I mentioned in my last post that the Ergomotion keyboard was a bit too wide for my liking making the classic mistake of hogging up deskspace without leaving room for other necessary input devices. This extra distance your arm has to travel to reach your mouse can make all the difference to your RSI.  I usually complain about this issue with reference to the extra space that the numeric keypad takes up – but more precisely the problem is that there’s usually one section for navigation keys (home, up, down etc) and then another section for the numeric keypad. Which together can be quite a hog on your desk space.

But it turns out that the promotional video shows the original keyboard design, but they pulled back the release date to make a more compact design. If you look at the images of the Ergomotion keyboard on the Smartfish site, or above, you’ll notice that these two sections have been neatly merged now and are nice and tight to the regular key, making it quite compact overall.

So there goes any reservations I had about it. It looks like a really well designed ergonomic keyboard in the truest sense, in that it takes every keyboard issue into consideration. Good job!

An ergonomic setup with all devices set in the same position everyday is not a good ergonomic setup. Change is good. They have taken this idea, and come up with an interesting idea, products that slowly change position/angles automatically. See the video below. Or on their own site.

They say they collaborated with top professionals in the field but they seem to have made the classic keyboard mistake of including a numberpad, which for people with RSI is much more of a disadvantage. See first section in my keyboards post. It’s a wee bit worrying that the quotes in the video are from the engineer and the designer. How about use case comments from rsi sufferers? Great that it looks nice but that’s the last of my worries. Not sure I’m the target market.

Seems like a really good effort at doing something new for ergonomics but I’d like to see a compact, version without the keypad.

Update: Turns out they had already resolved this issue. See update post.

Their mouse is interesting too, and I might check it out at some stage, but again they seem to have approached it from a classic mouse perspective, and added motion. But the base position presents the same problems as a classic mouse, that requires you to twist your wrist slightly, rather than the more natural handshake position of a vertical mouse. So I might hold off and see do they do a version where the base position is more vertical. But because it is so flexible, it might just make up for it. Flexibility is RSI’s worst enemy, so I’ll be keeping an eye on Ergomotion.

• Read my previous review.
• Read why your desktop real estate is so important

Over the years you’ll find yourself gathering all kinds of input devices, to try and find the right one, specially pointing devices, (ie mice / alternative mice). Don’t get rid of them. Get a usb hub and plug them all in. Then whenever you feel pain in your hands; switch things around. Stop using your vertical mouse, and go back to your basic mouse, or use your graphic pad for a few days. None of them are perfect, none of them should be used for 8 hours a day, so give your hands a rest from that exact position and switch around.

It’s a very powerful technique. So powerful, that I think people can very easily assume their latest input device is their saviour; when it probably has a lot more to do with the old switcheroo. Let that be your motto for the next month;

“If it makes you go OOH, try the old switcheroo!”

When I got the Wristwand in the post I thought I’d been had. Saw the end off a sweeping brush and you’ve got the Wristwand. But in fairness it does have to be the exact width (ok we’re still in sawn-off sweeping brush territory) –  it is wrapped in nice foam on either end.

It does give your wrists a good stretch though. You just hold either end and raise your arms over your head while twisting at the wrists. Exercises can be easy to forget, so at the very least things like this act as a good prop; a reminder. Even if they’re not the miracle cure some of the pr would have you believe. And the WristWand is less than a tenner,  so no big deal.

• WristWand on Amazon
• www.wristwand.com

Read my post on powerballs for more info.

Anyway – I’m a big fan of macros, automation, keyboard shortcuts and any software that makes computing less work, which ultimately means less strain on your body. So I’ll probably write more about that end of things from here on. This is a repost from my main blog:

You know computers are supposed to make your working life easier not harder right? But it can be easy to forget that sometimes, and some people will downright deny it! We’ve all had moments where we wanted to drop a PC out of a high story building but in general day-to-day work, if your computer is making your life harder, there’s a good chance you’re just not using the right tools. Or you’re not using a fraction of their potential. And that potential is to make your life much easier.

For every repetitive task you do, you could probably be using a dedicated application, an automated function or a macro. Some tasks are so suitable to this, that you can click a button and just watch your computer working away for a minute, doing a task that previously took you 15 minutes by hand. 15 long minutes of grunting and swearing and banging the keyboard.

