I’ve been hearing about the Dvorak keyboard for quite some time already, but the recent post by Matt Mullenweg got me intrigued once again. In fact, it has led me to a stage of geeky near-obsession that if I were not preparing several last-minute essays and thus heavily using my QWERTY keyboard, I would’ve tried to rearrange my laptop‘s keys.
Basically, the Dvorak keyboard layout supposedly makes for faster and more efficient typing. From the reactions and opinions I’ve read, though, it seems you’ve got to be patient when converting to Dvorak from the good ol’ QWERTY. I do like the arrangement of the vowels!
Does anybody out there use Dvorak? I’d very much like to hear your experiences. As soon as I finish this insane stretch of cramming essays, I’m convincing myself (yes, I am still convincing him!) to try Dvorak. Heck, if I get lazy, I’ll just buy a new USB Dvorak keyboard and plug it into my laptop.
Another QWERTY alternative I’m looking into is Colemak, which according to some sources improves upon Dvorak, and therefore is the best of the three layouts. Right now, I am more comfortable staring at the Dvorak layout, but only a few hours spent with both alternative layouts will tell which is better for me. Again, anybody there who cares to share their Colemak experiences?
If you’re interested in how these three layouts match up against each other, check out this comparison tool. It’s a Java applet that measures the approximate distance in meters that it takes to type in the text, among other stuff.
From time to time, it’s good go against the flow, and that’s one reason I want to try these two. It helps that both have some big names as advocates!