Poll: Keyboard only users (Mouselessness)

[OldBoy]

With conkeror/vimperator, and various firefox extensions and plugins, even web browsing can be done more efficiently without taking your hands off the keyboard.
Who among you uses only their keyboard?  If you use a mouse/trackball/pointing thingy occasionally, is keyboard-only use something you aspire to?
Is there anything that you would not be able to do, or do well, without a separate pointing device?

[kishy]

With conkeror/vimperator, and various firefox extensions and plugins, even web browsing can be done more efficiently without taking your hands off the keyboard.
Who among you uses only their keyboard?  If you use a mouse/trackball/pointing thingy occasionally, is keyboard-only use something you aspire to?
Is there anything that you would not be able to do, or do well, without a separate pointing device?

For me, I will often go mouseless, but not entirely.

If I'm working on my website I may have a whole bunch of HTM files open in Notepad++. In that situation, I switch files by CTRL+TAB and move the cursor with the cursor keys and home/end/pgup/pgdn as needed.

There are some things, for example web browsing, where having a mouse is critical to the experience being remotely pleasant. Navigation is generally possible without one, but is absolutely inefficient.

I don't really care what type of pointing device it is - TrackPad, TrackPoint, trackball or mouse, but I generally do need at least something to allow for quickly doing something that takes time via keyboard only.

[microsoft windows]

I couldn't live without my mouse when browsing the Internet.

[ch_123]

With conkeror/vimperator, and various firefox extensions and plugins, even web browsing can be done more efficiently without taking your hands off the keyboard.
Who among you uses only their keyboard?  If you use a mouse/trackball/pointing thingy occasionally, is keyboard-only use something you aspire to?
Is there anything that you would not be able to do, or do well, without a separate pointing device?

If someone made vimperator-like extensions for Chrome, I'd look into it.

[didjamatic]

Web browsing with a keyboard only is a fraction of the efficiency of using a 5 button scroll mouse that is setup properly + a keyboard.  When using a mouse, you still have your other hand on the keyboard and on keyboards with a tenkey you can access the enter key on the far right of your board with your mouse thumb... without removing your hand from the mouse to do so.  This is one of the pitfalls of a tenkeyless board.

Working in applications is another story, but it depends on the app.  I can't think of anything I can't do in XP with the keyboard alone.  But it's frequently not as efficient as being used together with a mouse.

[mmgoose]

i don't use extensions/add-ons on firefox and although i have to admit that not having a mouse is a wee bit slower it's not that bad. mousekeys are still necessary though for those pesky flash buttons.

[microsoft windows]

Web browsing with a keyboard only is a fraction of the efficiency of using a 5 button scroll mouse that is setup properly + a keyboard.  When using a mouse, you still have your other hand on the keyboard and on keyboards with a tenkey you can access the enter key on the far right of your board with your mouse thumb... without removing your hand from the mouse to do so.  This is one of the pitfalls of a tenkeyless board.

Working in applications is another story, but it depends on the app.  I can't think of anything I can't do in XP with the keyboard alone.  But it's frequently not as efficient as being used together with a mouse.

I never thought of using the Enter key on the number pad like that. But now that I think about it, it sounds like a great idea.

[ricercar]

I love posting this.

Tog on Interface

We’ve done a cool $50 million of R & D on the Apple Human Interface. We discovered, among other things, two pertinent facts:

    * Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than mousing.
    * The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than keyboarding.

This contradiction between user-experience and reality apparently forms the basis for many user/developers’ belief that the keyboard is faster.

People new to the mouse find the process of acquiring it every time they want to do anything other than type to be incredibly time-wasting. And therein lies the very advantage of the mouse: it is boring to find it because the two-second search does not require high-level cognitive engagement.

It takes two seconds to decide upon which special-function key to press. Deciding among abstract symbols is a high-level cognitive function. Not only is this decision not boring, the user actually experiences amnesia! Real amnesia! The time-slice spent making the decision simply ceases to exist.

While the keyboard users in this case feels as though they have gained two seconds over the mouse users, the opposite is really the case. Because while the keyboard users have been engaged in a process so fascinating that they have experienced amnesia, the mouse users have been so disengaged that they have been able to continue thinking about the task they are trying to accomplish. They have not had to set their task aside to think about or remember abstract symbols.

Hence, users achieve a significant productivity increase with the mouse in spite of their subjective experience.

[ricercar]

Interface professional: "We discovered..."
Webwit: "I guess..."

'Nuff said.

[ricercar]

I appreciate the respectful reply.

--
It seems disingenuous to believe Tognazzini didn't account for muscle memory in his 1980s testing. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find any 1980s articles which cover muscle memory in regards to UI. However, Brenda Laurel's 1990 The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design covers muscle memory, and that was drafted in the 80s, suggesting muscle memory was not unknown to the profession.

