the unbalancedness of keyboard Spacebars

[roaming pear]

Why is the spacebar usually a little off balanced?
I have looked at a lot of keyboards lately- especially small form factor keyboards - and it seems that the spacebar is never right in the middle.  There are often 3 keys on one side and 4 on the other...

Is there a reason for this?

[hwood34]

Unless you want to cut the function key in half and put it on both sides

[jwaz]

I would venture a guess that it is because your thumbs don't naturally rest right in the middle of the spacebar and that most users favor the their right thumb.


edit: thought you meant switch placement. the spacer key seems to sit a little to the left because the right side mods aren't symmetrical.

[tbc]

it is farther to the right, but only by .5x or so.

remember, the letter B is the actual center.  not the center of the 60% area.

basically, left winkey needs to be a 1x key

[IvanIvanovich]

It's what was decided when Windows and menu keys were introduced in around 1995 and has been like that ever since. Otherwise the only way to make it symmetrical would be to use various different size keys on the modifiers to reorient space to exact center. You could always get an older winkeyless or a Mac specific keyboard with only 3 mod keys on each side to avoid that imbalance.

[jacobolus]

Is there a reason for this?

The standard computer keyboard layout dates from 1878. Between the 1950s and 1980s, first various keys were added, mostly to the right side. Then IBM decided to put their ctrl and alt keys on the bottom row next to the spacebar, in a symmetrical arrangement. In the past 30 years, there has been very little change to the basic layout, even though it makes no sense compared to the shape and movement of human hands.

In short, the physical design of computer keyboards is awful... but it’s tradition, and people have learned it, and computer companies have decided that any innovation in something fundamental like the keyboard is just too big a risk. So we’re basically stuck with it as a mass-market design.

If you want something better, you’re going to need to design and build it yourself.

[Coreda]

In the past 30 years, there has been very little change to the basic layout, even though it makes no sense compared to the shape and movement of human hands.

Themoreyouknow.gif thanks for the bit of history 

Btw 'Imbalance' perhaps may sound more natural in the title, or even 'asymmetry'. Thought the topic was about bad stabilizers at first 

[roaming pear]

Thanks... That info helps.  I was mainly just wondering, but I did have a couple ideas.

1. sacrifice one of the 4 keys on the right and make the spacebar longer by that one key.... That just deals with the spacebar unbalanced.  There is another part and that being the escape key when compared to the backspace key, but that doesn't bother me too much anyway...

2. add a 4th key on the left side and shorten the spacebar by the size of that key

3. make the keyboard a little longer to have 4 keys on both sides... and make escape key longer (I  think this will also force the modiers on the left and right to have to be longer by half a key size.  (if that makes any sense)

those were just random ideas... but yeah...
It bothered me a lot for a little while, but once I realized that the keyboard I have is pretty much one of the closest I'll get to have a symetrical balance for the price and the functionality it has, I stopped letting it bug me....

[jacobolus]

The better solution is something like:


Or if you want something a bit closer to the standard shape:

[roaming pear]

That first one looks the nicest ^_^

[mouse.the.lucky.dog]

The better solution is something like:

You know the 6 key is on the wrong side on the bottom two?

[jacobolus]

You know the 6 key is on the wrong side on the bottom two?

The 6 key on a standard keyboard is closer to the left home position than to the right home position. I’m guessing about half of people use their left index finger to type 6, maybe even more than half.

Personally, I think the number row as a concept is kind of terrible, since many of the keys in that row require enough reaching to be slow and inaccurate. Putting a numpad on a layer triggered by some function key is a much better design, at least for me personally.

[Polymer]

You know the 6 key is on the wrong side on the bottom two?

The 6 key on a standard keyboard is closer to the left home position than to the right home position. I’m guessing about half of people use their left index finger to type 6, maybe even more than half.

Yeap..I know it is "properly" supposed to be used with the right hand but it closer to my left so that is what I use....

But going back to the unbalanced spacebar...I'm not sure why this would bother anyone other than you don't like the way it looks....but I look at it is as it is mostly wasted space..IMO, they could make it 3 keys smaller..

[jacobolus]

But going back to the unbalanced spacebar...I'm not sure why this would bother anyone other than you don't like the way it looks....but I look at it is as it is mostly wasted space..IMO, they could make it 3 keys smaller..

Anything more than maybe 2.5 units long is totally unnecessary. Spacebars should be split into two parts, so that each can be assigned a separate function.

As soon as I can get my hands on some of Matias’s upcoming PBT keycaps, I plan to make a keyboard something along the lines of:


At least modern laptops tend to have 4.5–6 unit spacebars, unlike the 8-11 unit spacebars that were common in the 80s and before.