keyboardism

The practice of interacting with computers with as little use of the mouse as possible. Dependent on your typing speed, and a bit difficult to learn under new programs/platforms, but there is no quicker way to compute.

Some tips to prospective keyboardists:

• For web browsing, use Opera!
  • Q/A to cycle through links, 1/2 to cycle MDI documents, 3 to switch focus between frames, and spacebar to select a link.
  • With Opera 7, use spatial navigation. Ctrl + arrows will quickly get you to the link you want.
  • Ctrl-B for a listing of the numerous other keyboard shortcuts
  • Searching is as easy as 'F2,g foobar'. Z/X for back/forward. Add your own custom searches to bring any website's search function to your fingertips.

Other platform-specific tips:

• Windows
  • Windows explorer (naturally launched from Win+e) is the only way to get around your local system.
  • Start (& other) menus: hit the first letter of the folder/program you want
• Unix-like systems
  • the bash shell: tab-completion is a keyboardist's salvation (along with up/down arrows to cycle through your history)
  • commandline scripting languages (bash, awk) help to make repetitive tasks a breeze
  • aside from Opera, you can also browse with lynx or links, or just grab a URL or two from the commandline using curl or wget
• PalmOS
  • The closest thing to keyboardism here is buttonism, or avoiding the use of the stylus as much as possible.
  • BlastPad, or its successor ScreenButton (both can be found at http://www.freewarepalm.com/) will let you use combinations of button presses to launch any app you like.