QUOTE Command-Key Illusion. Since users do experience the illusion that keyboarding is faster, there is market pressure to supply them with “shortcuts.”—even when using “shortcuts” will actually slow them down. /QUOTE

Yeah… That whole Tog article is patently ridiculous.

The whole point of Tog’s article is that although it might seem counterintuitive, the mouse can actually be faster sometimes, even if it seems slower. Until you put a stopwatch on something, you can’t know how long it really takes.

QUOTE Command-Key Illusion. Since users do experience the illusion that keyboarding is faster, there is market pressure to supply them with “shortcuts.”—even when using “shortcuts” will actually slow them down. /QUOTE

Yeah… That whole Tog article is patently ridiculous.

The only way that using the mouse only would be faster is if you haven’t ever used the app before, and the app made discovering keyboard shortcuts hard (eg: makes you hold down alt before showing access keys, not showing shortcut keys next to menu items, etc).

As for multiple monitors, I am a bit biased, as I have 4 24″ and 2 22″ monitors at home, and 3 monitors at work…

However, multiple monitors suffers much the same plague as keyboard only use, most apps don’t make use of multiple monitors and even behave badly when you try to use them with multiple monitors (eg: try opening two Excel sheets and putting one sheet on one monitor and one on another, I was finally able to get this to work by editing the registry… blech).

Just look at the Windows start bar, it only appears on ONE monitor! What if I only want to see a task bar on the current monitor that shows only apps that are on the current monitor? (Yeah, I know, install a 3rd party hack… blech).

Imagine if your tabbed web browser only had one tab bar, and showed tabs from EVERY browser window on that one tab bar?

Also, I can’t believe Windows still doesn’t have virtual desks built in. I found a virtual desk manager for Windows that works pretty well (NOT the powertoy…), but without support built into the OS, it will always have serious faults since it’s just a hack.

If you have to use only one monitor, virtual desks make it much less painful, and they enhance multiple monitor use as well.

Yeah, I think you’re right. It’s more than just pure “efficiency” that we care about. It’s not just about raw speed. I can imagine that for some people, multiple monitors can really help them get into the flow) state.

Good point about visual learners being more likely to see a productivity boost from multiple monitors. I hadn’t thought about that.

It’s hard to measure a subjective quantity like the “degree of distraction”, but that doesn’t mean it has no effect on productivity. As a developer, you’ve no doubt experienced being “in the zone” while writing code, getting to that point is non-trivial and often involves matters out of your control (scheduled meetings, unexpected phone calls, noisy co-workers). I think for certain people (myself included), having to click through icons on the taskbar or alt tabbing when more than 2 or 3 windows are involved can also be an obstacle to getting “in the zone”.

Also, visual learners (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles) may be more likely to get a productivity boost from multiple monitors. I like to be able to see all related windows (code, docs, terminals) without having to cycle through any of them, virtual desktops are a godsend that allow me to do “group” different applications together, multiple monitors allow me to group more applications per virtual desktop. I don’t understand how windows developers deal with a single desktop, but different developers have different habits and workflows.

ben

I don’t think I am misinterpreting the Tog quote. Your post makes it sound as if Tog reverses his position further down in the article. He does point out an exception to the rule, but the part that I quoted is still representative of the main point of the article.

[The remainder duplicates the comment I left on your blog]

You make it sound as if the later part of the essay completely contradicts the first paragraph that you quoted. But all he says is that Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V are an exception, because you can use both the keyboard and the mouse at the same time. That hardly means that “modern” keyboard shortcuts aren’t bound by his claim.

You’re right that there is a handful of frequently used shortcuts that are undoubtedly faster than using the mouse. And I agree, it’s not a cage-match between the keyboard and the mouse.

The link you posted in the comments is also a very valid criticism of the Tog quote — where are the results? What was the method? The quote, on its own, is probably past its best-before date.

But I don’t think the conclusion of the article is necessarily that “using the mouse is ALWAYS faster than using the keyboard.” The takeaway is that something that feels faster is not necessarily empirically faster. In my article, my point was that there is a different between a perceived productivity gain and a real one.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001088.html