Thursday, March 28, 2013
QWERTY
QWERTY .... is the most common modern-day keyboard layout. The name comes from the first six keys
appearing on the top left letter row of the keyboard and read from left
to right: Q-W-E-R-T-Y. The QWERTY design is based on a layout created
for the Sholes and Glidden typewriter and sold to Remington in the same year, when it first appeared in typewriters. It became popular with the success of the Remington No. 2 of 1878, and remains in use on electronic keyboards due to the network effect of a standard layout and a belief that alternatives fail to provide very significant advantages. The use and adoption of the QWERTY keyboard is often viewed as one of the most important case studies in open standards because of the widespread, collective adoption and use of the product. (source WIKI)
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The QWERTY layout was designed to slow typists down. If a typist got really proficient, he/she would get so fast that the typewriter would jam up. Most of the most commonly used letters are on the left side of the keyboard, and for most people, the left hand is the weaker hand.
ReplyDeleteThe Dvorak keyboard layout will allow for greater typing speeds than the QWERTY layout for someone who has not been trained to touch type on a QWERTY layout.
what keyboard?/
ReplyDeleteJust above the touch pad.
DeleteDid you say something?
ReplyDeleteYes, it's pretty sad that such a messed up system - with no discernible usability advantage is now the global standard.
ReplyDeleteThere are two massive drawbacks to QWERTY which may see its eventual demise:
1. It has a massive learning curve measured in months ... even years
2. It is not the most popular or common keyboard - that title belongs to the Alphanumeric (or T9) keypad found on most old-school mobile phones. More than 5 billion people use (or have used) this system - without requiring a single lesson. It has a tiny learning curve - measured in minutes.
So bear in mind the vast majority of the planet is yet to encounter QWERTY and when they do it won't be on a big desk-bound device with buttons anymore - it will be a shrunk down/squished up version on a smartphone or tablet. This is a global usabuility disaster waiting to happen.