As a mouseless-adjacent subject, I've been using a thumb ball (subtype of trackball) since the 90s. I cannot use a mouse for any length of time. I hate it. I rest my palm on the trackball and my...
As a mouseless-adjacent subject, I've been using a thumb ball (subtype of trackball) since the 90s. I cannot use a mouse for any length of time. I hate it.
I rest my palm on the trackball and my thumb moves the ball, and my fingers click the buttons.
I think it is the best implementation of pointer devices out there.
The only drawback is that just like before the days of optical mice when you had to clean the mouseball occasionally, I have to clean the trackball's ball occasionally (a little bit of grime accumulates around the the plastic nubs the ball rotates/sits on) — perhaps monthly. Takes 10 seconds with a q-tip.
I also used Logitech for years and years, but their quality fell off a decade ago. I now use the Elecom EX-G - I have three right-handed and one left-handed model. I love having two trackballs so I can choose which hand controls the cursor in case I have writing to do or whatever (I'm right-handed but can mouse with both)
I had a Logitech M575 (and a broken Delux MT1), and you're right that cleaning the ball is annoying. I had to do it it's every week or 5 days as my place's air isn't good. It doesn't help that I'm...
I had a Logitech M575 (and a broken Delux MT1), and you're right that cleaning the ball is annoying. I had to do it it's every week or 5 days as my place's air isn't good. It doesn't help that I'm having two cats, and their favorite sitting spot is on my desk, and their fur very often get stuck as well.
Don't remember which model numbers (it changed over the years anyway), but dat der bunny. The elecom I have now is very similar. But doesn't break. lol
Logitech M575
Don't remember which model numbers (it changed over the years anyway), but dat der bunny. The elecom I have now is very similar. But doesn't break. lol
I miss my Logitech Trackman and have looked at the thumb trackballs but I can't imagine it being nice to use, but please tell me I'm wrong! Can you flick the cursor around easily? I think...
I miss my Logitech Trackman and have looked at the thumb trackballs but I can't imagine it being nice to use, but please tell me I'm wrong! Can you flick the cursor around easily? I think left/right would be ok, it's that "swipe down" motion that just doesn't feel like my thumb works like that if that makes any sense?
The Elecom EX-G works almost exactly like the last Logitechs I used, only the build quality is better. It's a little heavier and more sturdy. And the buttons don't stop working, which I had...
The Elecom EX-G works almost exactly like the last Logitechs I used, only the build quality is better. It's a little heavier and more sturdy. And the buttons don't stop working, which I had several Logitechs do to me.
It feels like the same ball - it is probably not, but it is very similar. And I can absolutely go where I need to go with it. At least, exactly like I could with the Logitech.
I've actually run across a couple of folks in the wild who also use this model, and we all agree that it is what Logitech used to be. heh.
But I can - very VERY messily - sign my signature with my thumb. I've been using this style of input device for just shy of 30 years continuously. I hate mice. I can use them, but I hate doing anything important with them - like doing real work - photoshop, games, moving files around, whatever. They're fine for browsing, but my hand gets tired quickly. heh.
So I couldn't say if your thumb works that way - but mine does. :)
Thanks for the reply, I think I’ll get one. It’s about the only brand that offers a left handed model so it’s not like I have a ton of options to choose from anyway!
Thanks for the reply, I think I’ll get one. It’s about the only brand that offers a left handed model so it’s not like I have a ton of options to choose from anyway!
I have a lefthander and it is nice :) I like dual-wielding so I can do various things like pet my cat (to the right of the desk) or drink my drink (typically to the left) :)
I have a lefthander and it is nice :) I like dual-wielding so I can do various things like pet my cat (to the right of the desk) or drink my drink (typically to the left) :)
I’ve really thought about using Vimium, but haven’t made the call on actually trying it out yet. Have you heard of https://mouseless.click/ ? It’s fairly new, basically a grid based way of doing...
I’ve really thought about using Vimium, but haven’t made the call on actually trying it out yet.
It’s fairly new, basically a grid based way of doing mouse movement & clicks (I saw a YouTube video about it a few days back, but have not tried it myself). Seems like something that could maybe be used in place of warpd or the drawing tablet.
