Keyboard vs Mouse

Well this week saw a very interesting discussion on the WDSC mailing list: drag and drop, vs using keystrokes to accomplish the same goal.

While I see the merits of drag and drop (in particular I could see how cool it would be in the outline view), I feel like drag and drop on my source might be a bad thing – what if I miss a semi-colon, bracket, character? Maybe its because I have MS and my coordination is off on some days, but I get the feeling I would be dropping source in all the wrong places – I guess then UNDO would become my new best friend.

One of the goals in Remote Systems LPEX Editor has been to preserve the keys that folks are familiar with, while they transition to learning new ways of performing task. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t better ways to do things. I always seen myself somewhere in the middle of mouse vs keyboard, I use the keyboard and keystrokes almost exclusively at times (why waste time reaching for the mouse?), but then there are other times, using the mouse is just the better way to go.

I imagine that with the rich UI that eclipse provides, we will be adding more drag and drop and other fancier ways to interact with source in RS LPEX. There are usually several ways to accomplish any goal — the trick is finding the best one for you.