Custom "Shift+Insert" (paste, C-v alternative but work on terminal) key is my favorite shortcut. Since we never use insert for the original purpose but annoying , it's better to map this shortcut.
Ask HN: Does anyone use keyboard/mouse extra buttons for coding?
71–80 of 160 posts
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use keyboard/mouse extra buttons for coding?
#72I have a Logitech G700s mouse with 9 or more programmable buttons and different profiles based on the window in focus. My most useful mouse binds are copy/paste/enter buttons, backspace on the wheel tilt left. Win+tab on wheel tilt right helps to move around open windows very quickly. Also have 'q' and 'exit' for when I'm perusing terminal windows without my hands on the keyboard.
Paired with a G15 keyboard with a plethora of buttons, which include shortcuts to my most common applications as well as switch desktops left/right.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use keyboard/mouse extra buttons for coding?
#73Years ago I had a keyboard with dedicated cut, copy, paste buttons and a large scroll wheel. I really missed it when it broke.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use keyboard/mouse extra buttons for coding?
#74No. 1. I change platforms too frequently, so I cannot have a custom setup; and 2. when I try to run distributed with VNC or MSRemoteDesktop, there are too many conflicts when configuration, so it makes a mess. If you only ever work on one computer, it is a great idea, but you will find it challenging to acclimate to another computer.
This is my problem. I did find a programmable keyboard at one point that actually stores config within the hardware, so you could store hotkeys and move between OS's, but most of these sorts of things require installations and some kind of platform-specific config. I gave up using my macro keyboard professionally after taking on a client that uses Macs, with which it isn't compatible. Agreed with your last point thou…
I had a fancy ergo keyboard + left handed mouse + nostromo pad that I used in the ... 2000's maybe? loved it. had macros for all kinds of stuff for VisualStudio, I was an automation god among myself. Then my next job was like: different PC every day. Feh.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use keyboard/mouse extra buttons for coding?
#75I do, although I still rely a lot on pressing shortcuts traditional way.
Here is my shortcut layer, you can try to guess my IDEs - https://configure.zsa.io/moonlander/layouts/ZrQev/0NzMK/2 :)
I also have macro for ":="
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use keyboard/mouse extra buttons for coding?
#76Along the same lines: 1. How often do people use 'home' and 'end' keys ? I don't, but I know quite a lot who swear by them. Do they actually increase productivity ? 2. Should caps lock be removed as a large button in the most valuable real-estate-area on the keyboard ? I literally never use it. Even when typing long ALL-CAPS sequences. I just use 'shift' instead. 3. Do you use space bars with both hands ? I only use…
> 1. How often do people use 'home' and 'end' keys ? I don't
I'd say, what are you coding where you don't benefit from home and end?
I use both a lot while coding, usually in conjunction with ctrl+left or ctrl+right for quickly positioning the cursor where I want it, or ctrl+home or ctrl+end to quickly go to the top or bottom respectively.
> 3. Do you use space bars with both hands ?
Yes, not often while programming, but often with other applications or games where I have right hand on the mouse.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use keyboard/mouse extra buttons for coding?
#77Buy a Japanese keyboard and you have thumb toggles on you laptop/desktop amoung many other keys.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use keyboard/mouse extra buttons for coding?
#78The main reason people don't do this is that your fingers are on the keyboard most of the time, and there are already plenty of buttons if you learn how to hit Ctrl or Alt smoothly (e.g. remap Caps Lock to Ctrl) and how to create new shortcuts.
Yes. When you type 8 characters per second, it makes no sense to have to unglue your hands from the home row. On the other hand I find that raw typing speed has barely anything to do with development speed.
Navigation is hands down the most important aspect of reading programs or large documents. I've failed to find a tool that is superior to vim modal editing implemented. I use it for everything from Firefox to PDFs to vims and wouldn't change that.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use keyboard/mouse extra buttons for coding?
#79To me, most shortcuts gain nothing by being on mouse rather than the keyboard (which, of course, has much more room). However, when a shortcut modifies a mouse action or otherwise comes into scope while mousing—that is when you get useful leverage.
Here are the best uses I've put extra mouse buttons to:
1. Double-click. Great for selecting word-at-a-time and really relieves the RSI. If you double-click the double-click button, it turns into triple-click, which selects paragraph-at-a-time.
2. Close window. I live the "window closing lifestyle". If I'm not slamming a browser tab, I'm closing an editor or Finder window—which I often opened by mousing to a link, icon, or existing window a split second before. In fact, I can get quite a furious window-closing hurricane going, targeting window after window, focusing each with a click and then hitting the close-window mouse button. It's a great way to clean up after finishing a task.
3. Option-click. I use this almost exclusively for clicking on a different application and hiding the previous one, a standard Mac behavior that becomes smoother by being one-handed. It also activates rectangular text selection in BBEdit, as a bonus.
4. Exposé/Mission Control. Hold a button, have all your windows flatten out, then mouse to one to bring it to the fore. I have several quicker ways of unearthing windows, but this is a nice fallback when all else fails.
Those are the big 4. I have extra buttons I've been auditioning for some other bindings like Open In New Window and Back, but what I really wish for are...
5. Grab-scroll. I had this with the old ADB Kensington Thinking Mouse driver. Hold down a mouse button, yank on some scrollable content, and the content would follow your mouse pointer, just like today's 2-finger trackpad gesture. If anybody knows how to set this up today, I'd be grateful to hear it!
6. Drag window. It seems like we're all looking for faster ways to arrange windows these days: tiling managers, grid snapping, hotkeys bound to specific positions. In my perfect world, I could drag a window anywhere I pleased but without the expensive targeting of the small draggable region first. If I could place my pointer just vaguely over a window, hold a certain mouse button, and drag the window thereby, I'd be thrilled. I've never managed to set this one up but would love to hear ideas.
Funny enough—and maybe this is just an artifact of Mac software design—I've never found so-called "right click" profitable enough to actually earn it a button. :-)
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use keyboard/mouse extra buttons for coding?
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Blast from the past! My parents had an AgendA around 1995. I remember making a "Choose Your Own Adventure" game for the organizer part and learning the chords.
How did you get on with the keyboard? Also feel the advent GSM mobiles which brought T9 input killed that off. But read reports iirc of 60wpm being achieved by many, which whilst not epic, is darn impressive for one hand. Though looking at the Morse code wpm world record, it seems like track and field skills from the arcade days were left untapped in today's keyboard days.
I was around 12 years old, so not super well :) But oddly I ended up working on text entry after graduating from college, working on a system called Dasher.
I type qwerty around 130wpm, so I appreciate the arcade skills. I'd love to get into stenography but it seems like the amount of memorizing involved is akin to learning a new foreign language, too much to learn as a hobby.