What makes you assert that Tognazzini had "colored opinions" and was "in a religious war"? Those seem groundless, and needlessly inflammatory. I'll suggest working and playing with Bruce for over two decades gives a perspective:

• He tends to make professional assertions only when based on evidence.
• He isn't afraid to sacrifice company (dog)cows for good UI. He's not that kind of fanatic.

--
Here's an interesting tidbit, contrary to my previous point, that has significance:

Users are better able to remember disconnected data when they are the source for that data: they can remember shortcut keys far better if they assigned them. This fact was the basis for our decision to enable users, not applications, to control the programming of F1 through F15....

Apparently humans can cache our individual ideas (macros) better than those assigned by others.

[didjamatic]

This from Apple, the company that has consistently produced some of the the worst pointing devices available.  Though many look cool they have lacked much of the functionality of Logitech/Microsoft/Other mice and trackballs.  I think they sometimes try too hard to be different at the expense of some functionality.  Though often they succeed, with mice I don't believe they have fared so well.

[ricercar]

This from Apple, the company that has consistently produced some of the the worst pointing devices available.

Tog was against the one button mouse from 1985, a year after the Mac was introduced with it.

--
My bad. Brevity != Clarity. I meant to say 'apparently humans can remember our own ideas (such as keyboard shortcuts) better than ideas (or shortcuts) by others. And yah, that football coach example is perfect.

[sapht]

Many operations can be performed faster by using a mouse, sure, but not a lot of typing can be made with it. In a situation where maybe 50% of the work you do is type, I'm sure the delay of finding and using a mouse slows you down quite a lot. I feel vimperator has made my web browsing a lot more effective, with high regards to the quickhints functionality.

My editor is vim and my window manager is dwm so I guess you can figure out the rest of my keyboarding habits.

[Rajagra]

I love posting this.

Tog on Interface

Some weak logic there. For example he claims selection of an abstract key requires decision making, yet assumes navigating menus or (frequently) bizarre icons with a mouse does not?

Edit> If the mouse was really faster than the keyboard then all pro gamers would all be "clickers" - using the mouse to select actions. This is clearly not the case, "clickers" are an object of ridicule because they are so slow (even in games like World of Warcraft where speed is far less critical.) Conversely, keyboard turners are also laughed at, since the mouse is so much better for this.

That $50 million research clearly limited itself to people who hadn't learned shortcuts to any great degree, or focused on rarely used functions. The results must be interpreted in that context IMO.

[ricercar]

correct.

[quadibloc]

This is a tough question for me to answer, because my answer would be yes and no.

Yes, I would like a user interface that would let me do most things with the keyboard, so that I would only use a pointing device for tasks like freehand drawing.

No, I do not aspire to doing without a mouse to use Microsoft Windows, whether by virtue of memorizing the keyboard shortcuts for hundreds of programs, or by using some third-party add-in program which would supposedly allow my keyboard to take the place of a mouse.

A menu-driven interface like that on old Hewlett-Packard terminals, where the keyboard had eight function keys and the screen showed what they did at the current time, would have the potential of taking a load off the mouse if it were made an integral part of Windows, and if you actually could use it to navigate deeply into the menus of the applications you used.

But something like that which I would have to set up myself for my favorite applications would not be worth the trouble, and so no solution to this problem would be of much value unless it were "the standard". This is a pity, since it makes it tougher for genuine innovations, like the forthcoming Eee Keyboard (their PC in a keyboard with an integrated touchpad) to gain a foothold - essentially, only Microsoft is free to innovate.

[Superfluous Parentheses]

I use xmonad as a window manager and emacs for writing the stuff I do that pays the bills, and both work great without a mouse. Sometimes it's easier to use a mouse to select THAT piece of stuff and move it somewhere else, or when you're exploring options in the menu, but when you're writing/editing, you're not looking at a whole screen full of stuff, you're structuring ideas, and I find that using search in a good editor is less distracting than scrolling/mousing around unless you've already got the thing you're interested in on screen and in your center of focus.

For browsing, not so much: browsing is a visual experience dealing with pages that are have a complex layout and I've never seen any keyboard scheme that lets me select a specific link that I'm looking at anyway as quick as a simple mouse action does. By the way, take that as a plug that very common actions in a web application need keyboard "shortcuts" just like regular apps do. The post editor in this site is a good example: I really appreciate that I can use CTRL-B and CTRL-I to do bold and italics.

[Xuan]

We should write an entry in the wiki maybe with programs and utilities to facilitate the use of the keyboard.

[ds26gte]

If someone made vimperator-like extensions for Chrome, I'd look into it.

If all you need is mouseless browsing, and for scrolling and and for linking are adequate out of the box in Firefox.

Chrome has extensions now (since about a couple months ago).  I tried and liked Keyboard Navigation, which lets you press to mark all the links with a letter (or two, if there are more than 26 links).  Type the letter(s) to choose a link.