ABCD
A Basic Course in Dvorak

The Dvorak Keyboard is a major improvement over the QWERTY layout, which was designed to slow people's typing speed! Learning it may increase your typing speed, and even reduce the risk of repetitive strain injuries.

With the aid of some interesting parsing techniques, I have devised a typing course which, much like the tutors of the QWERTY keyboard, starts you out on the home rows and gradually has you learning the entire keyboard. With a Dvorak keyboard, you can type fairly interesting words fairly quickly. (Anybody remember lessons like "a sad lass; a dad falls" ?)

I have been interested in the Dvorak keyboard layout for some time, but never was able to find a typing tutor that properly taught this layout. I even bought a piece of commercial software that claimed to teach the Dvorak layout. But all they did was remap the keys and teach the same old QWERTY lessons. Yuck.

For the curious, or for reference, here is a picture of the keyboard layout. Notice how the commonly used keys are in the "home" rows and the more obscure letters are harder to reach.

First of all, let me answer a few FAQs here:

The Dvorak Keyboard is not a separate keyboard. (Well, not with computers, anyway.) It's a logical layout, in which you tell your operating system what physical keypresses correspond to what characters appear on your screen.
Current versions of the Mac OS (9 and X) come with the Dvorak layout. Use the keyboard control panel.
If you're searching for other Dvorak layouts, try looking at www.download.com.
If you are a Wintel user, it can be set as well.
I'm not familiar with left-handed or right-handed Dvorak layouts. Again, try searching as indicated above.
I know now that one commercial software package, Mavis Bacon Teaches Typing, does have Dvorak lessons. I don't know how good they are, though.
If you want to try this off-line, try saving the page, either as source (to include the entry fields) or as text-only.
If you are using WebTV, this probably won't work very well for you, due to spacing considerations.
To find out more about Dvorak, check out Dvorak International.

FYI: Here's a link [archive.org snapshot of original website, no longer available] to an interesting experiment, where somebody attempted to improve on the Dvorak layout using Genetic Algorithms. Interestingly, the layout that his system generated was surprisingly like the Dvorak layout!

OK, now you're ready to try out the course. Let's Begin!

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ABCD A Basic Course in Dvorak

ABCD
A Basic Course in Dvorak