Chording

Last updated

Chording means pushing several keys or buttons simultaneously to achieve a result.

Contents

Musical keyboards

A Piano player performing a C Minor 7 Chord (music). Piano C Minor 7 Chord.jpg
A Piano player performing a C Minor 7 Chord (music).

In music, more than one key are pressed at a time to achieve more complex sounds, or chords.

Computer keyboards

It is common for a person playing a PC game to simultaneously hold down the following keys: "Left Shift" for sprinting, "W" for moving forward, and "Space" for jumping. Computer Keyboard Simultaneous Keys Above.jpg
It is common for a person playing a PC game to simultaneously hold down the following keys: "Left Shift" for sprinting, "W" for moving forward, and "Space" for jumping.

Chording, with a chorded keyboard or keyer allows one to produce as many characters as a QWERTY keyboard but with fewer keys and less motion per finger.

Pointers

Mouse chording allows a user to use a two-button mouse, trackball, or touchpad as if it where a three-button device. For example, in the Unix graphical user interface (known as X11), the middle button is used to paste text. Since Microsoft-type mice traditionally only had two buttons, users of Unix-type systems such as Linux and BSD chord the right and left buttons to paste text.

Multitouch chording

TipTapSpeech an application for the iPhone and iPad is a chord-based text entry solution for touch screen computing. [1]

A GKOS chording keyboard application development for iPhone was started on the GKOS Google Group [2] on 25 May 2009. The application for iPhone became available on 8 May 2010, and a similar application for Android on 3 October 2010. Thumbs are used to press the keys that are located towards the sides of the screen, either a single key or two keys simultaneously. The further development of GKOS has led to the ComboKey keyboard [3] that works better on smartphones. ComboKey also allows one-hand typing with the hand holding the device, generating combinations by occasional swipes to other keys.

Douglas Engelbart, Cherif Algreatly, Valerie Landau, Robert Stephenson, Evan Schaffer, and Eric Matsuno filed a patent in 2010 for a chorded solution for multitouch screens.[ citation needed ]

Minesweeper tactic

In Minesweeper , chording may refer to a tactic which is traditionally done by left-clicking and right-clicking at the same time on an uncovered square to uncover all eight adjacent squares if it has the correct number of flags. [4] In many newer versions of Minesweeper, chording can also be done by middle-clicking or by simply left-clicking.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chorded keyboard</span> Computer input device

A keyset or chorded keyboard is a computer input device that allows the user to enter characters or commands formed by pressing several keys together, like playing a "chord" on a piano. The large number of combinations available from a small number of keys allows text or commands to be entered with one hand, leaving the other hand free. A secondary advantage is that it can be built into a device that is too small to contain a normal-sized keyboard.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Context menu</span> User interface element

A context menu is a menu in a graphical user interface (GUI) that appears upon user interaction, such as a right-click mouse operation. A context menu offers a limited set of choices that are available in the current state, or context, of the operating system or application to which the menu belongs. Usually the available choices are actions related to the selected object. From a technical point of view, such a context menu is a graphical control element.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scrollbar</span> Graphical user interface element

A scrollbar is an interaction technique or widget in which continuous text, pictures, or any other content can be scrolled in a predetermined direction on a computer display, window, or viewport so that all of the content can be viewed, even if only a fraction of the content can be seen on a device's screen at one time. It offers a solution to the problem of navigation to a known or unknown location within a two-dimensional information space. It was also known as a handle in the very first GUIs. They are present in a wide range of electronic devices including computers, graphing calculators, mobile phones, and portable media players. The user interacts with the scrollbar elements using some method of direct action, the scrollbar translates that action into scrolling commands, and the user receives feedback through a visual updating of both the scrollbar elements and the scrolled content.

Cut, copy, and paste are essential commands of modern human–computer interaction and user interface design. They offer an interprocess communication technique for transferring data through a computer's user interface. The cut command removes the selected data from its original position, and the copy command creates a duplicate; in both cases the selected data is kept in temporary storage called the clipboard. Clipboard data is later inserted wherever a paste command is issued. The data remains available to any application supporting the feature, thus allowing easy data transfer between applications.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Control key</span> Key on computer keyboards

In computing, a Control keyCtrl is a modifier key which, when pressed in conjunction with another key, performs a special operation. Similarly to the Shift key, the Control key rarely performs any function when pressed by itself. The Control key is located on or near the bottom left side of most keyboards, with many featuring an additional one at the bottom right.

