Windows, at least, has an accessibility feature. The same way it has a keyboard that can be operated by the mouse, it has a mouse that can be operated by the keyboard. It takes over your number pad when Num Lock is off.
Of course, the vast majority of programs also have shortcut keys.
For web browsing, you can press F7 to enter caret browsing mode. This will a text caret (aka cursor) to text, and you can use the arrow keys. You also have page down and such to scroll.
This works in Firefox for sure, and I believe it worked in Internet Explorer. It does not work in Chrome, as it is not a very accessible browser and never has been. I’m surprised tabbing through links even works.
The mouse is essentially for barely-computer-literate non-technically-proficient home users. Professional computer users (e.g., document entry typists) and any other “power-users” learn all the keyboard key strokes for doing at least all the most common operations. Especially if you’re doing a lot of touch-typing, it’s much faster to use keystrokes for everything than it is to keep moving one hand back-and-forth between the keyboard and the mouse all the time.
(ETA: The mouse and GUI were MAJOR factors in making personal computers accessible (that is, easily usable) by the Great Unwashed Teeming Masses.)
Even before mouses, there were off-keyboard add-on devices – even the numeric key-pad – that professional high-speed users were reluctant to use. The numeric key-pad was only for entering large quantities of all-numeric data.
It was long a standard goal that ALL operations that could be done with a mouse could also be done with the keyboard alone. I think, as modern computer applications have become more and more elaborate, this has fallen by the wayside somewhat. Certainly, for graphics-intensive applications like CAD, I expect some kinds of graphic operations really need to be done with a mouse.
Long before the days of GUI’s and mouses and other pointing devices, applications of all sorts had long lists of control-keys, ALT-keys, shift/alt/ctrl/function-key combinations, etc., for doing all of their operations. Remember the days when each application (like a text editor, dBase-II, Visi-Calc, etc.) came with keyboard template – a cardboard cut-out that you laid over the keyboard, or above the functions keys, with all the functions listed next to their assigned keys?
And, every application had ITS OWN set of functions and mappings of which functions were assigned to which keys? So every app did a lot of the same basic functions (like “delete line/record”) with different keys?
One of the genius moves of GUI-style systems was to define all of the most common actions as functions of the GUI system itself, and define API’s for all of the apps to access those functions. And with this, came MUCH more standardized behavior, at least for all the common functions. And standardized key-combination mappings. Suddenly, all the basic functions common to nearly all applications (like insert, delete, cut, copy, paste) were available in ALL apps, and worked the same way in ALL apps, and used standardized keys. In the days when this was a new thing, it was a BIG BIG new thing. It was revolutionary!
Except for the little detail of some genius deciding to set different shortcuts for different languages… Thankfully Microsoft is actually relatively rare in doing that.
At U. C. Berkeley, circa early 1970’s they were developing a time-sharing operating system for the CDC-6400 (a machine not particularly well-suited for time-sharing). This was strictly in the text-only command-line-interface days. There was no uniformity among the various utility programs regarding the command you should type to exit the program – in some, the command was EXIT, in some the command was QUIT and there may have been a few other variations.
The developers explained this once in this clever way: It would be easy to work within some utility program and yet forget what program you were in. But as long as you knew what the command was to get out, that would remind you what program you were in. :dubious:
When I worked at Safeway the computer we used to send orders to the warehouse was a very old PC running some very early version of MS-DOS (this was the early '00s). Our computer was particularly outdated, as apparently most other stores had considerably more modern equipment.
I remember fondly the morning Corporate sent what appeared to be a kid right out of college to install software updates, and finding him in that back office completely baffled, staring at a blank screen with a C prompt in the corner, the little green cursor blinking at him mockingly. I tapped him on the shoulder, flipped him a quarter and told him to go get himself a soda. “I got this.”
From circa 1994 to 2002 I worked for a small family-owned company that made cash register software. We had a customer – a chain of retail stores seen in many malls – that still had our older version of circa 1990 or so.
That retail chain is still using that 1990 version of the cash register to this day (yes, April 2016). I saw one in one of their stores recently. It’s unmistakable. The screen in that old version was a plain old plain text DOS style screen.
Don’t all computers come with touch pads and/or touch screens these days? None of mine have “Menu” keys and they all have touch pads. I always keep a spare mouse around in case the dog eats my mouse or something otherwise weird happens.
I have an Apple laptop of some sort here, which has a touchpad with a single button to click. (The Microsoft style touchpad has two buttons.) On this machine, I can get a context menu by pointing at whatever object on the screen, then doing Ctrl+Click. Is there supposed to be some other way to do that as well?
Turn on tap to click and tap with two fingers. If you open the settings for the trackpad it will show you a huge set of gestures. Newer Macs have a force sensing pad that adds more functionality still. Actually “clicking” is so last century.
Erm… Computer programmer here and I always use the mouse. It would be very difficult for me to do my job without using a mouse. about the only key combination I use is Ctrl+c and Ctrl+v.
Emacs user here. I can code in almost anything, and can cheefully use Emacs without touching the rodent. The trouble with the WIMP interface, and one that was noted very early in its adoption, is that it is often slower than a keyboard, simply because you need to move your hand away from the keyboard and then back again.
Using a system that is built around the WIMP paradigm is clearly not going to be easy without the mouse. Browsers are not easy - although there is always lynx. It is surprising what you can achive with lynx when you really really have to.
Using an integrated development environment that leans on the WIMP paradigm will be pretty difficult obviously. So Eclipse, Visual Studio and the like will not be fun.
Then again, I did my first real programming on 80x24 terminals (and learnt to program on punch cards.) Kids today…
Menus and dialog boxes are great. There is no way you are going to remember the short cuts for the 2 or 3 hundred different things you want your text editor to do. I find text selection works better with a mouse. It is not that hard using the keyboard but it is easier with the mouse.
The reason things like vi and emacs stick around is that a lot of times you only have access to a text shell. I know that is the only reason I use vim.
I learned to love mice way back on Xerox Altos. So, I’m real old-timer in that department. So the back-and-forth keyboard-mouse thing is so second nature I haven’t been bothered by it for almost 40 years.
I have sometimes had to use a MS-Windows computer without a mouse. You learn the alt/tab/etc. key sequences and you can get around it.
The last time was when I was doing an MB upgrade on a machine and something hinky was going on recognizing the mouse (actually the USB ports). I had only one din port which I kept for the keyboard (and no splitter:(). So I had to do all the debugging, driver fixing, etc. using the keyboard. But that required only using the OS interfaces. No apps. The non-standardization there would have been an even bigger pain.
For devices like the FireTV and FireTV Stick (which are Android devices), some apps assume a mouse which neither has. You can add one to the FireTV but not to the Stick (not easily, anyway). So there are “virtual mouse” apps that let you use the remote to fake a mouse. Apparently these aren’t the only Android devices with this problem. It’s just enough to get through a setup menu (“Click on Okay”) or something. Not a thing you want to use everyday.
Heh. I remember AutoCAD 1.1 (YES - CAD!! :eek: ) and a use of a mouse was OPTIONAL!
“CAD” in the early 80’s was all 2-D drafting at best or circuit board layout and if you turned on the “Snap” command so all you movements were in known increments with the arrow keys and it worked OK. Slow but doable.
