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I've found validation in this point of view in an unexpected source, World of Warcraft (WoW).

WoW has the ability to redefine the user interface through keyboard short-cuts, LUA code, and UX changes. There is an active community providing different takes on the UX.

WoW has a built in 'time test' which consists of 'boss' encounters in what the game calls a 'raid'. [1]

In polling characters who were better able to perform during an encounter, there was a strong correlation between "keyboard" users and better performace. Better was defined as able to respond faster and more consistently to changing conditions.

It would be interesting to have Tog have a look.

[1] For anyone not familiar with WoW and its gameplay, a group of 10 or 25 people, of different specialties (game specific; damage doers, healers, and damage takers (tanks)) who coordinate during an encounter with a powerful game character (a boss) by fighting it. Healers are focussed on applying various skills to keep the players alive (they take damage due to various game mechanics), damage doers (dps) use different skills to maximize their damage, and tanks use their skills to keep the game characters focussed on attacking them rather than the other players. After a set amount of time, the game character 'enrages' which basically makes it impossible to kill and it does 10x the amount of damage it normally does. This results in a 'wipe' (all player characters in the group dying).

If you suggested to a Starcraft 2 pro that they should stop using the keyboard shortcuts because they are slower, you would be laughed out of the building. Erik Naggum was on the ball with that one - it is impossible to acquire muscle memory for mouse movements because there is no base position from which all movement actions are performed.

Wouldn't they also laugh you out of the building if you suggested they should stop using a mouse?

I'm replying to the specific points about Starcraft 2 here, but really this is off topic considering that nobody is actually saying Professional Gamers in the year 2011 should be compared to word processor "power users" in the year 1989.

Professional Starcraft 2 players need to use hotkeys because they have to be able to do multiple tasks at once - they're macroing with their left hand while clicking around the mini-map and performing other tasks with their mouse hand. You couldn't play SC2 (well) with just the keyboard or just the mouse.

As for the muscle memory for mouse movements, there's no question that Pro SC2 players have exactly that. If you watch a pro give his opening workers commands, it looks like what he's doing should be impossible. You or I couldn't sit down at a computer and do it. But they can precisely because of muscle memory: they know how far a mineral node is from the starting base and exactly what mouse movements are needed to select a worker and send him to a specific mineral patch, then select the next and so on. It's true that in Starcraft 1 this muscle memory was even more necessary as SC2 has automated (to a high degree) many tasks that once required precisely practiced mouse movements, but you still see SC2 players using those skills that they learned from Brood War.

Keybinds are important in WoW but no less so then the mouse. The primary benefit of keybinding is to keep your mouse for faster turning and target changing (turning with the keyboard is slow). High end healing is based around click casting mods. The mouse is so vital to WoW that MMO mice have progressively added more and more buttons because it's essential to have your hand on the mouse when in combat.

Good point. It suggests that a keyboard that was a mouse might capture both qualities. I can't imagine how you might accomplish that (attach your keyboard to your wrists somehow?) but it sounds like an interesting (if cutting edge) experiment.

For the record I own one of the weird things Microsoft built the 'Strategic Commander' [1] which, if one could have two of them, and the protocol was documented, my make for an interesting test platform.

[1] http://guru3d.com/review/microsoft/commander/

The Strategic Commander looks like an awesome beast. And I like your idea of keyboards that were mice. If there were some way to move beyond the obvious ergonomic issues, that is. It would definitely be for the power user. Or power gamer. I mean, these guys already learn some pretty insane (to me) mice[1][2] to get an edge.

[1] http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=gaming+mice&um=...] [2] http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=gaming+mice&um=...

The mouse is so vital to WoW that MMO mice have progressively added more and more buttons because it's essential to have your hand on the mouse when in combat.

That's not the 'mouse being vital', that's 'missing out on keystrokes' and putting a keyboard on the mouse.

Actually it is the 'mouse being vital'. It's so vital that you don't "use it sometimes" and float back and forth ala classic mac interface the article discusses. Your hand is always on the mouse during combat.

Semantic games are fun but unless you're actually contesting that the mouse is vital you're just tilting at straw men.

Actually, it's "mouse being required". As in there are functions that Blizzard will not allow you to keybind like turning your camera or character. In games where this restriction is not in play, players have keys to face an enemy or do a 180.

In most non-casual games it's all about maximizing how many commands you can issue. WoW (and SC2) have interfaces for which a large part of the interaction is only efficient at all with the mouse. If you then depend on the mouse for other things, you've created a bottleneck.

All good WoW players bind all their skills to keys rather than clicking them because if they didn't do that they couldn't use that skill while running, or while selecting a new target. It's not about the cost (or lack thereof) of mode-switching between keyboard/mouse, or the cost (or lack thereof) of consciously manipulating the UI -- it's purely about being able to walk and chew gum at the same time.

