Hacker News Reader

Comment by VyseofArcadia | Hacker News Reader

I've been wondering for a while now why these fractional keyboards are so popular. It's some sort of trendy faux-minimalism that I've never been able to wrap my head around.

View on HN

They are small and thus take less space on the desk, or in your bag (perfect for traveling and on-site-work). And not all keys are necessary for everyone. Numpad is a big part with little use for many people. And the newer generation of keyboards is often programmable, so you can remap them on very sophisticated levels on the keyboard itself. This reduces the demand for more keys even more.

For example, on my keyboard I have no dedicated cursor-keys, but they are mapped to hjkl and wasd with a thumb-key. Function-keys are similar mapped to number-keys with the same thumb-key. This makes writing from homerow much faster, and I need to move my hands not so often. I basically just must my fingers, instead of the whole hand.

> For example, on my keyboard I have no dedicated cursor-keys, but they are mapped to hjkl and wasd with a thumb-key.

That sounds so bizarre to me, as so many keychords I use every minute of every day involve modifiers plus arrow keys.

Where do you put your thumb when you are using arrow keys? Maybe it's my small hands, but I can't use my right hand thumb to hit anything when I'm on arrow keys, and have to rely on using left hand to press modifiers.

So, I use a keyboard with split space bars, and map the right one to a layer switch key, when I want arrow keys I then hold the right side spacebar, and use ijkl (similar shape to arrow keys). Feels like exactly the same [1] as using arrow keys except I don't have to move my hand.

[1] Okay, 'I' is slightly off because row-staggered nonsense but honestly it just took me two days to get familiar to it.

I'd say the majority of office jobs won't really use arrow keys. Most people will rather use the mouse to move around, and engineers would use something closer to the center of the keyboard (like hjkl).

I have capslock mapped to ESC&CTRL, so my pinky is also around the important modifiers. And because of vim and gaming, hjkl & wsad are habitual for me anyway.

Decent fractional keyboards have buttons that change the meaning of every other key, they're called "layers". You get less keys but you get more options, and 100% less wrist moving.

Before I swapped to a split keyboard I liked the numpad-less/fractional keyboards because it allowed my mouse to be in a better spot on my desk as it required me to keep the keyboard centered without having to reach so far to the right to use the mouse.

75% is basically everything except the numpad, so if one isn't a big numpad user it's nice to have your mouse a bit closer.

75% is not exactly this. It mangles the home cluster (pgup, pgdn, home, end, insert, del), often missing "insert" entirely. It also relocates the arrow keys slightly.

If you just want a keyboard without a numpad, it is called TenKeyLess (TKL) or 80%.

For me, it matters. I use the home cluster a lot, including the insert key (for copy and pasting), and because I use many different keyboards (for work, etc...), muscle memory is important, and full size is the most common. So when using a compact keyboard, I like having the keys in the same place more than saving 2 columns.

But to each his own, especially with keyboards.

My comment was more to push back on the silly assertion that the only reason someone would like a fractional board is "trendy faux-minimalism".

I have a TKL on my PC and other than Insert (which I can't remember ever pressing on purpose in the last 15 years) the only other keys a 75% is missing are the cluster with print screen/scroll lock/break.

I'd be annoyed by a 75% if I used Insert for copy/paste etc and switched keyboards all the time, but I'm mostly on Mac so I'm used to Cmd+arrows instead of Home/End and Cmd+C/X/V. But it does have the extra strip on the right for some of those keys I do use, like Del. And now I can now hit every key on the board without really moving my hands much, including those that are normally on the Home cluster.

I could even do with a 65% but I don't want to have to switch layers to hit Esc, and actually do use the function keys for an IDE.

That's fine if you don't mind bending your arm inwards for long periods of time. For me, it's most comfortable having my mouse being more in line with my shoulder than my center

A subset of those is gamers that want the mouse closer to the center, rather than off to the right when using a full keyboard. Especially competitive gamers, because it helps reduce RSI

> because it helps reduce RSI

Really?! I spend so much time on my macbook for work using the trackpad as my primary mouse and it feels horrible for my arms. I could understand t improving APM but on my personal computer I really like having things spread out, it allows me to flex my arms a lot more.