But I think I’d still use Vimium in the browser where possible. Have you seen this for the ctrl-w issue?
It's super low effort to try. I have it on all my browsers even though I don't always use it. The only thing it remotely clashes with in my experience is youtube forward and back (because they...
I’ve really thought about using Vimium, but haven’t made the call on actually trying it out yet.
It's super low effort to try. I have it on all my browsers even though I don't always use it. The only thing it remotely clashes with in my experience is youtube forward and back (because they made it J and L for some reason for a 10 second skip, and left and right for a 5 second skip) but you can hit i to go into a mode where it will "disable" vimum on that screen until you hit escape.
+1 to the other comment: Vimium is just a browser extension. You can try it in a few days and uninstall it if you find the additional functionality redundant. I think I must encountered Mouseless...
+1 to the other comment: Vimium is just a browser extension. You can try it in a few days and uninstall it if you find the additional functionality redundant. I think I must encountered Mouseless some time in the past, but I didn't really care as I don't have a Mac myself. Regarding the grid mode, I think warpd has that, too, but I didn't show it in my demo GIF. You can look at warpd's Github for more information
P/s: thanks for the linked issue!! I think I didn't dig hard enough, and just get used to the quirk.
It’s a pretty normal thing to do for Mac apps - developers gotta eat too. I paid for an app to limit my laptop charging past a certain percentage and it serves me well. It’s better than having ads...
It’s a pretty normal thing to do for Mac apps - developers gotta eat too. I paid for an app to limit my laptop charging past a certain percentage and it serves me well. It’s better than having ads served or your data harvested.
As someone who's been far down this rabbit hole, a ZMK/QMK compatible keyboard will allow you to bind mouse controls to keys. They're not stellar, but they can help fill the gaps without having to...
As someone who's been far down this rabbit hole, a ZMK/QMK compatible keyboard will allow you to bind mouse controls to keys. They're not stellar, but they can help fill the gaps without having to use something like warpd.
Also highly recommend that for anyone wanting to try vimum to remember that hitting ? will bring up a help menu of every command, and you can use the browsers find feature to search for what you're looking for.
For example in the blog you used j and k to scroll up and down, which for weppage reading is often much slower than using d (down) and u (up) which will scroll a half page down each time you hit them.
As I already said responding elsewhere, the cost of trying out vimium is minimal at best. I often forget I have it and go back to mouse use, but it conflicts with almost nothing and can be easily disable on the screen where it is conflicting if you're having problems by hitting i.
Edit-
To ramble more about this, the big hurdle often comes outside the browser, and depends on your OS. I have windows in most of my environments so I cannot recommend enough the following free tools to help:
PowerToys: Developed by microsoft, lots of useful features, the main one I use a ton is powertoys Run on alt+space. It has a couple of useful glyphs you can put at the front of your search to search files, open windows, do quick calculator work, etc.
Edit-
Having looked at this recently, they've added a command palette which looks to be the launcher 2.0, so maybe try that instead. Also you'll probably want to look at fancyzones, which can help with window management. Using Windows + up/down/left/right can help bounce windows around to where you want them, and fancy zone can help size them appropriately.
Everything by void tools: the powertoys search should be this, but isn't. It's the ultimate "find my shit now" tool. Very nice, and as long as you know the rough name of what you're looking for it's going to find it almost instantly. No more hunting for appdata or hidden folders for that mod folder for that game you're playing or that config file for that app you installed.
Windows Terminal + Zoxide and maybe nushell: for the things that are more exploratory or require you to maybe make some folders, the new windows terminal is quite nice. Powershell is fine, I personally prefer nushell for lots of little reasons. Either way you'll want to install zoxide as it makes navigating your folders much much easier than using cd. Basically keeps a dictionary of where you've gone, and will partial match to antyhing you type and take you there, cycling through multiple matches on repeated entries. Lets you fly around your directories so you can quickly create whatever you need (with mkdir and shudder touch in nushell).
I'll add more as I think of stuff, but those are some of the main tools that not only help with being keyboardless, but also are just tremendously useful in general.
