So I'm looking at the
current proposed layout, and im thinking there is a discrepancy between the goal of
working for everyone, and the results it delivers.
For
any language not using A-Z it doesn't work as well as English does.
For
English users, there are foreign symbols, which considering they are largely monolingual, is unfortunate. And there are less familiar keys on the right side [ { } ]
For
German users extra provisions are also made, but its not in the right orientation compared to a german layout, also its ö ü ü.. missing the ä
Its probably to get
French closer to almost where it should be, but in my opinion both of those fail at even being a subpar way to write, on account of cancelling each-other out.
For French, on the part of their layout that isn't skewed, its not on the right buttons, it should be numbers. And considering its a one button+another button affair anyway, that is worse.
So all in all its forgetting how half of the audience types, and annoying the remainder. No typewriter or keyboard has ever gotten away with the former. JIT ANSI and ISO keyboards are for language compatible on the functional level.
For the people functional typing cant be incorporated for, on the current proposed layout, there is no language layer, leaving out
greater europe, or
anyone willing to type in this manner by doing some changes to it.
Efficiency is made worse by moving , and . to the opposite side of enter and shift. When that is where space is, it seems like a given , and . should be there, lest we forget , and . actually belong on the right.
Being able to
find backspace, especially with that symbol, is both strange when you know about it, and something that fails when you dont.
Novices are lost when
Fn, or Meta deals with symbols, this could have been directly familiar to half the audience with AltGr, instead its reminiscent of a bad feature of mobile keyboards, and
none of the real ones.
For
advanced users, the alternate graphics are gone. I don't think all of that is better typing of
F-keys. Especially considering there are
accidental things to be had, the latest is if you want to alt+tab out of a game, you forget which shoulder is which and Fn+(tab)esc.
For nobody
symbols on letters is more familar, yes, even the ones used to mobile devices too.
And for everyone, it looks cluttered.
Who are we left with to benefit when this should fit everyone?
Esc is inefficient since if you use keyboard only (like i imagine most people type, (similar to a pandora where they were shoulders were similarly unmarked) or at least they do when its on a bench) ties up both thumbs at the worst positions.
Having
tab a little better positioned compared to a normal keyboard turns out to be slightly more familiar, but is the one button that should be on the opposite side of something, namely dpad. On a regular desktop keyboard one hand can do arrowkeys, and the other can do tab. With the tab bottom left, albeit not as elegant, you can palm it with the base of your thumb and still use the thumb for tabulator, then have the other available for backspace. Quite nice for cleaning up code or similar.
Select Start is in the
wrong correct orientation. (i should proofread more closely)
There are a bunch of other things like
Fn mediakeys,
shift+combos and
altGr+combos etc to consider losing too.
I know a lot of these are accepted as legacy solutions, not noticed as drawbacks to a lot of people, but still here we are, with the demographic most likely to be in favour of them, talking about
other people.
In terms of design, thats a poster saying
Bidoofs only, party at 9.
Test it on those other people, on its own or agaisnt
this, if you want to piggieback on my research. In my opinion and experience pandoralayout, and especially the current proposed one, works for some people who it is not worse for to incorporate more people. And as clearly as it can be put, the current proposed layout is
broken right now for those people.
There is a huge market for keyboards on mobile devices these days, TOHKBD, which is for a relatively old and obscure phone, did so with a keyboard alone.
Catering to the people who buy them, with different layouts, for a smaller project, could never have been done without having more keys than A-Z. Keymats pay for themselves, twice over.
.