Macros

One of the greatest labour-saving devices in computing is the macro. A simple definition of a macro is the ability to record your keyboard and/or mouse actions, so you can ‘replay’ the actions rather than manually redoing them each time.

I first got into the whole macro thing when I started a job as a technical writer where we were using Word to write our documents; scripts for content developers and voice over artists. All the text had to be in very particular formats, labels, layouts and colour-codes. People spent an unbelievable amount of time on the formatting rather than the actual writing. Word Styles (which looked different on every computer were driving people crazy). They spent a fortune getting some guys to build a dedicated application but that was just as bad. An unfortunate but all too frequent case of programmers with no user interface skills building a useability nightmare. So I dug a bit into Word’s automation and customization and it ended up as the perfect solution.

People slag off Microsoft products – but the level of customization you can do in Word makes it an amazing piece of user centred software. You can record your own macros, then create keyboard shortcuts or buttons to trigger the macros and you can add whole toolbars containing the buttons, or use menus to add new commands. You can also delve a bit deeper with vbscript to add loops and if statements to your macros, almost building applications within the application.

I started off recording simple macros for myself that would make text red bold, green italic etc. Then I would map that to a keyboard shortcut. Then I started adding more complex functionality. I started sharing these with the team and soon enough I took on the role of completely redesigning all the templates, and processes used throughout the whole production team, making use of every level of automation available. I got really carried away with the macros then, using them to build whole tables of information.

The main template ended up with a whole toolbar of buttons, a customized insert menu, and lots of other functionality available through keyboard shortcuts.

Below is a brief video example: At the click of a button, a whole table is split up, formatted and populated. Common phrases are added from the insert menu. That’s just one type of table, we had about 5 different types, all added with one click. At the end of the process, another macro re-formatted the whole script to spit out xml for the developers and a vo script for the voice over artist.

This is an advanced version of the amount of work you can save yourself doing if you use Word a lot and find yourself doing any task again and again.

You can record any kind of macro you want. Very detailed ones. Though beware you can’t just click all over the screen, you have to use your keyboard to highlight text and navigate around text. Find and replace type macros can be very useful too. I have a few macros that I use now to take a word document and clean it up for the web, so it replaces foreign characters and symbols with the proper Unicode / html.

When I was leaving the job where I built all the macros, I was handed a thoughtful customized gift that is one of my proudest possessions: a Macro Man superhero t-shirt! It even has the buttons on the back!

Breaking out of Word

Right so. Word Macros. Great craic altogether. Used wisely they will save you a lot of work. Invest a bit and you get a lot – but what about outside of Word? Now you need an independent macro recorder. I’ve tried a few over the years but recently found one I really like, autohotkey, a free, open source application. Downloadable from http://www.autohotkey.com/

Autohotkey, lets you record mouse clicks and keyboard actions. That simple. You can use it in a number of ways. It’s one of those programs where the more you invest in, the more you get back. I found, I really needed it a few times recently. It was a total lifesaver. If you find yourself cursing a really badly designed user interface, something like autohotkey can make all the difference.

I was working on a job recently where I was migrating from one web based resource centre to another. I had to add loads of images. Three versions of the same image every time. The UI and UX design was terrible. I had to browse through a load of folders every single time I needed to add an image, it took about 5 minutes and 50 clicks to add every image! After recording a few macros in autohotkey, I could just sit there with my arms folded and watch autohotkey do all the work. It’s great to watch!

Below is a video capture of another resource library that I used regularly, and went to the same location regularly. I often had to login and browse through lots of folders ever time, clicking those tiny plus symbols (which should be banned from all user interfaces!). The video below isn’t impressive in itself but bear in mind that I just pressed a button, sat back and watched until the folder with the images I wanted was open.

Autohotkey comes with a recorder but you usually have to edit the script a bit as well. It doesn’t record intervals between actions, so you have to add a lot of pauses, or sleeps. It’s very easy script to edit though. Here’s one example:

Send, {ALTDOWN}{ALTUP}fd

sleep, 2500

Send, {ENTER}

What this does is press ALT F D on my keyboard, waits 2^½ seconds, and then hits Enter. When I’m using Photoshop, I run this script with a keyboard shortcut and it goes to ‘save the image for the web’. Something that you do a LOT, yet takes longer than it should; a good simple example of using Autohotkey.

