photo credit: zappowbang
The Dvorak keyboard, one of those weird ideas that makes sense but no one in their right mind would learn. It’s a layout specifically designed to reduce errors, encourage faster typing and even reduce injuries such as carpal tunnel. The downside is that it looks like this:
Yet, that weird layout is what I happily type in. In fact, I not only type faster in Dvorak than in Qwerty but I find it a lot more comfortable as well.
Why Dvorak?
I’m lazy. I really don’t like doing something the “right” way if I can do it faster the wrong way. Qwerty is what I learned in school but they layout never quite worked for me so I looked into what people were using as an alternative and found Dvorak.
There’s a history behind the Qwerty layout and Dvorak layout that I really don’t want to go into too much, so I’ll sum it up: Qwerty’s layout is somewhat random to avoid typewriters from jamming and Dvorak is based on which letters are used most and places them on the home row. The semi-colon on the home row in Qwerty never did make much sense to me.
How to start using Dvorak
Just start using it! Every source I’ve read says you can pick it up in a few weeks but it took me a couple of months. So either the proponents are being optimistic or I’m just a slow learner. I’d vote for the latter if I were you.
I started with handmade stickers on my keys but that didn’t work too well, the stickers had a habit of coming off. I tried popping out the the keys on my keyboard to match the layout but I found that the keys on different rows had different shapes. It was like typing on a keyboard that had bad teeth.
After fighting with the stickers until I had a quasi-reasonable grasp of where the keys are, I then kept an image of the layout as a desktop background. If I ever forgot where a key was, I’d check the desktop. Throughout this, I kept doing typing exercises until I just remembered where all the keys were.
Problems with Dvorak
There are several problems I have. I learned Dvorak on a PC and then later switched to a Mac so I know there are several problems. Firstly, the login pages on both Mac and PC are always Qwerty and I haven’t the slightest clue how to switch them to Dvorak. Ironically, Ubuntu gives you the ability to switch layouts at the login screen.
Also, on a PC, hitting ctrl+shift will switch your keyboard layout so sometimes when I’m switching through tabs (ctrl+shift+tab) in my browser I accidentally change my layout back to Qwerty. Another annoying thing that catches me is “W” is next to “V” so sometimes when I’m trying to paste, I accidentally close windows. Also, Final Cut does not recognize Dvorak at all so none of the short cut keys will work at all unless you switch back to Qwerty.
Despite some of the drawbacks, I highly recommend switching to Dvorak, especially if your wrists hurt.
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