Lately I’ve been really trying to avoid using the mouse while coding. You may not realize it but it’s a huge distraction to:
- Stop typing
- Find your mouse
- Find your cursor
- Hunt for the icon you need
- Click the icon
- Release mouse
- Resume typing
That is a lot of work! And you probably do that quite a bit during a typical day.
Lately I’ve been using Mousefeed (http://www.mousefeed.com/) to help me break this habit. Mousefeed is an Eclipse plugin which will encourage you to use the keyboard. If you click on a menu item with the mouse it will display in a small popup the appropriate keyboard shortcut:
Mousefeed popup showing keyboard shortcut
Unfortunately the author has stopped development on the plugin. The site mentions it works in Eclipse 3.3 but I downloaded the Mousefeed jar file and dropped it into my Eclipse ‘dropins’ folder (C:\eclipse\dropins\com.mousefeed_1.0.0.jar) and it seems to work fine with Eclipse 3.5 and the latest CFEclipse.
By using the keyboard I can eliminate the steps above required by the mouse and dramitically speed up my coding!
FYI – I’ll be presenting on more time saving tips like this at cf.Objective and CFUnited!
Possibly Related:
The Breaking Bad Habits – Stop Using The Mouse! by Jim, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
This looks interesting and worth giving a try. I been started using Eclipse shortcuts that Bob Silverberg’s blogged about recently which have also cut down on my coding time.
http://www.silverwareconsultin.....gle+Reader