Mouse chording is the capability of performing actions when multiple mouse buttons are held down, much like a chorded keyboard and similar to mouse gestures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Touchpad</span> Type of pointing device

A touchpad or trackpad is a type of pointing device. Its largest component is a tactile sensor: an electronic device with a flat surface, that detects the motion and position of a user's fingers, and translates them to 2D motion, to control a pointer in a graphical user interface on a computer screen. Touchpads are common on laptop computers, contrasted with desktop computers, where mice are more prevalent. Trackpads are sometimes used on desktops, where desk space is scarce. Because trackpads can be made small, they can be found on personal digital assistants (PDAs) and some portable media players. Wireless touchpads are also available, as detached accessories.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Drag and drop</span> Action in computer graphic user interfaces

In computer graphical user interfaces, drag and drop is a pointing device gesture in which the user selects a virtual object by "grabbing" it and dragging it to a different location or onto another virtual object. In general, it can be used to invoke many kinds of actions, or create various types of associations between two abstract objects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Graphical widget</span> Element of interaction in a graphical user interface

A graphical widget in a graphical user interface is an element of interaction, such as a button or a scroll bar. Controls are software components that a computer user interacts with through direct manipulation to read or edit information about an application. User interface libraries such as Windows Presentation Foundation, Qt, GTK, and Cocoa, contain a collection of controls and the logic to render these.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Button (computing)</span> Graphical user interface element

In computing, a button is a graphical control element that provides the user a simple way to trigger an event, like searching for a query at a search engine, or to interact with dialog boxes, like confirming an action.

A double-click is the act of pressing a computer mouse button twice quickly without moving the mouse. Double-clicking allows two different actions to be associated with the same mouse button. It was developed by Tim Mott of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. Often, single-clicking selects an object while a double-click selects the next object up in the selection hierarchy, or executes the function associated with that object. Following a link in a modern web browser is accomplished with only a single click, requiring the use of a second mouse button, "click and hold" delay, or modifier key to gain access to actions other than following the link. On touchscreens, the double-click is called "double-tap"; it's not used as much as double-click, but typically it functions as a zoom feature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Menu bar</span> Graphical control element

A menu bar is a graphical control element which contains drop-down menus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microwriter</span> Hand-held portable word-processor with a chording keyboard

The Microwriter is a hand-held portable word-processor with a chording keyboard. First demonstrated in 1978, it was invented by UK-based, US-born film director Cy Endfield and his partner Chris Rainey and was marketed in the early 1980s by Microwriter Ltd, of Mitcham, Surrey, UK. By using a mnemonic alphabet, its manufacturers stated it allowed note-taking of up to 8,000 characters at an input rate averaging 1.5 times that of handwriting.

The Windows shell is the graphical user interface for the Microsoft Windows operating system. Its readily identifiable elements consist of the desktop, the taskbar, the Start menu, the task switcher and the AutoPlay feature. On some versions of Windows, it also includes Flip 3D and the charms. In Windows 10, the Windows Shell Experience Host interface drives visuals like the Start Menu, Action Center, Taskbar, and Task View/Timeline. However, the Windows shell also implements a shell namespace that enables computer programs running on Windows to access the computer's resources via the hierarchy of shell objects. "Desktop" is the top object of the hierarchy; below it there are a number of files and folders stored on the disk, as well as a number of special folders whose contents are either virtual or dynamically created. Recycle Bin, Libraries, Control Panel, This PC and Network are examples of such shell objects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virtual keyboard</span> Software component

A virtual keyboard is a software component that allows the input of characters without the need for physical keys. Interaction with a virtual keyboard happens mostly via a touchscreen interface, but can also take place in a different form when in virtual or augmented reality.

A text entry interface or text entry device is an interface that is used to enter text information in an electronic device. A commonly used device is a mechanical computer keyboard. Most laptop computers have an integrated mechanical keyboard, and desktop computers are usually operated primarily using a keyboard and mouse. Devices such as smartphones and tablets mean that interfaces such as virtual keyboards and voice recognition are becoming more popular as text entry systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mouse button</span> Electric switch on a computer mouse

A mouse button is an electric switch on a computer mouse which can be pressed (“clicked”) to select or interact with an element of a graphical user interface. Mouse buttons are most commonly implemented as miniature snap-action switches.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Input device</span> Device that provides data and signals to a computer

In computing, an input device is a piece of equipment used to provide data and control signals to an information processing system, such as a computer or information appliance. Examples of input devices include keyboards, computer mice, scanners, cameras, joysticks, and microphones.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MessagEase</span> Input method for touchscreen devices

MessagEase is an input method and virtual keyboard for touchscreen devices. It relies on a new entry system designed by Saied B. Nesbat, formatted as a 3x3 matrix keypad where users may press or swipe up, down, left, right, or diagonally to access all keys and symbols. It is a keyboard that was designed for devices like cell phones, mimicking the early cell phones' limited number of 12 keys.

References

  1. TipTapSpeech Archived 15 December 2010 at the Wayback Machine
  2. GKOS Group
  3. ComboKey Plus
  4. "Minesweeper Strategy". Authoritative Minesweeper. Retrieved 25 March 2022.

See also