Full disclosure: I have a Georgi steno keyboard from him, and I’m using an Ergodox as my main keyboard both at work and at home. No issues with the thumb cluster for me.
Could you share more details on how programmability helped you get rid of the mouse? I recently switched from Kinesis Advantage 2 to Ergo Dox and absolutely love it. I’d like to take my setup one step further so any advice is appreciated.
It’s a collection of four things. Firstly, having arrow keys, pgup/pgdown, home/end available through a layer allows me to navigate without having to move my hands. Second, I have a mouse layer - I can move my mouse around so that when I come across the (all too common) SaaS app that has javascript and tab overrides I don’t have to lift my hand. Third, I learned a lot of shortcuts. I did this by unplugging my mouse. Eventually, you figure it out and you end up being faster than with it. For example when browsing HTML, ctrl + f => esc => enter to click has changed the way I browse the web. Last, I use a tiling window manager. I used to use i3 when I was using linux, but now that I’m on OSx I use Yabai, which I recommend.
For clicking links, you may be interested in using a web extension or browser with “hints” and/or by the quick search facilities in firefox (/ (quick search) and ; (quick search, only links)).
vim-ish webextensions with hints: Tridactyl (disclaimer: I am a developer), cVim, surfingkeys, vimium
Started out with an ErgoDox a little over a year ago. Starting with colemak for the first time, as well as adapting to a split keyboard that traded many keys for fewer keys and more layers (regular keyboards only really have one layer - Shift) was a steep learning curve, but definitely worth it.
After a few months I wound up landing on the “3x6 + thumb-cluster” structure and found the ErgoDox just had a whole lot of keys I never needed to use. Since then I’ve built a Keebio Iris and a Gergo - both are running exactly the same configuration (built from my fork of qmk_firmware), and any further boards I build will definitely be structured as 3x6 + 3 thumb-cluster (A dactyl manuform is starting to look appealing.
I haven’t used a full-size QWERTY keyboard for months and months now - not sure how well I would manage. After a year, my typing speed is getting toward where it was before the switch (I used to peck-type, now I touch-type) and perhaps I have less back issues / strain. I would recommend trying out some variant of split-ergo if you’re at all interested.
In general I think this layout demonstration would benefit from a few examples. :)
Also, this is probably the best website about custom keyboards, although I probably wouldn’t recommend the butterknife. ;)
If you are looking for a community https://deskthority.net is great.
Full disclosure: I have a Georgi steno keyboard from him, and I’m using an Ergodox as my main keyboard both at work and at home. No issues with the thumb cluster for me.
Currently using an ergodox. The ergodox’s programmability has been instrumental to my full switch from mouse + keyboard to keyboard only.
What’s pretty incredible is that I iterated on my layout without any outside inspiration and our symbol layer is exactly the same.
Could you share more details on how programmability helped you get rid of the mouse? I recently switched from Kinesis Advantage 2 to Ergo Dox and absolutely love it. I’d like to take my setup one step further so any advice is appreciated.
It’s a collection of four things. Firstly, having arrow keys, pgup/pgdown, home/end available through a layer allows me to navigate without having to move my hands. Second, I have a mouse layer - I can move my mouse around so that when I come across the (all too common) SaaS app that has javascript and tab overrides I don’t have to lift my hand. Third, I learned a lot of shortcuts. I did this by unplugging my mouse. Eventually, you figure it out and you end up being faster than with it. For example when browsing HTML, ctrl + f => esc => enter to click has changed the way I browse the web. Last, I use a tiling window manager. I used to use i3 when I was using linux, but now that I’m on OSx I use Yabai, which I recommend.
For clicking links, you may be interested in using a web extension or browser with “hints” and/or by the quick search facilities in firefox (/ (quick search) and ; (quick search, only links)).
vim-ish webextensions with hints: Tridactyl (disclaimer: I am a developer), cVim, surfingkeys, vimium
browsers with hints: qutebrowser
+1 for Qutebrowser. iIt doesn’t really have power-user extensions, but it’s really simple, clean UI, easy to use, a lot of configurability.
See also chordite: http://www.chordite.com/
That’s really interesting, it’s a shame that the latest version was Last-Modified: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 16:42:16 GMT
Oh I missed the 2016 update using the Adafruit BLE board…
Started out with an ErgoDox a little over a year ago. Starting with colemak for the first time, as well as adapting to a split keyboard that traded many keys for fewer keys and more layers (regular keyboards only really have one layer - Shift) was a steep learning curve, but definitely worth it.
After a few months I wound up landing on the “3x6 + thumb-cluster” structure and found the ErgoDox just had a whole lot of keys I never needed to use. Since then I’ve built a Keebio Iris and a Gergo - both are running exactly the same configuration (built from my fork of qmk_firmware), and any further boards I build will definitely be structured as 3x6 + 3 thumb-cluster (A dactyl manuform is starting to look appealing.
I haven’t used a full-size QWERTY keyboard for months and months now - not sure how well I would manage. After a year, my typing speed is getting toward where it was before the switch (I used to peck-type, now I touch-type) and perhaps I have less back issues / strain. I would recommend trying out some variant of split-ergo if you’re at all interested.
What do the colors in the layout charts mean?
In general I think this layout demonstration would benefit from a few examples. :)
Also, this is probably the best website about custom keyboards, although I probably wouldn’t recommend the butterknife. ;) If you are looking for a community https://deskthority.net is great.
I use a TypeMatrix 2030. Only a little weird for the first day, but the Enter key in the middle is great.