No longer using a mouse

17/2/2018

Around a week ago now I decided to finally go completely mouse-less - unplugged and packed away in its original box. I have been wanting to make this change for quite a while now and have slowly been transitioning things that I rely on a GUI for to more keyboard oriented approaches (or in some cases plugins that assist). The largest most substantial change I have made is my move back to qutebrowser. This sadly retires surf and tabbed (both fantastic suckless tools) from my suite of used software. Another major pain point is Reddit and Waterfox. I rely on various Firefox extensions for what I do on Reddit and changing to a browser that supports none of them is not viable, so instead I began using the VimFX plugin. This brings vim-like keyboard control to Waterfox along with hinting (allowing you to click on things with your keyboard). VimFX by default however does not support the new ModMail system, so I am going to have to investigate implementing hinting for that myself (I did roughly the same modifications on qutebrowser). I have began using Alpine as an email client (moving email entirely to the terminal), which will eventually retire Thunderbird. Currently, for replying to emails I still rely on Thunderbird (its suite of keyboard shortcuts makes this possible without a mouse).

I haven't particularly had the need for a mouse throughout this week - the one remaining pain point however is taking screen shots of regions of my screen. For this, although rare, currently I use my USB pen/tablet combination. My desk is much neater without a mouse and accompanying mouse pad.