You might like to shop input devices, mouses and keyboards. I really like shop keyboards, one of the reason is that each keyboard can sometimes add a special flavor, like a knob to adjust the sound volume etc. But have you thought of using a software to emulate these new features, because it’s very likely that your keyboard might miss one of the feature that you like to have.
BetterTouchTool
Recently I purchased a tool called BetterTouchTool, it used to be a freeware. Now you can try it for 45 days and then pay $10 to use it. What it does is that it allow you to customize your input device.
Magic mouse
I used to use a magic touchpad a lot where you can have couple of gestures. Therefore I like to have these basic ones on the magic mouse as well. For instance, I merely mapped the 1 Finger Tap to be a Left Click in the following example.
Very simple and easy to do, but now my magic mouse can do a simple 1 Finger Tap which the mac OS doesn’t allow me to do. A tap is easier than a click most of times ;)
Similarly, I surf web and used to click CTRL-w to close the active tab of the browser. But sometimes I rather to use the mouse. So I mapped 3 Finger Tap with the Ctrl-w , this way I don’t have to move the mouse to click that x button near each tap, instead I just put my three fingers on my magic mouse, do a tap, and then the page is gone.
There’re more you can do to the navigation as well. There’s a TipTap Left and Right mapping to SHIFT+COMMAND+[ and ] so that you can navigate to left and right of the tab via a tap with another finger resting there.
Keyboard
I also use the Esc key a lot due to the usage of Vi editor. Since the key is normally sitting on the left corner of the keyboard, I sometimes want to use my right hand to do it. So I find a key that on my right corner of my keyboard Del which I never use, and then remap it to Esc.
I also added a HUD Overlay in this case so that whenever I hit Del I got a display of Esc on screen to confirm my action and let me take a break from my coding time. Wonderful.
Summary
Customizing the input device via a software such as BetterTouchTool, could be a much cheaper solution than finding the right device. Please give that a try, you might be surprised how easy to accomplish things that your input device is missing.
