So this doesn't work for me and it doesn't seem possible to change the shortcut on Firefox :(

  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.

> the author typed a paragraph and then had to replace every “e” with a “|”, either using cursor keys or the mouse. The author found that the average time for using cursor keys was 99.43 seconds and the average time for the mouse was 50.22 seconds

Sure, keyboard-only users who do that exact task who literally use the arrow keys plus backspace are slower than mouse users, but since keyboard-only users don't do bulk search and replace by navigating to each relevant character with arrow keys, that's a meaningless benchmark.

> 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.

That's not my experience at all. Once you learn a keyboard shortcut, it doesn't take two seconds to recall it. Were his tests on expert users, or on beginners?

The issue is not speed, it's control. Precision, if you will. I can automate repeated tasks with the keyboard. Doing that with the mouse is beyond awkward; it's counterintuitive.

Mouse is for interaction. Keyboard is for automation.

(Obviously for some tasks, e.g., ones involving graphics, we need a mouse.)

Is automation faster than interaction. You tell me. Try doing everything your computer does by hand. I will give you $50 million for your efforts. Then report back with your discoveries.

Generally no one (seriously) programs a computer exclusively with a mouse. A keyboard is used. Surely, there must be a reason for this.

Of course, the "tech" company model of the world needs users to not be programmers. The mouse is taken as a signal "we have a human on the line". Automation is taken as a signal "it's a bot". Truly, the only significant difference between the two is that it is far more difficult to manipulate, analyse and serve ads to "bots" and charge advertisers money for it. Users who can program the computer to automate tasks can escape online advertising and tracking in ways that others cannot.

How much of one's internal working memory has to be flushed of the image of what you're trying to create, so that you can visually process mousing through menus much more densely packed than anything back in 1989 when Tog wrote that reply?

Even if it's subconscious and technically faster, or even an illusion - I feel like mouse is consuming more cognitive resources.

The feedback loop with keyboard can feel quite different, in flow it feels like you issue commands and look for immediate response.

Also, when doing a repetitive task you quickly pick up key rhythms and patterns without needing prodigous memory to recall every possible "shortcut".

What I am not sure the user interface testing covered is making users perform the same task 50 times per day.

I don't think that using keyboard to control mouse has the same advantages as a keyboard-native interface.

Tog insists that professional users discard the evidence of their own decades of experience using a computer in favor of the results of his stopwatch but not only declines to show his exact results and methods but declines to even conduct an experiment which looks even slightly like a professional computer using completing a task preferring a nonsensical exercise that appears designed to be automated for even greater savings. Why then after the writer discredits their ability to understand the topic 32 years ago are we still discussing their words.

It's hardly necessary to touch much on his ideas about hierarchies of complexity or perceptible time as he only needs to venture outside his own area of expertise into new and exciting theories about neurology and perception to support the otherwise forlorn and unproven theory that using the mouse was inherently faster in the first place.

If you ever in the course of your programming find the need to formulate new theories of quantum physics to explain why everyone else is wrong and you are correct you may want to step back and consider whether you have departed from the beaten path or perhaps from reality.

So why are we still wasting bandwidth on him?

Incidentally this reply was composed in Emacs. I sadly have a bad habit of misspelling words that spell check has alas done little to alleviate. Each time I misspelled a word instead of taking my hands off of the keyboard I hit a hotkey to go back to the first misspelled word tracking backwards from cursor. Most of the time the first suggestion was correct and I merely hit Enter. Once I had mangled it so badly that I had to hit a few characters to set it once again upon the right track. So 95% of the time 2 keystrokes, rarely 4 to correct misspellings after which I could continue typing from wherever I left off.

Sometimes I found that I didn't like a particular paragraph and wished to rewrite it. This can be accomplished in Emacs evil mode with cip meaning change in paragraph. This erases the current paragraph cursor is in regardless of where in the paragraph you are in other times I just wanted to rewrite part of a sentence in normal mode capital C deletes onward from point and leaves you in insert to continue typing.

it mirrors the command line experience. Command line is faster/move convenient once you've learnt how, but finding out how to use it involves reading a manual basically. Each individual task involves a search for a command line command that executes it.

Whilst the learning process for GUI is intuitive because it depends on a chain of tasks that are presented to the user as a visual dashboard.

Two entirely distinct learning processes.

[1]: https://github.com/dexterleng/vimac

[1] https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com/product/trackball

0: https://rmpr.xyz/Frankentile/

Get separate mouse and keyboard wrist rests.

Use a vertical mouse instead of a traditional one.

Use more than one type of mousing device and switch up from time to time. Graphic tablets with digital pens take some getting used to but are excellent.

Look up RSI forearm stretches and take breaks to stretch your arms and hands for a few moments at least every few hours. I'm also a big fan of gyro ball exercisers.

Get an ergonomic chair with movable arm rests that can keep your arms at around the same height as the desk your working at.

Out of curiousity, how are you binding Vimac?

I'm binding it to where the right-shift key should be, and it's worked well, but always curious about alternative setups.

If you do it all the time, it's worth fixing it.

Are not most GUIs are a 2D input mechanism?

Junior: TrackPoint

Senior: Keyboard Only

Partner: Has someone else use the computer

You might want to have a look at KeyCombiner Desktop[1], an application that can show the shortcuts for the current app without leaving it. On macOS, it even shows shortcuts for the current browser tab.

This solved the problem for me. Disclaimer: I made KeyCombiner

[1] https://keycombiner.com/desktop/

No, it's not a trackball (it operates by pressure rather than rolling), but the navigation is quite precise, and leaves both hands on the keyboard and home-row keys.

I've reached the point I'd like that for a desktop keyboard as well as laptop.

However, my first computer was a Commodore 64 and I currently have a Commodore 64 emulator I love playing around with - and doing everything in keyboard commands is a pita for things like word processors and spreadsheets even when you have the shortcuts in muscle memory.

There's a reason the mouse was so successful.

Whether or not Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V actually copy paste within any given application is about 50/50 (and not always the same between copy and paste!).

Since the big new version of Mobile Firefox it no longer scrolls when you send it scroll events (presumably there's a child frame or something).

Then again, Android is just generally not ready for production in a lot of ways other than keyboard support (the latter of which I sort of forgive them for -- phone keyboards are unfortunately quite rare these days).

So yes, we make an exception, but it's due to necessity not desirability.

Sadly, it cost money to include a keyboard, so the race to the bottom means you can't find them anymore. Just like real back buttons.

The trackpoint makes it even better since your hands do not move from the keyboard in the first place