Oh I should try binding mouse controls, didn’t realize that was an option. Though my keyboard uses VIA so not sure if those options are there OOTB or if I’ll have to compile with QMK. I have a...
Oh I should try binding mouse controls, didn’t realize that was an option. Though my keyboard uses VIA so not sure if those options are there OOTB or if I’ll have to compile with QMK.
I have a minimal-ish form factor ergo mech keyboard so I already have a toggle layer that I use for using hjkl as arrow keys.
Yeup you can do all directions and all clicks, so just having it on a layer is....well great is over stating it but "good enough" is probably a nice summation. I've been meaning to look into a way...
Yeup you can do all directions and all clicks, so just having it on a layer is....well great is over stating it but "good enough" is probably a nice summation. I've been meaning to look into a way to mess with macros or mouse polling or acceleration or what not to make it smoother (just basically have it go much slower when i'm using keyboard inputs so it's not some jerky mess), but haven't yet. I'm sure someone better than me might have input.
There are also ergos/split ergos with a built in nub/trackpad/mouseball if you want to go that route, although I've never personally tried them I do love the idea
Thanks for the writing!! I learned a lot from your comment! ZMK/QMK sounds nice! I'm not sure why I'm not a big fan of having layers on keyboard and do big customization, but remapping should...
Thanks for the writing!! I learned a lot from your comment!
ZMK/QMK sounds nice! I'm not sure why I'm not a big fan of having layers on keyboard and do big customization, but remapping should always be an option
Windows: it's a shame that NixOS is my daily driver and I don't plan to change that soon, but who knows. The Windows tools you mentioned sound enticing
You don't have to commit to layers nearly as much as people think for what it's worth, but everyone has their own path if they want to get into this sort of thing. I highly recommend something...
You don't have to commit to layers nearly as much as people think for what it's worth, but everyone has their own path if they want to get into this sort of thing. I highly recommend something like keychron to start, as they're a fairly large company with good quality keyboards, and they follow standard layouts. Just so happen to also have enough space to usually have a function layer or two, which if it's just for the f1-x keys, might as well use the rest of that space.
It's really no different than any other "chord". Shift/Alt/Ctrl/Gui are all layer keys as well, and if you don't want to hold the key down all the time there's plenty of ways to swap layers.
As for windows, that's really just the main daily driver for me. Linux is a lot more keyboard friendly because it's built from the ground up to basically work headless, so you can do just about everything you'd want through the terminal anyways, outside of webbrowsing (and even then it's possible just not pretty).
My dream device is some kind of dual half keyboard thing that goes around your wrist and each side also acts as a separate mouse. You'd have two cursors and would never have to switch anything.
My dream device is some kind of dual half keyboard thing that goes around your wrist and each side also acts as a separate mouse.
You'd have two cursors and would never have to switch anything.
I've gone mouseless, or using the computer without a physical mouse, for around 2 months. The supporting tools I used are: Vimium: a browser extension for interaction (mainly navigation/links...
I've gone mouseless, or using the computer without a physical mouse, for around
2 months. The supporting tools I used are:
Vimium: a browser extension for interaction (mainly navigation/links
following) while browsing the web
warpd: a program to control the mouse in other cases
A drawing tablet: the last resort if warpd cannot make it
To be honest, I don't think there is a huge boost in productivity, but it helps
with concentration as I don't have to move my hands that often anymore. Going
mouseless might aid in preventing common pains and injuries of software
engineers (namely RSI and carpel tunnel) as well. In this post, I'll try to get
into each tool I used and my thoughts about them.
It seems you’re already set on the vim control scheme, but I know lots of people have been successfully staying in emacs to go keyboard only. I think people not wanting to ever take their hands...
It seems you’re already set on the vim control scheme, but I know lots of people have been successfully staying in emacs to go keyboard only. I think people not wanting to ever take their hands off their keyboards is also why the tracknubs on thinkpads are popular with certain groups.
I am also not 100% sure this is still the case, but Windows used to be completely useable without a mouse due to its roots as an OS prior to the invention of the mouse. There are still many hotkeys that allow navigation without a mouse.
