Slide Keyboard

Story

Put touch back where the keys are

For twenty years the pointer has lived to the right of the keyboard, on the arm of the sofa, or in your other hand. It always sat a short distance away — a distance you repeated a thousand times a day.

Move the touch surface into the same plane as the keys and your hand never has to leave home row: a few centimetres right and you're touching, a few back and you're typing.

What you save isn't those centimetres. It's the attention switch — eyes leaving the screen to find the pointer, then coming back to find your place again.

Timeline

• 09:41Open email, two-finger scroll, stop at the third message.
• 10:12Box a range of cells, drag, not one overshoot.
• 11:05Zoom a photo down to an eyelash, then pinch back to the whole frame.
• 14:30Scroll a code file to line 480, cursor still where you left it.
• 16:02Three-finger swipe, back and forth between desktop and full-screen window.

Code

const pad = new SlidePad({ hz: 120 });

pad.on('scroll', (dy) => {
  doc.scrollBy({ top: dy, behavior: 'instant' });
});

pad.on('pinch', (scale) => {
  view.zoomTo(scale, { anchor: pad.center });
});

Sampling runs at 120 Hz and scroll position is recalculated every frame, so slow scrolls don't skip and fast ones don't overshoot.

— End of feed.