Introduction to Web Development

I've gotten used to using a lot of shortcuts in my past jobs with the keyboard. ALT TAB is switching between apps, CTRL Tab in Firefox switches between tabs, and Ctrl T in firefox creates a new window.

Based off of that knowledge, most of the time I tried to find shortcuts for things without using a mouse. Usually I would just press Control anything. I think that when all is lost, press control. Tab also for that matter.

I didn't find other shortcuts really - but if I do, I will definitely share them.

My goal was to try and launch my browser and get to a few websites that I visit often. It didn't take me long to figure out how to tab to the Macintosh HD, but getting it to open took a while. I tried pressing enter, different combinations of the command, shift, option, and control keys in vain. I vaguely remembered a key command to open a file from an application so I tried Command + O and it worked. From there I used the arrows to get to my broswer app. I opened it and found that using tab eventually got me to the URL. I typed in the address and pressed enter and it worked. After trying different key combos, I discovered that Command + B opens bookmarks. I couldn't figure out how to close certain windows that I had opened. This was especially true of Finder. It was very annoying so I just had to Command + Tab to a different app. Overall i liked only using the keyboard when I knew what keys to use. I found it faster than using the mouse. On the flip side though i found it very annoying when I didnt know the key commands to navigate arround.

I've learned to not use the mouse in excel through past internships, etc. Whenever I get into the rythym of nto using the mouse, I strongly prefer it, but when on IE or Mozilla, it can hard to move around the page. Tabbing takes to long if there are a lot of links. Knowing shortcuts is very helpful.

Um, first thing's first: I'm NEVER doing this again! :)

I never realized just how important it is to have a mouse. I use a Mac and am constantly two-finger scrolling through just about every page I read. The command+tab key came in handy to switch between apps, and expose helped me see everything that I was working on--but it still was very difficult to navigate around.

I am a person that moves through several applications swiftly and not having a mouse definitely impeded that process. I was very frustrated to say the least! All hail the mouse!

Wow, all that I can really say is that I have a new found respect for the mouse. I can't believe how difficult it is to surf the web without a mouse. The TAB key became my best friend during these two days. I also found that I was surfing the web a lot less because of the hassle of using only the keyboard. I'm not sure if by doing this exercise we're supposed to be learning something about accessiblity and possilby implementing it in our future websites. If that is the case, then I will make sure to factor in the fact that some people may not have a mouse, and try to make the site a little more accessible for them.

I actually enjoyed the assignment, although I wasn't able to complete the whole two days. I normally try to use my mouse as little as possible, just so I can increase my speed on the keyboard, so this assignment wasn't too difficult. I also know alot of windows keyboard shortcuts so navigation wasn't too difficult. Although I couldn't play any computer games without my mouse, browsing the web or typing up programs was not that difficult. Even though I enjoyed this assignment, I would never trade my mouse for the world.

Pure Chaos!!! Im just joking. I don't know all of the features but this is what I knew before this experience.

Tab-moves the cursor forward in order of links or clickables
Arrow Keys-on the desktop you can use the arrows to navigate to the programs or start menu
Enter-designates action to enter or proceed

Mouse-less Experience
Shift&Tab-goes backwards in the links or clickables

It would be nice for a touchscreen instead of these operation. Beggars can't be choosers, as for my case I don't even have a computer(Need one super bad). All the little tricks like copy, paste, cut and along through engineering assignments I picked other shortcuts.

So, after class on Tuesday I went to the 2nd floor computer lab in the UGL to book flight arrangements but could not last more than five minutes without using my mouse. Trying to hit tab to navigate throughout each search box was not only tedious but frustrating. Due to a time constraint, I gave in to using the mouse.

What I did manage to learn from this experience is how deeply involved all of the websites that I choose to visit can be when using the keyboard as opposed to the mouse.

I don't think any website should only incorporate only the mouse or the keyboard but possibly a balance of both. For those who enjoy using the only the keyboard, I don't think I could agree. However, I do some benefits of having the capability of successfully navigating throughout a page by using the keyboard. In some ways its eliminates your hands from leaving the keyboard and having to return to the keyboard to type something in search boxes. But, I would rather like to think I can use the mouse to speed up some parts of the process. Time is money, and I certainly don't have enough of either.

This assignment makes me want to throw something!!! Wow, I thought I would be able to last the whole two days, but I got so frustrated after about an hour and a half that I gave up completely. It was really bad at first, because I have never done that before, so I didn’t know any of the keyboard controls. And, because I quit cold turkey, I couldn’t look them up. So I sat in front of my computer for about twenty minutes and pressed buttons until something happened. I tried different combinations and got the hang of it a little. I found out how to open the start menu but then, once I was able to open internet explorer, I couldn’t figure out how to click on anything. I sat and looked at my emails without knowing how to click on them for the longest time. I had found the buttons to go up and down the page, but it took me forever to realize that the tab key would move me around the page, and I only figured that out after I used tab+shift for about ten minutes going backwards through every page trying to get to what I wanted. But then, I accidently hit something that made another window pop up, and I couldn’t figure out how to move between windows. I got stuck so long, and was so frustrated, that I just stopped and turned the computer off completely.
It was so frustrating to take so much time to do something so simple as to click on an email. It drove me out of my mind. I can’t imagine having to do that all the time. It gave me this massive feeling of helplessness. And learning all the controls takes too much time. Especially if you aren’t sure where to look them up or if you don’t have the time to guess like I did. Besides, using the mouse is such an ingrained habit that I had to turn the touchpad off completely so I didn’t start to use it and not notice. This really made me think about how dependent I am on the mouse. I never realized it before, but it really does play a major role in everything I do on the computer.

