Keyboard wish #47: Mouse keys

How many times do you copy something just because you want to paste it somewhere else, immediately? Only, you get yourself into quite a mess if there's something valuable already on the clipboard. Sure, there are tools out there that allow for multiple clipboard items. It's built right into Office and even Visual Studio. But who uses that feature really? They're... clunky. For me, I always end up running a quick Win+R+notepad+Ctrl-V. Ahh the endless uses of notepad... but anyway.... all this madness and all you want to do is get something from ------> here

to...

there <----------

Why must it take at least 4 coordinated strokes of the keys to do it? Control-C, put hand back on mouse especially if you're a southpaw ('C' is on the left side), Control V. And you overwrite your precious clipboard contents to boot. Hopefully that content wasn't sensitive, because you betcha you aren't going to take care to clear the clipboard contents. You know what I'm talking about... ever hit paste, then go, "oh yeah... I remember that." For fun sometimes I hit paste at public ter- ... nevermind.

Drag and dropping with the mouse sometimes steps in to save the day. Instead of copying and pasting that item, you could drag and drop it to get over there... no clipboard involved. It's refreshing when that works, isn't it? For example, you can select code in Visual Studio and drag the selection to another part of the source file... quite handy, especially when you are trying to save whatever may already be in the clipboard.

When you think about it, what makes it handy is how few operations it takes to accomplish, not the fact that it's a mouse based operation. You push in the mouse button, then you let go of it... jeeze, it can't get much better than that.

But the mouse isn't the only thing that you can press and depress, right? Not that the keyboard isn't already cluttered with useless keys, and some keys that are arguable. But my suggestion I think would be a great addition.

A CopyPaste button.

Select what you want, hold down the button, then release when you're done. No pesky clipboard required.

If you imagine doing this in combination with the mouse it doesn't seem that useful... you could just press the mouse button down as already described, as you move from 'here' to 'there'... if you've already got your hand on the mouse, that's easier. But if your hands are already on the keyboard, and you can easily get from source to destination with a quick Alt-Tab or arrow key navigation, this would be a huge time saver.

It isn't an original idea I'm sure... the concept of using the keyboard's intrinsic up/down nature is definitely not new. For example, the uber-useful Alt-Tab and Ctrl-Tab.

This goes along with my desire for a left and right mouse click button on the keyboard. For windows keyboards you already have the menu key, which is similar to a right click, but it activates based on the keyboard selection instead of the mouse location. The problem with clicking with the mouse is that it's actually a very unnatural thing to do IMO. You must hold the mouse in place while applying pressure to it... often times, you cause the mouse to move inadvertently while doing this, especially if you are attempting a quick double click, causing you to miss your target.

Aside: A funny story... at my very first job, I was a tech support agent for a nameless ISP. I once spent over two hours on a single call, much to the supervisor's discontent, because the poor guy kept missing where I told him to double click. How on Earth he was planning to get along on the internet is another story... accessibility wasn't exactly mainstream back then. In the end we got him up and running. Then, I stood up and quit. I worked for Dairy Queen for the next two years. No I'm not kidding :) 

But a button on the keyboard would allow you to do this separately from the mouse, allowing you to be confident in the click's location. How often do you type something while moving the mouse? I can't even think of a scenario where one would do that. So, your other hand is doing nothing... yet for some reason we require you to click with the same hand that is already busy? Bah!

I attempted once to write something to reprogram my right control key into a left mouse click (again, I'm left handed...). Alas, global keyboard hooks are not my forte and I gave up...

 

4 Comments

  • Haploid -- yes! I was hoping someone would know of a good tool. Most of these macro tools are cool but don't give you fine enough control. This one does..

    In its scripting language you can write:

    RWin::
    MouseClick, left,,, 1, 0, D ; Hold down the left mouse button.
    KeyWait, RWin ; Wait for the key to be released.
    MouseClick, left,,, 1, 0, U ; Release the mouse button.
    return

    AppsKey::
    MouseClick, right,,, 1, 0, D ; Hold down the right mouse button.
    KeyWait, AppsKey ; Wait for the key to be released.
    MouseClick, right,,, 1, 0, U ; Release the mouse button.
    return


    And the right windows key will be left mouse click, and the AppsKey (context menu-ish key) will be right mouse click. You can even hold them down for dragging and what not.

    For a right hander I'm not sure what a better combination of keys would be... on my keyboard at least, the apps key is on the right side and there is no apps key on the left. I don't really use the right windows key or the apps key, and they are easily accessible, so they are perfect.

    It is wierd. But it does feel good to be able to click seperately.... very cool :) At first I couldn't figure out how to get it to let me keep the mouse button down while the key is pressed. I gave up, chalking it up to yet another macro tool falling short. But its a very flexibile tool... so I figured it out.

    One thing I didn't expect... since the keyboard autorepeats, its possible to setup this mapping to cause continuous rapid fire clicks (although not with the macro I pasted above). That's be great for some games I would think.

    Thanks for the link :) If anyone is curious what its like, definitely try it out. Even if you're just in the "useless keys" camp, you can use this tool to disable keys. For example,

    RWin::return

    Disables the right windows key. Soo.. caps lock can truly die if you feel it must (ahem, Bertrand).

  • Oh BTW I'm using this in Vista without any issues.

  • If you're left handed (like me) you should definitely try using Ctrl+Insert and Shift+Insert for copy/paste instead of the standard Ctrl+C/V. You can keep the left hand on the mouse at all times :D

  • I agree, having copy/paste built into the mouse would be handy on Windows.

    "It isn't an original idea I'm sure"

    You're right, the X Window System (popular now on Linux) has implemented this for years. Currently selected text is in a buffer that is pasted by clicking the middle mouse button (clicking down the scrollwheel on two-button mice).

    It'd be even nicer to have virtual desktop support (like what OS X will finally have, and what Linux has had for years)...

Comments have been disabled for this content.