I spend most of my computing hours using the keyboard 99% of the time. I can completely agree keyboard interfaces are very rewarding.

However, I believe there is "muscle memory" that can be learned using the mouse. For example, playing a lot of first person shooter games in my day, one can learn and memorize the nuances of moving the mouse. Correlating the amount and direction of movement of the mouse with the response of the screen is, I believe, a skill that can be learned and is quite rewarding.

The way you move the mouse has less to do with how you interact with the interface - yes, you may be able to optimize mouse moves, but that's not enough.

What happens is that a mouse-friendly interface is organized in such a way that finding the right action to click on involves traversing a tree of choices. Even if you memorize the exact location of the action you want in that tree, for many actions you still need several clicks to perform something instead of just one.

And that's not the end of it - you clearly need keyboard input too, in many cases. For example in WYSIWYG editors, you type-type-type, then you need a new header, move your hand on the mouse, select the right header in the select-box (during which your eyes also move from the current line), then get back your hand in typing position and start typing again, until you need another mouse action.

This is the reason I wrote my last resume in HTML and didn't even bother opening office, even though HTML sucks for typography (I'll probably switch to Latex next time).

That said, the mouse is better for browsing around, exploring stuff or for interfaces such as Photoshop. I also don't mind the mouse for interfaces where I don't need to be productive. Someone mentioned CAD in this thread - I disagree as AutoCAD is more productive with keyboard input.

Unrelated, but one of the things with FPS's and such that annoy me the most is that you are required to use the mouse to achieve top efficiency. It would be great if someone made a game or extended the options to allow for better keyboard navigation / aiming. Like key combinations to tweak the interval size for a directional key (speed). I.e. shift+w, alt+w, ctrl/cmmd + w, maybe vim-like w20, etc. Also for increasing turn intervals like 45, 90, 180, and custom degree immediate turns.

I'm pretty sure that Quake 3 is basically unplayable on my phone because I don't have a mouse. Your suggestion might work fine if you were just shooting stationary targets, but for moving objects, no way.

You used to use the keyboard for all actions in FPS's. The first Quake is an example of this. And it was goddamn terrible, which is why everyone started playing shooters with mice as soon as possible.

Wasn't it back around that same time period that some people also tried playing FPS games with a joystick? Probably would have worked ok for Doom, but I can't see it working as well with anything that allows vertical aiming.

The controls from the original Quake is not what I'm suggesting. Controlling your movement and aim via keybaord right now IS terrible and I'm not disputing that.

What I'd like to see as an experiment is having a much finer grained control over your keyboard sensitivity.

As an example, let's say you have "a" mapped as your left turn (not strafe) key. So pressing and holding "a" gives you the standard movement speed you've come to expect. Pretty terrible.

Now let's say holding shift and pressing "a" gives you a turn speed that's twice as fast. Already this is a pretty significant improvement and offers you some control over you turn speed using only the keyboard.

Now let's add a couple more modifiers; crtl/cmd for 3x speed, alt/opt for 4x speed. Let's also add some new keys for turn 90 degrees, turn 180 degrees, turn 270 degrees, and these are all instant, just like a fast mouse turn.

A mouse still allows for much more granular control when it comes to aiming etc. but for someone who spends to time to really adapt these keys it would close the gap significantly and may even make keyboard aiming / turning a viable option.

I could be completely wrong though and it might just feel terrible, but I'd love to test it out to see.

The difference between FPS mousing and other kinds is that in an FPS the goal is actually to use the mouse as accurately as possible. In most other tasks using the mouse is not actually part of what you're trying to achieve.

In an FPS, it's the relative motion of the mouse the matters. That's what the mouse excels at: motion from where it currently is to the DIRECTION you need to go.

Elsewhere, you actually have to click on things. Personally, I find that that takes up a huge amount of cognitive space.

Typical point-and-click interaction is conscious, yes, but mouse gestures generally aren't, since you don't have to know where the cursor is in order to use them.

This is why I like Opera so much.

That's one of the reasons I used to like Opera. Now I like it because shift+arrowkeys basically mean that I never have to even touch a mouse to browse the internet. It's completely keyboard-accessible.

I use the Vimium extension in Chrome to gain that same keyboard navigability.

To prove your point I upvoted and replied to your comment just by using the keyboard.

I don't mind using the mouse so much as I do moving my hand from my keyboard to the mouse and back.

Similarly, there's Pentadactyl and Vimperator for Firefox.

It's also an incredibly powerful addon when you dig down into what you can do with it. Last I checked (which was quite a while ago, to be fair), Vimium sadly didn't have the more technical aspects, but it's pretty much equal for keyboard browsing.

This is a great point - when I was trying to articulate (to myself) why I prefer the keyboard it wasn't necessarily any speed advantage, it was more like the "flow" advantage. Your point speaks to that.

