Adapt KeyStrokes Keyboards with Layout Kitchen
Now that KeyStrokes and Layout Kitchen work together, I have adapted a stardard KeyStrokes keyboard to work more the way I want it to. I’ve made it easier for me to use and more efficient for typing at the same time. Here’s what I did so you can use mine or follow along with your own adaptions.
This is the keyboard I was using previously, the “Block” keyboard:
Prior to KeyStrokes 4.0 the keyboard was all grey, so the blue colour on some keys has already improved its usability for me. I wanted more colour though, so I loaded up Layout Kitchen and first opened the Block keyboards and used File->Save As to make a copy. I called my copy “R - Colour Block”.
Then I started colouring the keys! It’s easy to do, just click on the key in Layout Kitchen and then in the Inspection Panel click on the block of colour labeled “Button” and select the colour you want:
Next, I changed some of the keys to make them more efficient. Which keys you change will depend on your own usage and you’ll have to figure out out for yourself. These were the changes I made:
- Changed the “q” key to a “qu” string because the “u” comes after 99% of the time and I can backspace it away on the occasions it’s not needed.
- Removed the ยง key because I never use it.
- Removed the enter key because I only use return, not enter.
- Made the capslock key smaller because I hardly ever use it.
- Added a forward delete key.
- Made the column with capslock/shift/command/etc. in it narrower because I want the keyboard to be as small as possible and I don’t need the extra width.
After all that, and the colouring, my keyboard looked like this:
I guess it could be a bit garishly bright for some, but it suits me. Even when my eyes are very bad I can usually hit the right keys because I have memorised the positions for most of them in relation to the borders between the coloured blocks.
The eagle eyed amongst you may have noticed this keyboard block has a key with a “+” it it the bottom left corner. That one is set to bring up a different keyboard, the one called “R - Colour Block Plus” which is shown here:
The extra column on the left in purple has word endings on it. They’re set up to type a backspace, then the letters shown on the key, then space. Say you’re just selected “end” from the prediction list, KeyStrokes will helpfully type “end ” into your document with it’s auto-spacing. Then you hit the purple “-ing” key and keystrokes backspaces to erase the space, types “ing” and another space, neatly turning your “end ” into “ending “. Kudos to Marie-France Bru for this idea which she used with SwitchXS. I chose the endings to include by looking up a list of the most common suffixes in English and using my own memory of how often I type different endings.
On the “Plus” keyboard the yellow “-” key in the bottom second-left column will turn the keyboard back to the regular. Because the keyboard takes up screen space even with the SmartTransparency turned on, I prefer it as small as possible unless I’m doing a lot of typing.
You can download my two keyboards from the link below. They need to be installed into the directory ~/Library/Application Support/Assistiveware Support/KeyStrokes keyboards/ before you can use them from KeyStrokes.
Website: Ricky’s Colour Block Keyboards
I’d love to hear feedback if anybody uses these!
- Ricky Buchanan, ATMac
Ricky,
I loved the changes you made to the Keystrokes ABC keyboard. This is the one my student uses. I have found changing the keyboard more complicated than I thought it would be - so this is great to have. Thank you.
I was wondering if you knew how or could lead me to a site that would help me put the common punctuation (?, !) on the keyboard instead of the seldom used (?,{,}). It takes my student, a second grader, that extra movement to get the question and exclamatory marks. Seems like it should be simple enough, but I can not figure it out.
Thanks,
@Lorry: It’s not obvious how to do that, so don’t feel bad about it! The easiest way I know is to change the button type to “Text (to type)” and then change both the “Text” and “Label” fields in the Inspector to the punctuation mark that you want. This way it won’t change when shift is pressed, so you can set buttons for ! and ? or any others you want.
Hope this helps! Best of luck with your second grader
- Ricky
Hi
I like the design of the block keyboard also but I’m thinking of switching some of the letters so its more like the dvorak keyboard with the letters most commonly used together, next to each other.
What I wanted to ask was how do you set up a button to bring up this keyboard? For example I have an ‘ichat panel’ which includes my most frequent phrases and some smileys (provided by Joe from Assistive ware).
On my iMac i like to use the hardware keyboard but the iMac is in my office connected to printer etc.
On dark winter nights I like to chat from in bed (where its nice and warm with leccy blanket on!) on my iBook and the keyboard isnt as easy for me to type with.
What I’m trying to do is add a button to my current ‘ichat panel’ that will expand it to include your extended keyboard (with the word endings on) when using it on the iBook and hide it when using it on my iMac with hardware keyboard.
How do I do this?
Lastly, is there a site anywhere that shows which letters occur most frequently next to each other to help me with designing letter location on my keyboard?
Thanks
Kati
@Kati: That’s a great idea to find a keyboard where the letters that are commonly used are together. Have you tried the “Damper” keyboard layout? That comes with KeyStrokes and is set up like that - the space bar is in the middle.
In terms of hiding/displaying the extra stuff you can only have one keyboard on screen at a time, so you can’t just make a panel with the extra stuff and put it on screen unfortunately. What I did was make two keyboards, one with the plain stuff and the extra stuff on it, and one with just the plain stuff on it, and in Layout Kitchen open them up and one of the button commands is something like “Show keyboard” then you type the name of the keyboard to show. Then on the OTHER keyboard do the same but put the first keyboard’s title in it.
About letters occuring frequently together, I honestly have no idea! Perhaps somebody else will know?
Also, I emailed you about this - there’s a bit of extra information in the email. Best of luck.
- Ricky