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Old March 11th, 2014 #1
Alex Linder
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Join Date: Nov 2003
Posts: 45,751
Blog Entries: 34
Default Using a computer WITHOUT a mouse

It appears to me this can be done. I fiddled with it a little. But there must be some place you can read on how to do this.

Please let me know if you know the answer. Just talking about an ordinary PC.
 
Old March 11th, 2014 #2
varg
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Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 9,738
Default

It can be done. But it aint pretty.

It's a lot easier to do this in Linux since you have the option of running 100% in text console and a lot of the programs were written before mice were used, so there's way more keyboard shortcuts to do everything and even faster than if you had a mouse. For example, to even use the most praised text editor in linux called vim, you have to rely entirely on keyboard shortcuts and there are thousands of them : http://www.keyxl.com/aaa8263/290/vim...-shortcuts.htm there are benefits to it and it's actually way faster than using a mouse once you memorize all the commands.

In Windows it can be done it just takes more patience and is frustrating..

You can move around your desktop by using the arrow keys to select icons then pressing enter to launch them.

You can open the Start bar by using the win-key on your keyboard, then using the arrow keys to navigate, and pressing enter to launch. The right and left arrow keys will allow you to expand or contract menus.

You can switch between multiple applications by holding and tapping alt-tab.

You can minimize everything and go back to the desktop with win-D, then using alt-tab to restore the application you want.

To close a program or a window you press the alt-F4 keys.

When in software or a browser you can use the tab key to select every element on the page. So for going to VNN you'd tab until you're on the address bar and you type the url in and press enter. In Firefox you can use the shortcut of alt-D to put you in the address bar field, it's F8 in Opera.

If you were writing a post on VNN you'd have to keep pressing tab for a while until it got down the 'post reply' button then press enter. On the new page you'd have to tab down to the text field where you write your message, then tab a couple more dozen times to get down to the 'submit' button and press enter on it. Same thing for the main page where we have the links for the subforums, and thread listings.. tab for everything. You can also use shift-tab to go in the reverse direction if you went past it.

Going back and forward in your page history can be accomplished with alt-back arrow or alt-forward arrow.

On pages you can scroll down by using arrow keys or pgdown and pgup.

You can refresh a page with the F5 key.

Ctrl-f to find text on a page. Keep pressing enter to go to the next match.

You can open new tabs with ctrl+t. Ctrl-tab (in firefox) to switch between tabs.

But the hardest part is emulating clicking by selecting every element on the page with tab. It takes a lot of time and effort because you have to go through the list of every element on the page until you land on the button, link, or text field you want. This is where you'd wish you have a mouse (as I have when I've had to do this while mouse was broken)

firefox keyboard shortcuts: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb...-tasks-quickly
I think you've said before you use opera: http://www.opera.com/help/tutorials/nomouse/
windows keyboard shortcuts: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/126449

Last edited by varg; March 11th, 2014 at 01:56 PM. Reason: .
 
Old March 11th, 2014 #3
Alex Linder
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Join Date: Nov 2003
Posts: 45,751
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Default

Excellent, thanks Varg.
 
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