Another example is when I’m editing PHP that has to be previewed on a live server. That’s a lot of clicking for every edit. Now I just press a button, and Autohotkey saves the file (in dreamweaver), uploads it, waits a tiny bit, then switches to Firefox and hits refresh. So much easier. And I had it set up in now time.

You can also use Autohotkey to autofinish phrases that you type a lot. For example when I type JBA, autohotkey types my name and address and when I type btw, autohotkey types by the way for me. Again you can see that investing a bit of time here, could save a huge amount of time in the future. Word has an inbuilt version of this too, called autocomplete but obviously autohotkey works throughout all applications, so you can use it for webmail, twitter, excel… whatever.

A launcher

The final part in automating your work easily is to have a dedicated launcher for your macros. You can launch Autohotkey macros as you would any other file; by adding a desktop shortcut, or adding an icon to your taskbar, or using a keyboard shortcut but the snazziest method of all is to buy a dedicated programmable keypad. This really ties everything in together nicely. After much research I got an X-keys desktop. It’s got 20 programmable keys. Setting it up couldn’t be easier, it’s got a great interface, you just click a switch on the hardware and the buttons appear onscreen, then you can drag your shortcuts onto the keys and flick the switch again. It’s also got its own Macro software that’s also really easy to use but I mostly use Autohotkey.

X-Keys comes pre-programmed with regular functions like cut, copy, paste and undo, which I’d recommend keeping. It also has shortcuts to launch applications like your browser or email but I think this is a terrible waste of hotkeys. Any application that you open and leave open for most of the day is a waste of a key.

You can save different presets with the x-keys software, so you can have a whole keypad of different shortcuts just for Photoshop, or you can load another full of html code, and another for general use. But as they keys are labelled with stickers, if you change the presets a lot, you have to remember or write down the combinations. I haven’t properly labelled them yet as I’m still changing them a lot. One idea I find useful is to have one key mapped to an autohotkey script called ‘latest’, which will launch whatever macro you’re currently using a lot.

It was very hard to find somewhere I could buy this from Ireland. I eventually got it from Keytools. You can’t use the web form to buy directly from Ireland but you can ask them to fax or email you a form.

I was also going to write about various applications for very specific jobs but this post is already big enough, but just to point you in the right direction, there are applications for everything these days. If you find yourself resizing windows to specific dimensions a lot, then google ‘windows resizer’, if you find yourself taking lots of screen grabs and emailing them to people then download an application to do it for you. Or just have a look around download.com or tucows or lifehacker for some inspiration.

So – I’ll say it again: invest a little and you will get a lot back, stop banging your head against your computer screen, give it a big hug instead!

At the moment my main mouse is an Evoluent vertical mouse. I’ve wanted a vertical mouse for a while now. It makes perfect sense. A handshake position is a much more neutral position for your arm/hand to be in.  Look at your arm in a handshake position, then twist it into the position for holding a regular mouse and watch all your nerves and muscles twist across your arm near the elbow. Doing that for a whole day is not good.  I originally  wanted a zero tension mouse but had major trouble buying one from Ireland (like many ergonomic products) and eventually gave up on it.

I don’t actually find the vertical mouse that odd; it’s just like a regular mouse on its side. I had a sigh of relief when I first started using it. It does feel more natural. Of course there are quirks to get used to, as with most alternative mice. You can’t pick it up and move it as easily as a regular mouse which isn’t a big deal, but more importantly, you have to be very careful that you get the angle of your arm right by adjusting your chair height (or desk). Otherwise you force your wrist into an unnatural angle. Other than that it’s exactly like a regular mouse. I highly recommend one. Along with everything else I’ve been doing lately, the horrible pains have mostly gone from my biceps. I still have stiffness and aches and pains but the agonising muscle pains have subsided.

The Evoluent Vertical mouse also has a third button pre-programmed to double-click which is invaluable. I really miss it when I’m using another mouse/computer. I know a third button is not unique to this device but it’s still worth mentioning.

