–This is all about perspective. If one wanted to side with the mouse users, the list could have been re-written:
–1 - Take your right hand off the mouse
–2 - Take your left hand off your chin
–3 - Press and hold ALT
–4 - Press S
–5 - Release S
–6 - Put your hight hand back on the mouse
–7 - Put you left hand back on your chin
– I love this, it makes me feel so guilty!
As one of them “gamer” programmers (17 years old, been coding and gaming for almost as long as I can remember) I have found its a hybrid of both. I am much faster with most things on the keyboard. On my day to day stuff I almost never touch the mouse. In firefox I use the arrow keys. In Word, Outlook, and OneNote which make up most of my time, being a student, I rely on shortcuts. But then if I switch to 3D modeling my hand moves over to my trackball.
Disclaimer: I am not a normal user. I type on an old Microsoft Natural keyboard, that has been spray painted black and blue, and use a trackball instead of a mouse. For new users a mouse is probably easier, but for coding, and to some degree office tasks the keyboard for me is king.
And yet, I think (no, I fervently hope) that both are doomed to die because both (keyboard and mouse) are inherently un-ergonomic. The mouse as a pointing device is extremely unprecise, both devices are slow, get dirty and literally destroy your wrists.
There’s so much potential for improvement and so slow progress, I have to admit disappointment. The possibilities are endless and very far from mere fiction (although that’s where they come from, for the most part).
I like to keyboard mouse, but it always feels awkward to ctrl-o with your left hand.
It’s a good thing I’m left-handed, but mouse with my right hand.
I wish someone could conceive a one-handed interface for a keyboard. I’m working on one for myself at the moment; the hard part is finding a keyboard that might be small enough for the purpose. The ASUS Eee keyboard looks like a potential contender.
After that, is learning to type with one hand. And then typing and mousing at the same time…
–In my experience, there’s absolutely no question that judicious use of a few keyboard shortcuts will make you faster and more productive.
Why do you trust your experience? Given the cognitive amnesia Tog describes, you need to have had a third party timing your actions for keyboard vs mouse. Have you ever done so?
Jeff,
You make it sound as if the later part of the essay completely contradicts the first paragraph that you quoted. But all he says is that Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V are an exception, because you can use both the keyboard and the mouse at the same time. That hardly means that “modern” keyboard shortcuts aren’t bound by his claim.
You’re right that there is a handful of frequently used shortcuts that are undoubtedly faster than using the mouse. And I agree, it’s not a cage-match between the keyboard and the mouse.
The link you posted in the comments is also a very valid criticism of the Tog quote – where are the results? What was the method? The quote, on its own, is probably past its best-before date.
But I don’t think the conclusion of the article is necessarily that “using the mouse is ALWAYS faster than using the keyboard.” The takeaway is that something that feels faster is not necessarily empirically faster. In my article on multiple-monitor productivity (http://dubroy.com/blog/2008/03/28/the-real-reason-you-want-a-multi-monitor-setup/) that you commented on, my point was that there is a different between a perceived productivity gain and a real one.
Hey, try using your mouse with your non-writing hand. It’s hugely efficient! I lucked into this configuration by being a left-hander in a right-handed world, and I think it’s made me a better person.
Hi Jeff,
I am a linux user and do most work on my terminal console. As for me, mouse and keyboard can be both increase productivity if the user know how to fully utilize both tools. Sometimes, keyboarding is way much faster than mousing but sometimes mousing is also faster. Depends on which task you’re doing.
Anyway, I prefer putting my left hand on my chin while my right hand scrolling the mouse, browsing and reading your blog… 
You just made my day. As I was sitting here left hand on chin, scrolling through the comments (right hand on mouse wheel) and read yours…
Too bad I had to take my hands off the mouse and chin to type this response…
From years of working on keyboards and graphics, I know from experience you should use all three tools: your keyboard, your mouse, and your BRAIN.
I quite agree wit the original post, why does everything have to be conceived as a sports match with only one winner? For some functions in some programs a keyboard shortcut is faster, for other functions a mouse. Why does there have to be a winner? I blame the whole discussion on too much sports on television.
I think it depends on the application. Video editing and graphics software have little use for keyboards while word processor’s and editor’s have little need for a mouse.
I would argue that both mice and keyboards are dinosaurs in this day and age anyhow.
Why can’t we replace the mouse with an eye interface where we could just look at the spot and use speech-to-text technologies to input keystrokes?
My company has upgraded everyone to MS-Office 2007, and I’m sure in some context, the ribbon bar is ‘useful’, but I can spend minutes looking for what I want.
As for keyboard shortcuts, using the old 2003 shortcuts is frustrating because I look at what’s going on the screen as I type them: they work, but it’s thoroughly confusing unless I just feel the force and blindly use the old key strokes.
There hasn’t been REAL software for writers since WordPerfect; and WP was a comedown from WordStar. I became highly proficient in WS and WP, and I could run circles around mousy-cut-and-pasters. Don’t get me started. Word in all its varieties plain sucks - starting with the idiotic UI choices that permeate the program, e.g., entering text constantly at the bottom of the screen. DUH!!
“Why can’t we replace the mouse with an eye interface where we could just look at the spot and use speech-to-text technologies to input keystrokes?”
Eye following technology exists, now but how do you click?
For imprecise input a mouse still is best, touch screens suffer from GorillaArm syndrome and are not very precise, for precise input the best currently are Graphics tablets
Speech-to-text is not practical in a busy office the noise levels would be unbearable, and differentiating between speech to be entered ,commands, and speech to be ignored is cumbersome at best …typing is still the best of a set of bad choices
But Mouse vs Keyboard is wrong the right tool for the right job is the correct answer, mix and match as appropriate …
* Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than mousing.
* The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than keyboarding.
Depends what you are doing … try entering text with a mouse, then try resizing a picture to an asthetically pleasing size with the keyboard, then try selecting a random collection of files from a folder and copying then to another (best done with both mouse and keyboard together…)
Yeah, WordStar was great: you had no idea what your document looked like until you printed it. Stupid WYSIWYG is such a productivity-killer.
I’m not sure if this was mentioned in the comments, to many to read through already!
I wouldn’t call using the mouse over the keyboard for speed as being completely ridiculous. You are assuming that the user knows all the keyboard mnemonics over the menu/toolbar items. If they don’t know the keyboard mnemonics or if they don’t fully remember them, they have to think about if they know the mnemonics, then if they do they can hit it, if not, they then have to take the “slower” way and use the mouse.
Over all, it might take as long if not longer to try to use the keyboard over the mouse. It really just depends on the user.
I think it’s one of the biggest reasons Microsoft put the “Ribbon” interface into Office. They determined that it would be faster and easier for the user to have the must popular editor options in front of them in a toolbar type interface over Menus and a menubar.
Just a thought…
Imagine first-person-shooters with eye-tracking technology instead the mouse. Aiming would become a non-issue… sweet!
But as the other poster asked - how would you click?