I think there's also a big difference in the amount of physical effort needed when using the mouse. With the keyboard it's easier to keep most of my arms relaxed, and when I need to switch to the mouse everything from the shoulder down has to contract into action.

Possibly you could stand to up the sensitivity? I can accomplish most of what I need from a mouse using simple wrist rotation.

That said, I live in emacs and spend most of my day on the keyboard. Maybe I'm doing it wrong in a way that only works for limited mouse use.

An interesting perspective (even if, I think, hopelessly wrong-headed).

Maybe that's why I hate Windows so much -- the position of the menu bar, for example, means I have to stop and think to pull menu items in a way that I never have to on the Mac (thanks to Fitt's law). Similarly, the over-reliance on toolbars and ribbons.

> Unlike the keyboard, the mouse scarcely rewards learning at all

I find it hilarious watching experienced vi and emacs folks furiously typing macros to perform text operations that are trivial with a mouse or graphical editor. The problem isn't that the mouse doesn't reward learning, but that what you learn is harder to define.

There are Vim folks who know when to use the mouse, though...

I use emacs. I don't really feel the need to defend it however. But honestly furiously typing is just not correct. Most of it is just muscle memory, not a lot of conscience thought. It takes a lot longer to switch to the mouse and click a position than to just use the built in commands.

There is also the aspect that the only time my hands hurt, or I experience carpal tunnel symptoms is when using the mouse extensively (especially when gaming). I have never had pain when using the keyboard.

"It takes a lot longer to switch to the mouse and click a position than to just use the built in commands."

Sure. Never mind that mediocre Starcraft players like me can perform about 100 mouse actions per minute of the sort you just described.

That argument really doesn't match reality anymore.

You can only build a muscle memory for keyboard commands, if there are uniform shortcuts across different programs. Which is the case with commands such as ctrl-c, ctrl-v, ctrl-w etc. However creating such uniform shortcuts won't fit the variety and complexity of today's applications - shortcuts are easy if you're dealing with trivial tasks like text editing in vim and emacs. However especially on the web (where many users probably spend most of their time) building an intuitive and usable interface for keyboards would be nearly impossible, given the variety of web applications.

Related anecdote: in Vim, ^W is the fairly useful 'delete previous word'. Pretty much everywhere else, it is 'destroy window'. This had led to many an issue.

Also related: In Emacs C-n is next line, which I would use to scroll through a small portion of the document. Most everywhere else it spawns a new window, so in Firefox I would want to scroll down 5 or 6 lines and end up with a bunch more windows open.

This is why I've stopped using programs that don't have the decency to at least pretend to be Emacs.

Although, if you learn Vim, there are Vim extensions for just about every program you might use - Firefox, Chrome, Eclipse, etc. I love being able control many programs with Vim's or Vim-like keybindings.

Vim navigation (j/k, etc) seems to be fairly standard for "move through items in a list". It's in Gmail, DuckDuckGo, and some others I can't remember offhand.

Are there any other examples I'm missing?

A couple of terminal applications that aren't vim that also use j/k are screen and w3m. Screen on its ctrl-a " selection screen and in ctrl-a esc mode, w3m on just every webpage (though it also uses emacs ctrl-v to scroll down a page).

> Are there any other examples I'm missing?

Twitter, Github and Kalimba¹ are the ones I can immediately recall.

¹Kalimba is Embedly's HN frontend, very nice for quickly going through stories: http://hn.embed.ly/

This is only true for mouse based interfaces that require hand-eye coordination (click this, drag it there) -- gesture based interfaces (click and drag left/up/etc) don't suffer from this problem at all.

I believe I perform Opera mouse gestures using just muscle memory, I really don't have to think at all.

Before mouse gestures, yes, I would have agreed with that text, but not now. I genuinely browse faster with just the mouse and the gestures than with only keyboard, or with mouse+keyboard without gestures.

Note: the Chrome gestures plug-in is not up to the quality of the Opera native implementation. There's no comparison.

> one which cannot be fully relegated to "muscle memory."

I find mouse clicking as much "muscle memory" as using the keyboard; changing the position of buttons and items causes issues. For example, when I upgraded to Firefox 4, accessing bookmarks was moved, and for a few days I didn't automatically bring up HN without thinking.

I find that I unconsciously make the cursor track my eyes. I don't know if this falls into the realm of muscle memory but it makes using the mouse a lot less effort because the I am usually looking at where I am about to click.

Fun fact: this is the real reason why vinyl is so loved by DJs.

soul-destroyer

That's a very good term. I've often seen it applied to commuting, for largely the same reasons.

It's also completely meaningless.

Really? I think it captures the feeling of having your feeling of purpose slowly sucked out of you fairly well.

Having experienced it with 6 months of a 5 hour commute in NYC (from Upper East to bumfuck Long Island and back), I can assure you it isn't.