This is the new keyboard layout I’ve ever heard of since QWERTY. I thought QWERTY is the most usable keyboard. But on reading about this keyboard layout, it’s promising. Reducing your typing effort

The Dvorak keyboard is patented in 1936 by Dr.August Dvorak and his brother in William Dealey. The proponents of the keyboard says, the keyboard layout only requires small amount of movements to reduce the typing effort compared to standard QWERTY keyboard. Also it purported to reduce the repetitive strain injuries. Even though it was offered with major operating systems includes Windows, Linux and MacOS etc in addition to QWERTY keyboard, it failed to become popular

Some of the advantages on using Dvorak Keyboard are

QWERTY Keyboard is for Typewriters – QWERTY keyboard was born in order to solve the mechanical problems found in the initial typewriter layout. It’s good for type writers but not for typist.

Speed Boost - Dvorak layout contains 70% of most used keys in the home row (in qwerty keyboard, the row contains asdf keys). 22% on the top row and 8% in the bottom row. In QWERTY, only 32% of keystrokes are on the home row. Which means most of the time, typists’ fingers are either reaching up for the top row (52%) or down for the bottom row (16%). So not only does QWERTY do nothing for typists, it actually hinders them. It further improves the speed by containing the vowels on the left side of the home row and most used consonants on right. Alternating between either fingers are faster.

Less mistakes – Homerow is where typists make less mistakes. As mentioned before, 70% of the most used keys are in homerow which helps you to reduce the typing errors. But this is not the case for QWERTY. Most of the time, we will have to move away from homerow.

Better health – In Dvorak layout, typists finger travels 1.5 km per day while on QWERTY it’s 30 km per day. These extra miles are more error prone and stress on fingers.

Easy to switch from QWERTY – Studies have proved, Dvorak is easy to switch from QWERTY typist. There are lot of helpful games to learn about Dvorak typing.

Despite of these advantages, Dvorak can’t become popular. Simple people don’t want to change. Just think, do you want to join the prestigious club of Dvorak, which includes Matt Mullenweg of WordPress, Bram Cohen., inventor of BitTorent and finally Barbara Blackburn, Worlds fastest typist.

Further reading –

Dvorak Simplified Keyboard – Wikipedia

7 Reasons to Switch to Dvorak Keyboard – Work Awesome

Have Keyboard will program – Coding horror

Image Originally Taken from Wikipedia, under Wiki Common License.