• I bought mine from PC world business for €90.00
• Keytools.co.uk are doing a pack which includes the goldtouch split keyboard,  the Evoluent mouse and other bits and pieces for £275 (€343)
• Amazon are doing a similar bundle with goldtouch keyboard and evoluent mouse for £174.00 (€217) but don’t deliver hardware to Ireland

I only discovered this keyboard while writing my general keyboards post. I always thought a split keyboard without a numerical pad would be fairly ideal, so you have much less distance to reach to one side for your mouse.  And I also think adjust-ability is our best friend. The Goldtouch has both of these covered. It can be flattened right down to a flat keyboard or split and tented up to the degree that suits you. You can just open the lever type lock adjust the height and angle and re-lock it. This is great because I find that a different setup suits different activities better. If I’m using Photoshop, I’d be mousing with my right hand and hitting lots of shortcuts with my left.  A flat keyboard feels much better for this. Whereas if I’m doing lots of writing, I want it pitched right up like a tent.

The keys are also nice and light. I still can’t believe how loud and heavy the Microsoft Ergonomic keyboard is. I have that at home now (though I try not to use the computer at home too much these days).

Cons

It’s not perfect.  Somethings gotta give when making a compact keyboard. The hardest difference to adapt to that I found was that the delete key was moved to the left.  Doing Ctrl alt and delete is an awkward move, as is regular deleting just because your right hand automatically veers to the right. And shift and enter and keys like that aren’t as easy to find. with your fingers. But I’ve been getting very used to all that after a few weeks.

Bye bye keypad

I also miss my keypad (not as much as I am glad it is gone however). I used with Mousekeys a lot. Mostly for hitting the number 5 when I needed to click the mouse in multiple succession. (If you don’t know about Mousekeys, see my post on Windows Accessibility options). However I plan to buy a separate keypad to make up for this. The main point is that having an unmovable keypad takes up extra desk space making you stretch over to one side for your mouse. Whereas you can put a seperate keypad whereever you want.

Summary

I’m very happy with it. And I’ve experimented with a lot of keyboards. I think it’s probably the best one out there for us folk. I can’t stress how important adjust-ability is for beating RSI. And I’ve definitely started getting better recently. But I also have a new vertical mouse (review to come). And I’ve been very diligent with my daily routine and everything else, so it’s a combination of many things.

• I got my Goldtouch keyboard at PC World business for €172.58
• More reviews at amazon
• Manufacturer site www.keyovation.com
• Buy from Amazon

I was browsing through Maplins at the weekend and saw a very cheap  mini keyboard that I decided to experiment with. (€16 / 10UKP)

I’ve already mentioned on my keyboards post that I want a keyboard with no keypad so this was a cheap and easy option. It’s actually being marketed as a Mini Desk-Saver Keyboard and the only reason I bought it was to save desk space, or to be more precise have a keyboard and mouse that I don’t need to reach to the side for. It seemed good at first (though I knew it couldn’t be long term) as I didn’t have to reach to either side for anything and I could actually fit a graphics tablet, keyboard and mouse comfortably in front of me.

But the size of the keyboard forced my hands really close together which put my wrists into a very unnatural angle. I didn’t realise just how much this would happen. This is called Ulnar Deviation and it’s precisely what split keyboards are designed to avoid. That’s why laptop keyboards and mini keyboards like this are terribly unergonomic. I thought I might end up with sore wrists but it was much more far-reaching than that. I was in bits for the whole evening yesterday, specially in the upper-back and shoulders and I had an ice pack on my muscles, well a bag of frozen spinach. So experiment over – avoid mini keyboards!

Other negatives

To save space, they also grouped several keys with other keys that could be accessed with the Fn key. But this was done with two keys that I use a lot; Home and End. And other keys were moved slightly; it just seems wrong to have Page Up and Page Down side-by-side rather than over-and-under.

Also, like a lot of keyboards, you can tilt the keyboard up towards you by putting little feet up at the back. This is wrong. Badly researched design that’s copied from one product to the other. So many manufacturers do this. The keyboard should tilt back away from you. Otherwise its forcing your wrist up at an angle.

I dread to think what mini laptops are going to do to a generation. I just had a quick look at the website for the Eee PC and even the image they are using is screaming No No No. If that kid keeps up that hunched posture and bent wrists he’ll be a cripple before he has acne.