Bit Literacy - Mark Hurst [56]
This is the Dvorak keyboard layout:43
The all-important middle row is where the fingers can type, quickly and comfortably, without having to reach to another row. Qwerty’s middle row is a train wreck: ASDGF on the left hand, HJKL;’ on the right hand. Compare that to Dvorak: AOEUI on the left, DHTNS- on the right. Dvorak’s middle row contains all the most popular letters in English, with vowels on the left hand and consonants on the right.
Typing in Dvorak is faster, easier, more accurate, and physically healthier—all aims of bit literacy. What’s more, the Dvorak keymap itself is free, not copyrighted or owned by any company, and it’s available instantly. Like all other parts of bit literacy, it just requires consistent practice for the user to reap tremendous long-term benefits.
The bit lever
Archimedes, the ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher, famously said that with a long enough lever and a place to stand, he could move the earth. The idea is similarly powerful in the bit world. Properly set up, a piece of software known as a bit lever can take small inputs and generate huge outputs. Knowing how to use a bit lever is essential to bit literacy.
A bit lever can dramatically increase a user’s typing speed by automatically typing common words or phrases. For example, many users must repeatedly type the name of their organization in e-mails, documents, and Web forms. But there’s no reason for the user’s fingers to type the whole thing every time. Repetitive tasks like this are the computer’s job, not the user’s. The user should not have to type anything that the computer knows already or can learn easily enough: the user’s name or organization, the current date, common phrases, stock answers, and other common text. So even though touch-typing is essential, an even better way to create text is to have the computer type it for you.
This is how a bit lever works: whenever you type an abbreviation and then hit a trigger, like the space bar, the abbreviation instantly gets replaced with an expansion that you’ve defined previously. For example, on my computer if I type “cg” and hit the space bar, “cg” instantly turns into “Creative Good”. The abbreviation-expansion function is all a bit lever does, but that one function holds tremendous value for bit-literate users.
Here are just a few uses of a bit lever:
Correcting misspellings: “teh” becomes “the”, and “taht” becomes “that”. This allows users to type much faster, since common misspellings are corrected on the fly. It’s fun to blaze away on the keyboard and watch in amusement as the bit lever fixes misspellings in the cursor’s wake. (Even though typing in Dvorak is more accurate than Qwerty, I still get plenty of use from this function.)
Typing long words or phrases: I use the word “experience” a lot, but using my bit lever I just type “ex”. Similarly, “ce” becomes “customer experience”, “env” becomes “environment”, and so on. Common phrases work, too: “tf” becomes “thanks for”; “tfy” becomes “thanks for your”; “tvmfy” becomes “thanks very much for your”; and so on. A bit lever can make you more efficient and more polite at the same time.
Typing entire messages: This is especially useful for custom responses in e-mail—for answers to common questions, customer service responses, and the like. I simply define the abbreviation and expansion once, and it’s available from then on.
Typing long URLs: It’s easy to point people to my various websites as I write e-mails. “geu” turns into http://goodexperience.com, “cgu” leads to http://creativegood.com, and “blu” turns into http://bitliteracy.com. I can also point to a specific page: for my Gel 2007 conference, for example, I just type “g7u” and it types the URL: http://gelconference.com/c/gel07.php