Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: tips for working with Mac OS X without using the mouse? (RSI)

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 109 posts

Re: Ask HN: tips for working with Mac OS X without using the mouse? (RSI)

#51

Post by 1amzave »

roelbondoc wrote: post #12

I'm a ruby/php developer who works on a Macbook Pro 9 hours a day and I've learned to work w/o a mouse. Took a while to get used to, but now I keep my mouse in my desk drawer and only pull it out if someone borrows my computer. First it starts with the setup. At work I have an external monitor and keyboard. I keep my MBP to the right so I can use the touch pad here and there when I can't use the keyboard for certain…

> Spotlight - I don't use Dock, sometimes I forget its even there. I would disable it if I could.

While my replacement isn't spotlight (I just use Proxi with a bunch of switch-directly-to-application-X hotkeys), I don't use the Dock either and would disable it if I could do so easily, without losing Dashboard, Spaces, and everything else that runs as part of the Dock process. (Although I actually still use command-M and Witch to minimize and unminimize windows to & from the Dock via the keyboard.)

In Tiger there was a nice hidden preference that allowed you to put it at the top of the screen, under the menu bar, where it would only come out if you really wanted it to (because the mouseover activation row was only one pixel tall and not at the top edge of the screen but rather the bottom edge of the menu bar), and was thus effectively pretty much disabled. Sadly, that option disappeared in Leopard. The best alternative I've found so far is to make the Dock really really tiny -- you can make it smaller than the System Preferences GUI will let you via 'defaults':

  # defaults write com.apple.Dock tilesize -int 1

Re: Ask HN: tips for working with Mac OS X without using the mouse? (RSI)

#52

Post by bingaman »

tvon wrote: post #46
bingaman wrote: post #40

Visor http://visor.binaryage.com/ hasn't been mentioned but it's how you should be opening and running your terminal. Turn on and spend a few minutes learning the keyboard shortcuts in GMail if you use it (conveniently, they map nicely to vi). This alone probably has saved me days of mousing, plus it can make ripping through your inbox kind of fun. I also strongly second vimperator (the only reason I'm still using Fi…

I couldn't live without Visor, I have it set to ctrl-~ and a full screen terminal. It's lovely, I spend most of my time there with vim and screen.

I have caps-lock mapped to ctrl and visor set to ctrl-. So my terminal is always two pinkies away :)

Re: Ask HN: tips for working with Mac OS X without using the mouse? (RSI)

#55

Post by evilduck »

doki_pen wrote: post #26
roelbondoc wrote: post #12

I'm a ruby/php developer who works on a Macbook Pro 9 hours a day and I've learned to work w/o a mouse. Took a while to get used to, but now I keep my mouse in my desk drawer and only pull it out if someone borrows my computer. First it starts with the setup. At work I have an external monitor and keyboard. I keep my MBP to the right so I can use the touch pad here and there when I can't use the keyboard for certain…

I'm not trying to besnarky, but why even use a MAC. It seems like Linux is a better fit and less expensive. MAC is really about the UI, and if you don't take advantage of that you are just left with an almost Unix environment.

Considering the time most of us spend on a computer, the cost differences between a Mac and a PC are negligible over the lifetime of the purchase, people should use what they prefer and what they're most productive with.

A $300 to $500 difference over two or three years of primary usage is probably a difference of pennies per hour of usage, and that's assuming that you won't waste more time maintaining a Windows or Linux install and that you're equally productive on each OS, which generally isn't the case.

Re: Ask HN: tips for working with Mac OS X without using the mouse? (RSI)

#56

Post by mark_l_watson »

mccutchen wrote: post #38

This might be old news to you, but it took me a while to discover after I started using OS X: Cmd-Tab switches between applications (as I'm sure everyone knows), but it's less useful on OS X than Ctrl-Tab is on Windows or Linux because it doesn't switch between individual windows in those applications. Cmd-Tilde (~) was the missing link for me. It switches between windows in the current application. Those two are pro…

That is great! I didn't know about Cmd-~ either. Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: tips for working with Mac OS X without using the mouse? (RSI)

#57

Post by thought_alarm »

When you're working/coding you should never have to use the mouse, except for say, positioning windows, etc.

Use the Keyboard Preferences to add or change shortcuts for your most-used commands. This can be done system-wide or on a per-application basis.

For example, give the "Access Menu Bar" command a better shortcut, such as Option+Space; give Window Zoom a shortcut (I use command+control+Z), etc.

In your most-used apps, explore the menu bar to see what keyboard shortcuts are already available, learn them, assign shortcuts for commands you use the most.

And make sure the software you write can also be navigated using the keyboard, assign thoughtful keyboard shortcuts, etc.

Re: Ask HN: tips for working with Mac OS X without using the mouse? (RSI)

#59

Post by gregwebs »

A lot of great tips here. I tried hard to get used to things, but I always felt that I was fighting the Mac window manager. I now have Virtualbox running Linux on my Mac. In full screen mode it is the same as running Linux. I use Xmonad, a tiling window manager with great support for keyboard shortcuts.

My other pain point was that Mac doesn't have autocopy, although I am not sure if that is good or bad for your RSI.

Re: Ask HN: tips for working with Mac OS X without using the mouse? (RSI)

#60

Post by mace »

steve19 wrote: post #25
roelbondoc wrote: post #12

I'm a ruby/php developer who works on a Macbook Pro 9 hours a day and I've learned to work w/o a mouse. Took a while to get used to, but now I keep my mouse in my desk drawer and only pull it out if someone borrows my computer. First it starts with the setup. At work I have an external monitor and keyboard. I keep my MBP to the right so I can use the touch pad here and there when I can't use the keyboard for certain…

try tmux instead of screen. Supports vertical splitting. tmux is in macports.

The latest version of screen also supports vertical splitting.
Post reply on HN