Exactly this. I would add also, do you want to accomplish by additional hand/wrist movement (access F-key row) or by additional keypresses (layer, tap-dance, etc)?
Well, I think that any keypress that requires you to move your wrists in any way is weird basically. How do you reach 5, 6, or 7 on your number row for example? what about 1 or ` or esc? I like making it so that I can reach all of these buttons without moving my wrists and with the "correct" fingers.
With layers, you mash the F5 key even faster, without moving your wrists. Usually you press a layer selection key with one hand, and the F5 on that layer with the other, in one fluid movement.
With a keyboard firmware like QMK, you just put everything to layers, and don't move your wrists. It's actually faster than reaching to a distant separate F-key and then.back to the home row, properly aligned.
I switch layers with my right thumb. Any key that has LT -> 1 (or whatever number) switches to that layer while I’m holding that key. I could set it up to not have to hold the key but then I forget what layer I’m on lol
I have my 'tenkeys' on a layer activated by extra thumb buttons. For me pressing a button is faster than moving my hand. It does mean that you need both hands to use the tenkeys, which does eliminate some use-cases.
Either I am completely misunderstanding you, or what you're saying sounds absolutely horrible and unusable to me.
Are you saying you that you would hold some modifier combo and then slide your finger over g,h,j,k,l to go right? How is that anymore usable? You're doing so much movement you may as well just reach for a mouse or touchpad. Also I have no idea how you'd calibrate that to move a sensible amount across short/long distances.
Or are you suggesting something else? I don't understand what you mean by "sliding".
Because with layers (holding down a key to change what other keys are doing) you can have the arrows, numbers or F-keys right under your fingers. So you don't have to move your hands so much to use them, and some people really like that idea.
> Only two thumb keys seems like it could be a pain.
Depending on the context (mostly in games), I sometimes hit "B" with a thumb on my Ergodox. I think holding B/V for layer toggles could work on this board?
I've been experimenting with home-row combos instead. So you press multiple keys at once, enabling the use of one-shot mods so you don't have to hold keys down for modifiers and can instead tap them
A one-shot shift under one thumb is also amazing, if you have such a keyboard.
Or you could use some right-thumb-hold (or no hold, but one-tap) button with the more rows and skip the pinkies, and even add closing brackets for the same combo to offset the modifier cost
It depends on your use case, and how you have your keys and layers mapped.
Back when I used a 60% and was working in a physical office, I had mapped arrows to Fn + [i, j, k, l]. This allowed me to barely move my right hand, at the cost of holding some other key with my left pinky. Overall, my wrists barely had to move.
Maybe not quite as comfortable, but you could - as an axample - configure one of the left thumb keys as a layer switch, and then define the corresponding layer such that the right hands home row acts to move the mouse pointer.
Maybe you'll find my post https://arathunku.com/b/2023/moonlander-keyboard-layers-tour... helpful with oneshot modifiers across layers but also keeping Shift and Ctrl accessible. I really hated any timers / held vs tapped on home rows, it prevented me from fast typing and rollovers. Now I really only have space bar on hold/tap that's used in usual writing but it's on my right thumb and have never been a problem.
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