Smaller keyboards just give your mouse a larger workspace and more freedom to reposition. While there are "bad" and "good" positions for RSI, the reality is that being fixed into the "optimal" position with no ability to adjust will also eventually cause problems.

Your ability to vary position is important to staying healthy. More workspace can help with that.

having the arms straight rather than angled inwards (where the trackpad is) also is an ergonomic move...

Wouldn't you want your head/eyes centered on the monitor, not the mouse being held by your arm that's off-center?

I don't understand your comment. Nobody's looking at their mouse (or their keyboard) when gaming.

The seating position and keyboard is centered on the screen, the mouse is off to the right. I've never seen anybody try to center their mouse on the screen- then you'd either be bending your arm inward/across your body or sitting left of center of the screen

When using the standard WASD+mouse arrangement, you don't exactly want to center anything, but rather put the WASD keys at the left hand's natural resting place, and likewise with the mouse and right hand. With many large keyboards, the mouse then ends up colliding with the keyboard, so you have to spread out your arms. With a small keyboard this isn't an issue.

I'm pretty sure most of the time gamers do this, it's to give the mouse more area so they can lower their sensitivity for higher precision.

You can image search "csgo pro player" to get some idea, they're mostly positioned to be ready to flick their arm when they have to aim.

Though I'll admit that I often turn my keyboard slightly when gaming despite not playing FPS, just for comfort.

Size matters; I like the extra real estate for my mouse hand more than I need the numpad. Allows me to take a better posture and I'm no longer banging my mouse into the keyboard from time to time.

If the "tenkey" cluster was on the left hand side of the keyboard in the same way the Sidewinder X8 allowed you to configure it (keypad was detachable), that would be perfect, but nobody makes that for some reason.

And before you ask, I can't use 60% boards specifically because I need F2, F5, PageUp/PageDn, and Delete, none of which are actual buttons on that kind of keyboard. The only place a right-handed computer user is in need of desk real estate is to the right of the text-entry part of the keyboard (and where your hands go at the bottom, obviously); keyboards are free to expand upwards with function keys and leftwards with the non-text-entry part.

I used to travel a lot. I limited myself to one backpack. A lot easier to pack a small keyboard. Since I used vim and tmux for years I was already used to modifier keys.

That and I prefer the modifier key approach, you move and contort your hands less. Faster and more ergonomic.

Personally I wanted an ergonomic mechanical keyboard I could shove in my bag and take to the office, and that meant something not-full-size. Once I'd made the decision that it wasn't going to be a full-size keyboard, that meant learning layers on a fractional layout, and it was the need to hammer the layering into my muscle memory that meant my fractional keyboard became my daily driver at home as well.

I only swap it out now if I want to do things in Blender, because that's very keyboard-heavy in a way that really assumes all the keys are laid out in front of you, including the keypad.

I use a keyboard with 34 keys. Except for being split, the lower number of keys has fixed my RSI as I never have to move my fingers too far.

Why couldn't I use a larger keyboard then? I could, and that's how I started, but having unused keys is just a waste and occupies precious table space.

Of course, they're much easier to travel with too (although I haven't done that yet).

For me, I just have an external num pad.

I was finding I was getting elbow pain by having to cock my arm a bit to use my mouse.

TKL keyboard for the win

It is nice for a laptop to have real keys but still small enough to fit in a backpack, which is why I hake a 60%. It does most of what I want.

i have a full size keyboard but it takes up so much desk space I don't use it.

For me it allows me to input whatever I need to input, without leaving home row.

Since you use CTRL and SHIFT without problem, basically just imagine having a few more modifier keys. That's all.

The ergonomics of a full-size keyboard are atrocious, because they weren't designed with mice in mind. You've got a relatively unimportant set of keys occupying the exact piece of desk space that a mouse should be. Unless your shoulders are three feet wide, you'll either end up with your QWERTY keys too far to the left, your mouse too far to the right, or some awkward compromise.

If you really need a num pad - most people don't - then you can get a separate one and position it to the left of your keyboard.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com