I use Windows a lot without grabbing the mouse. If I do end up needing a mouse, it's because some software forgot to even think about keyboards entirely, or incorrectly overrides standard keys...
I use Windows a lot without grabbing the mouse. If I do end up needing a mouse, it's because some software forgot to even think about keyboards entirely, or incorrectly overrides standard keys such as F10 = menu or Alt+Down = open drop-down. Windows itself is pretty immune to this and has shortcuts for a lot of global things, such as Win+Digit to activate the taskbar buttons, Win+T/+B to focus the taskbar/tray, etc.
You can also open a link in a new tab using F instead of f to bring up the labels, which should avoid the conflict with Ctrl-W.
Vimium allows us to use Ctrl + [label keys] to open a link in a new tab
If [label keys] ends with w, then the key combination becomes Ctrl + w, which is overridden by a browser to close the current tab instead, which is really undesirable
You can also open a link in a new tab using F instead of f to bring up the labels, which should avoid the conflict with Ctrl-W.
Interesting article! It's been quite a while since I last tried to navigate my browser using just the keyboard. At the time, I found it quite clunky and eventually gave up. Though the article also...
Interesting article! It's been quite a while since I last tried to navigate my browser using just the keyboard. At the time, I found it quite clunky and eventually gave up. Though the article also mentions the idea of using a tablet as a pointer device. I've never considered that until now. I was able to get it working using SuperDisplay and it is surprisingly smooth, I might give it a serious try to see if I like it or not.
Emacs is a big boost for a mouseless life because of how much you can do with it. Vim is a good program as well but Emacs does way more stuff. The disadvantage is that Emacs may consume your life.
Emacs is a big boost for a mouseless life because of how much you can do with it. Vim is a good program as well but Emacs does way more stuff. The disadvantage is that Emacs may consume your life.
I’ve been using an eye tracker instead of a mouse for most productivity tasks over the last few years, and it’s worked pretty well. The main downside has been the hardware cost, but it looks like...
I’ve been using an eye tracker instead of a mouse for most productivity tasks over the last few years, and it’s worked pretty well. The main downside has been the hardware cost, but it looks like there’s some competition these days which uses a regular webcam.
I’d highly recommend looking into it if you’re concerned about ergonomics — having tried a handful of setups over the years (thumb and finger trackballs, vertical mice, trackpads, drawing tablets, various ergonomic mice) it’s by far the least physically aggravating option. Hazarding a guess, I would imagine the only thing better would be a brain-computer interface, but I’m not keen to install a chip in my skull quite yet …
As the author pointed out while using Vim, it's super efficient when it's prepped correctly. Windows has created a trend (maybe Mac was involved?) that almost feels qwerty-ish: slowing things down...
As the author pointed out while using Vim, it's super efficient when it's prepped correctly. Windows has created a trend (maybe Mac was involved?) that almost feels qwerty-ish: slowing things down just to slow them down. I know that's not the case, but that's where we are now.
I've learned so many windows shortcuts and have always preferred using a keyboard vs a mouse. I actually run Arch Linux with i3wm, for which the latter is designed to use a plethora of keyboard links to manipulate the tiles (the windows rarely float and will sit side-by-side in various forms, depending on how I lay them out). It was a steep but quick learning curve, and once I set up keyboard preferences that made more sense to me (sorry users of hjkl, but that's a huge nope for me, despite insisting on gaming with esdf) it just flowed so perfectly. I could set up some bash scripts to set all my windows up when I boot up, but I actually just enjoy moving them around with the keyboard.
Mouse usage is so ... inefficient. At work (on Windows), I often find myself doing repeated tasks that could easily be expedited if I didn't have to constantly click here or there to start another round of keyboard kung fu. I've learned quite a few of the shortcuts, but it's still pretty difficult getting around completely without a mouse.
Another mouseless convert. I switched when my mouse broke, and I had been having RSI issues in my mouse hand. Honestly, I thought I'd give up after a few weeks, but its been 2 and a half years...
Another mouseless convert. I switched when my mouse broke, and I had been having RSI issues in my mouse hand. Honestly, I thought I'd give up after a few weeks, but its been 2 and a half years with no complaints. With the right software, it really isn't that obtrusive and those RSI issues vanished.
