The newspaper that my wife subscribes to insists on an 800px wide page, regardless of the fact that modern monitors are nearly twice that (not that a fixed too-large margin is any better, in fact that woul be worse). Also, that newspaper uses a very small font, and increasing the font sive to a legible size results in about 20 characters per line in the now very narrow columns. Yuck!
Example 3:
I have a good friend who makes a living by designing web sites. Big, flash-intesive things that don't scale and graphics that break apart if you try. But if you don't -- true, it looks just like the company's product brochure.
In a word, the key is a DYNAMIC layout. Fine, provide top banners and sidebars and menus, but for Pete's sake let me decide the size of the body text!
Reminds me of this interview (can't dig up a link, sorry) where a journalist asks one of the Star Trek script writers just how the gravity generators actually work. The reply was, I believe, the only sensible answer possible:
"Very well, thank you."
Yeah, be very careful, or you might end up dealing with vintage politicking! ;-)
Responding to an AC, I know...
Running Ubuntu, is that not an obvious choice for a person who wants to run Linux but does NOT have mad hacking skills?
Me, I run FreeBSD, and it works okay -- but then I spend far too much time tinkering with it to get it to do what Windows just "does".
I would think the OP's woes are based on wayback soft/firmware versions.
I am also using Dvorak, since last week of last year -- ie. very nearly one year now.
I like it a lot, but it really shows how many places are difficult or plainly impossible to reconfigure (user login screen (I managed to fix my WinXP at work, but not my KDE at home), bios, dos or flash based applications, etc).
Those unconfigurable places really wreak havoc on my blind typing skills when I later return to Dvorak. I have not been able to retain my qwerty skills (but then, I have tried to avoid it).
Have you guys Dvorak keyboards, or just software-remapped qwerty keyboards? I used a bunch of self-made stickers for a while, but now all my keyboards look like qwerty (occasionally causing fun situations with guests).
The hardest thing to get used to is those "peck" situations where you mouse around and just need to hit a single key every now and then -- I am too easily distracted by the (lying) key caps.
Okay, it's like this: The population is 2M. 5% of those have intertet access from home. That would be 2M * 0.05 = 100k machines. Deploying 5.000 new Ubuntu machines *compares* to 5% of the internet-connected home computers.
:-).
I say "if you look at it one way" and "comparable" because we're not looking at the same pool of machines. But being school machines they are very likely to have an influence where it counts - in potential new computer users (as opposed to zombified corporate Windows users
I RTA, and I I think this is very neat (if not elsewhere, this could at least be very useful in wheel-and-circle-deficient Lego builds! ;o) ).
Still, I don't see it. Surely, if you keep the axle linkages, sand the wheels down, and merely rotate the motor 90 degrees so its drive shaft is parallel to the axles, that would also yield propulsion without right-angle gearing, no? Granted, you would need a chain drive or a (non-angled) set of gears to connect motor and axle, unless the axle IS the drive shaft.
2.000.000 population, 5% internet penetration, 5.000 Ubuntu desktops -- instant 5% market share if you look at it one way.
No wonder this makes headlines.
I do believe you have a point. Thank you for your most informative post. And for readjusting my paranoia filter.
"if you were smart enough to pay cash"
... heard about "RFID Tags in New US Notes"? http://www.prisonplanet.com/022904rfidtagsexplode. html
Ahem
"If you suffer from shrinking fonts, get better software."
You are ever so right -- and I have: at home I use FreeBSD. But (here) at work, I'm stuck with Windows and its "naive approach" (and no, virtual environs is not a realistic option for a number of reasons). But I have set it up to 124 DPI.
because when you start to zoom the text, the top&bottom lines are hidden by the clever column layout. I had to disable their css to read the article (thank you, bookmarklet css toggler).
What is it about web designers that insist on having text fixed at 9pt? This laptop of mine has huge resolution on a non-huge screen, so I *need* at least 12pt for comfort, and 16pt for leisure.
And furthermore, like those things we all did before we knew any better: Once "out there", our past actions are darn hard to take back (be it stealin' cars, or spamming the ether with political speeches).
IF we ever decide that spamming the ether will need to be controlled (so that other SETI projects will find us, err, civilized), all we can do short of time travel is to let bygones be bygones and commit to a better future (and we all know how good we are at that last bit...).
"someone could hack the data stream and inject malicious data"
... (just for the sake of argument):
Hmm
1) Hack the data stream
2) Remove that tell-tale spike
3) Stay undetected!
"Support for multi button mice is not recent. I'm not sure but, but I think it's been around at least ten years."
Um, I admit that I haven't had my Macs powered on for some time, but none of them knew of more than one button -- none. In other words, this feature is newer than System 7.3, at least. Could one attach a multi-button mouse to a Quadra, or a PowerMac? I'm sincerely asking, because I honestly don't know that you can -- just that I've never seen one.
What a "kottke troll" is, I have no idea.
"I'd pay thousands of dollars if I could get a modern notebook with a fairly normal keyboard and side-mounted trackball, like I had on my old 20MHz Compaq notebook."
I'm pretty sure you can still get a Mac Portable in excellent condition, and it might well cost you a fat wad. But modern? Well yes, compared to an older machine...
It's a problem because it needs that extra finger. I know it sounds like a small thing, but are you aware of the number of mouse clicks that go into an average work week? A lot.
For instance, when I read an online article, being able to load links in background tabs is a godsend. I do that using a middle click. Or, I highlight the occasional word and right click to call up a dictionary.
Had I only one mouse button, your argument is that I could simply use one extra finger to hit Command or Option. But that finger has got to be attached to the hand not holding the mouse, and thus it's more inconvenient.
Now that Apple have introduced multi-button support in their OS, we can use them. But on the laptop itself we still have only one button (and as far as I have experienced in shops, the pointer surface doesn't even have hotspots for scrolling - but I could (hopefully) be wrong). I guess if someone would give me an Apple laptop, I'd install some form of mouse gesture utility.
DISCLAIMER: In the olden days I was a Mac guy, I've had everything from the original Mac to a Colour Classic. After that, Windows (and more recently, KDE) has spoiled me.
Hi. Just a friendly, offtopic note:
You might want to use "want" in place of "wan't". As an example, "can't" is short for "can not" and "won't" is short for "will not", but want is a word in its own right.
Remember, I'm not trying to bash you, just letting you improve your english.