Designing with the Trackpad
Well I’ll have to be designing on the road for the next 2 weeks. I’ll be out of the office and away in Boston on a business trip. Everything should continue to operate smoothly as I can collect both phone and email messages.
There is actually one very good skill that has developed out of all this constant travel over the last few months and that has been my growing affinity with the trackpad on my Powerbook.
When I first got my PowerBook G4 I absolutely hated the trackpad, I just didn’t like having to use it and it seemed so slow and cumbersome compared to my mouse. Designing on the run with a trackpad proved almost impossible and I toted a tiny mobile mouse around with me for months. Over the past few trips though I’ve found myself pulling my mouse a little less and using the trackpad a little more. So if there’s one thing to be grateful for whilst spending time at the airport, it’s that you get to spend some quality time learning the fine art of using Photoshop with your trackpad. I have learned that keyboard shortcuts often can be much faster than using a mouse for about 70% of operations, and that despite only having 1 button, the apple trackpad has pretty good scrolling consistency (and right clicking using the ctrl key is not that bad after all). I’ve been using iScroll 2 to permit my pre-2005 Powerbook to scroll, and despite it being in beta, I find it works quite well. Of course for serious design work, nothing can replace the mouse, but for some quick edits I am now finding that the trackpad is bearable.