Since I taught myself some of the Windows keyboard shortcuts, this experience wasn't as bad as it could have been. Nevertheless, seeing what you want and having to hit tab a bunch of times to get to it wasn't very pleasant. Linux programs, such as emacs, were designed with keyboards in mind, so they had keyboard shortcuts for everything, which made life easier. For more GUI-oriented interfaces, like Windows, navigation is slightly more complicated, but the standardized nature of Windows meant that there were common keyboard shortcuts for every program. But when you get to the Web, mouseless navigation can get pretty nasty, especially on graphic intensive sites. Heaven forbid if you go to a Flash site where navigation is fully integrated into Flash.

Site maps are my friend now. And if you really can't live without a mouse, this site tells you how to control the pointer with the numeric arrows.

http://www.microsoft.com/enable/training/windowsxp/mousekeys.aspx

Yeah, so I tried to check my email without use of my touch pad. I was able to open the internet easy enough, but there is where it got really tricky really quickly. They just don't teach you the hot keys needed to navigate the internet when you aren't equipped with a mouse. I can't remember one teacher throughout all the schooling I've had that has attempted to teach the class how to use a computer with no mouse. This is most likely due to the fact that there aren't many people out there that would attempt such an obvioulsy difficult task. After about thirty or so minutes of tabbing, shifting, and use of the arrow keys I was reading my emails like I knew what I was doing. Just please don't ask me to try and do it again, because it involved A LOT of trial and error!

The mouse-less experience was extremely frustrating. I tried not using the mouse to check my daily websites and it was kind of a disaster. I had a very hard time navigating the pages. It probably took me three times as long to get where I wanted to go. I was successful in completing my task, but in a tremendous amount of time. Also, I tried to do some research for one of my advertising classes without the mouse. This also proved itself to be a horrendous process. I looked up a few articles without the mouse, and then I surrendered to temptation and used the mouse for the rest of my research. I never thought about using a computer without a mouse. This experience was a very eye-opening one.

well... I learned a site with a billion little clickable images/buttons is a nightmare without a mouse. Also tab became my best friend. I found that I couldn't figure out how to do certain things without a mouse such as selecting and deselecting radio buttons and check boxes. Other than that, navigating a site was frustrating and painful but doable.

Navigating through Windows in general was a little bit easier because there are so many shortcuts are availabe to use. The only difficulty with that I can think of is trying to memorize all of them for the first time.

I think it's mostly about the tools you have. Unix is designed with a mouseless environment in mind. Webpages were easy to navigate with the lynx program. As it was all text based, pictures were lost and it wasn't very pretty to look it. It did get me where I needed to go though. Pretty much anything you want to do can be done relatively easily without a mouse in unix. I didn't want to venture trying this assignment on a mac or windows box.

i have a Mac. Needless to say, I was not very successful with the trial - It didn't last very long. When I had a PC, I learned a lot of the shortcuts with the keyboard. I knew more shortcuts than most people I'm sure, and thought I could apply the same method with my Mac. I was in for a surprise. I had already had my Word program open before I remembered I had to go mouse-less, and I managed to get my report typed in and maneuvered around without much trouble. However, when it came to having to open a new program, I was rendered helpless. I didn't even know where to begin to open anything else without using the mouse. I succumbed and got a browser open. However, once I got it open, there was no way for me to get to the address bar. On PCs, as I recall, I could've held down Cntrl+D (or something to that effect) and it would've gotten me there, but not with the Mac. Nothing. There was no way I was going to get anything done without my mouse. I have a newfound appreciation for the little fella.

Pure frustration! Not being able to use my mouse or my touch-pad was definitely one of the most frustrating things about the past day and a half. I never really gave it much thought until this assignment, but man was it a huge pain in the butt. And I have to admit that the temptation to just use the mouse "just once" was too great at times. Simply checking out my usual day-to-day websites and accessing the links on the webpage took longer than normal since I was being forced to tab through everything. That was probably the most annoying part because sometimes I couldn't even get to the link for some reason. Several times I actually just gave up and went to go do something else because I couldn't get to a certain link and complete the task I wanted to complete.

Changing through different programs that I had open and scrolling through pages wasn't hard because I already habitually do that with my keyboard rather than my mouse. Opening certain programs took longer than usual because I had to tab through things on my desktop rather than just double clicking it in my quick launch bar.

One major aggravation was the fact that sometimes I would hit the wrong key on the keyboard trying to find a short cut somehow and it would open a random window or start a random proccess altogether which ended up slowing me down.

This task in general just made me want to learn more keyboard shortcuts because what if my mouse broke one day. The mouse is such an integral part of a computer usability experience. It definitely makes things much easier and more efficient to do and I feel sympathy for those of us who aren't able to use one on a day-to-day basis with their computer.