We generally seem to have a similar setup, but I've marked the few differences.
Instead of Vimium, I use Surfingkeys. I don't have a particular reason, it just seemed good when I started.
I use a Steam Controller as the fallback. With SC Controller, it works surprisingly well. Its probably my best $5 purchase.
As a mouseless-adjacent subject, I've been using a thumb ball (subtype of trackball) since the 90s. I cannot use a mouse for any length of time. I hate it.
I rest my palm on the trackball and my thumb moves the ball, and my fingers click the buttons.
I think it is the best implementation of pointer devices out there.
The only drawback is that just like before the days of optical mice when you had to clean the mouseball occasionally, I have to clean the trackball's ball occasionally (a little bit of grime accumulates around the the plastic nubs the ball rotates/sits on) — perhaps monthly. Takes 10 seconds with a q-tip.
I also used Logitech for years and years, but their quality fell off a decade ago. I now use the Elecom EX-G - I have three right-handed and one left-handed model. I love having two trackballs so I can choose which hand controls the cursor in case I have writing to do or whatever (I'm right-handed but can mouse with both)
I had a Logitech M575 (and a broken Delux MT1), and you're right that cleaning the ball is annoying. I had to do it it's every week or 5 days as my place's air isn't good. It doesn't help that I'm having two cats, and their favorite sitting spot is on my desk, and their fur very often get stuck as well.
Don't remember which model numbers (it changed over the years anyway), but dat der bunny. The elecom I have now is very similar. But doesn't break. lol
Off topic, have you considered an air filter? A good one is a bit pricey and needs a little research, but it's incredible what a difference it makes!
I miss my Logitech Trackman and have looked at the thumb trackballs but I can't imagine it being nice to use, but please tell me I'm wrong! Can you flick the cursor around easily? I think left/right would be ok, it's that "swipe down" motion that just doesn't feel like my thumb works like that if that makes any sense?
The Elecom EX-G works almost exactly like the last Logitechs I used, only the build quality is better. It's a little heavier and more sturdy. And the buttons don't stop working, which I had several Logitechs do to me.
It feels like the same ball - it is probably not, but it is very similar. And I can absolutely go where I need to go with it. At least, exactly like I could with the Logitech.
I've actually run across a couple of folks in the wild who also use this model, and we all agree that it is what Logitech used to be. heh.
But I can - very VERY messily - sign my signature with my thumb. I've been using this style of input device for just shy of 30 years continuously. I hate mice. I can use them, but I hate doing anything important with them - like doing real work - photoshop, games, moving files around, whatever. They're fine for browsing, but my hand gets tired quickly. heh.
So I couldn't say if your thumb works that way - but mine does. :)
Thanks for the reply, I think I’ll get one. It’s about the only brand that offers a left handed model so it’s not like I have a ton of options to choose from anyway!
I have a lefthander and it is nice :) I like dual-wielding so I can do various things like pet my cat (to the right of the desk) or drink my drink (typically to the left) :)
I’ve really thought about using Vimium, but haven’t made the call on actually trying it out yet.
Have you heard of https://mouseless.click/ ?
It’s fairly new, basically a grid based way of doing mouse movement & clicks (I saw a YouTube video about it a few days back, but have not tried it myself). Seems like something that could maybe be used in place of warpd or the drawing tablet.
But I think I’d still use Vimium in the browser where possible. Have you seen this for the ctrl-w issue?
It's super low effort to try. I have it on all my browsers even though I don't always use it. The only thing it remotely clashes with in my experience is youtube forward and back (because they made it J and L for some reason for a 10 second skip, and left and right for a 5 second skip) but you can hit i to go into a mode where it will "disable" vimum on that screen until you hit escape.
+1 to the other comment: Vimium is just a browser extension. You can try it in a few days and uninstall it if you find the additional functionality redundant. I think I must encountered Mouseless some time in the past, but I didn't really care as I don't have a Mac myself. Regarding the grid mode, I think
warpdhas that, too, but I didn't show it in my demo GIF. You can look atwarpd's Github for more informationP/s: thanks for the linked issue!! I think I didn't dig hard enough, and just get used to the quirk.
I think it's funny that he's charging money for mouseless
It’s a pretty normal thing to do for Mac apps - developers gotta eat too. I paid for an app to limit my laptop charging past a certain percentage and it serves me well. It’s better than having ads served or your data harvested.
As someone who's been far down this rabbit hole, a ZMK/QMK compatible keyboard will allow you to bind mouse controls to keys. They're not stellar, but they can help fill the gaps without having to use something like warpd.
Also highly recommend that for anyone wanting to try vimum to remember that hitting ? will bring up a help menu of every command, and you can use the browsers find feature to search for what you're looking for.
For example in the blog you used j and k to scroll up and down, which for weppage reading is often much slower than using d (down) and u (up) which will scroll a half page down each time you hit them.
As I already said responding elsewhere, the cost of trying out vimium is minimal at best. I often forget I have it and go back to mouse use, but it conflicts with almost nothing and can be easily disable on the screen where it is conflicting if you're having problems by hitting i.
Edit-
To ramble more about this, the big hurdle often comes outside the browser, and depends on your OS. I have windows in most of my environments so I cannot recommend enough the following free tools to help:
Edit-
Having looked at this recently, they've added a command palette which looks to be the launcher 2.0, so maybe try that instead. Also you'll probably want to look at fancyzones, which can help with window management. Using Windows + up/down/left/right can help bounce windows around to where you want them, and fancy zone can help size them appropriately.
Everything by void tools: the powertoys search should be this, but isn't. It's the ultimate "find my shit now" tool. Very nice, and as long as you know the rough name of what you're looking for it's going to find it almost instantly. No more hunting for appdata or hidden folders for that mod folder for that game you're playing or that config file for that app you installed.
Windows Terminal + Zoxide and maybe nushell: for the things that are more exploratory or require you to maybe make some folders, the new windows terminal is quite nice. Powershell is fine, I personally prefer nushell for lots of little reasons. Either way you'll want to install zoxide as it makes navigating your folders much much easier than using cd. Basically keeps a dictionary of where you've gone, and will partial match to antyhing you type and take you there, cycling through multiple matches on repeated entries. Lets you fly around your directories so you can quickly create whatever you need (with mkdir and shudder touch in nushell).
I'll add more as I think of stuff, but those are some of the main tools that not only help with being keyboardless, but also are just tremendously useful in general.
Oh I should try binding mouse controls, didn’t realize that was an option. Though my keyboard uses VIA so not sure if those options are there OOTB or if I’ll have to compile with QMK.
I have a minimal-ish form factor ergo mech keyboard so I already have a toggle layer that I use for using hjkl as arrow keys.
Yeup you can do all directions and all clicks, so just having it on a layer is....well great is over stating it but "good enough" is probably a nice summation. I've been meaning to look into a way to mess with macros or mouse polling or acceleration or what not to make it smoother (just basically have it go much slower when i'm using keyboard inputs so it's not some jerky mess), but haven't yet. I'm sure someone better than me might have input.
There are also ergos/split ergos with a built in nub/trackpad/mouseball if you want to go that route, although I've never personally tried them I do love the idea
Thanks for the writing!! I learned a lot from your comment!
You don't have to commit to layers nearly as much as people think for what it's worth, but everyone has their own path if they want to get into this sort of thing. I highly recommend something like keychron to start, as they're a fairly large company with good quality keyboards, and they follow standard layouts. Just so happen to also have enough space to usually have a function layer or two, which if it's just for the f1-x keys, might as well use the rest of that space.
It's really no different than any other "chord". Shift/Alt/Ctrl/Gui are all layer keys as well, and if you don't want to hold the key down all the time there's plenty of ways to swap layers.
As for windows, that's really just the main daily driver for me. Linux is a lot more keyboard friendly because it's built from the ground up to basically work headless, so you can do just about everything you'd want through the terminal anyways, outside of webbrowsing (and even then it's possible just not pretty).
My dream device is some kind of dual half keyboard thing that goes around your wrist and each side also acts as a separate mouse.
You'd have two cursors and would never have to switch anything.
I've gone mouseless, or using the computer without a physical mouse, for around
2 months. The supporting tools I used are:
following) while browsing the web
warpd: a program to control the mouse in other caseswarpdcannot make itTo be honest, I don't think there is a huge boost in productivity, but it helps
with concentration as I don't have to move my hands that often anymore. Going
mouseless might aid in preventing common pains and injuries of software
engineers (namely RSI and carpel tunnel) as well. In this post, I'll try to get
into each tool I used and my thoughts about them.
It seems you’re already set on the vim control scheme, but I know lots of people have been successfully staying in emacs to go keyboard only. I think people not wanting to ever take their hands off their keyboards is also why the tracknubs on thinkpads are popular with certain groups.
I am also not 100% sure this is still the case, but Windows used to be completely useable without a mouse due to its roots as an OS prior to the invention of the mouse. There are still many hotkeys that allow navigation without a mouse.
I use Windows a lot without grabbing the mouse. If I do end up needing a mouse, it's because some software forgot to even think about keyboards entirely, or incorrectly overrides standard keys such as F10 = menu or Alt+Down = open drop-down. Windows itself is pretty immune to this and has shortcuts for a lot of global things, such as Win+Digit to activate the taskbar buttons, Win+T/+B to focus the taskbar/tray, etc.
Yes I love Win+X+U+U for shutdown and Win+X+U+S for sleeping. I haven’t found a quicker way to turn off a computer with other operating systems.
You can also open a link in a new tab using
Finstead offto bring up the labels, which should avoid the conflict withCtrl-W.Interesting article! It's been quite a while since I last tried to navigate my browser using just the keyboard. At the time, I found it quite clunky and eventually gave up. Though the article also mentions the idea of using a tablet as a pointer device. I've never considered that until now. I was able to get it working using SuperDisplay and it is surprisingly smooth, I might give it a serious try to see if I like it or not.
Emacs is a big boost for a mouseless life because of how much you can do with it. Vim is a good program as well but Emacs does way more stuff. The disadvantage is that Emacs may consume your life.
I’ve been using an eye tracker instead of a mouse for most productivity tasks over the last few years, and it’s worked pretty well. The main downside has been the hardware cost, but it looks like there’s some competition these days which uses a regular webcam.
I’d highly recommend looking into it if you’re concerned about ergonomics — having tried a handful of setups over the years (thumb and finger trackballs, vertical mice, trackpads, drawing tablets, various ergonomic mice) it’s by far the least physically aggravating option. Hazarding a guess, I would imagine the only thing better would be a brain-computer interface, but I’m not keen to install a chip in my skull quite yet …
As the author pointed out while using Vim, it's super efficient when it's prepped correctly. Windows has created a trend (maybe Mac was involved?) that almost feels qwerty-ish: slowing things down just to slow them down. I know that's not the case, but that's where we are now.
I've learned so many windows shortcuts and have always preferred using a keyboard vs a mouse. I actually run Arch Linux with i3wm, for which the latter is designed to use a plethora of keyboard links to manipulate the tiles (the windows rarely float and will sit side-by-side in various forms, depending on how I lay them out). It was a steep but quick learning curve, and once I set up keyboard preferences that made more sense to me (sorry users of hjkl, but that's a huge nope for me, despite insisting on gaming with esdf) it just flowed so perfectly. I could set up some bash scripts to set all my windows up when I boot up, but I actually just enjoy moving them around with the keyboard.
Mouse usage is so ... inefficient. At work (on Windows), I often find myself doing repeated tasks that could easily be expedited if I didn't have to constantly click here or there to start another round of keyboard kung fu. I've learned quite a few of the shortcuts, but it's still pretty difficult getting around completely without a mouse.
I'm also mouseless! I use a trackpad :)
Another mouseless convert. I switched when my mouse broke, and I had been having RSI issues in my mouse hand. Honestly, I thought I'd give up after a few weeks, but its been 2 and a half years with no complaints. With the right software, it really isn't that obtrusive and those RSI issues vanished.
We generally seem to have a similar setup, but I've marked the few differences.