This will be about the specific workflow of the combo of the foot pedal + the Sticky Keys preference on in OS for heavy-duty clicking and mousing around, as it's necessary with our DP work without messing up our hands.
A few months ago a wrote about hand health issues, and we discussed how one potentially injurious move is clicking with the mouse constantly> that can stress the hand a great deal, especially when doing it for hours non-stop. And this is precisely where this Kinesis Savant Elite 2 triple foot pedal shines!
At $170, it's a bit pricey, but it works so great that it's totally worth it.
https://kinesis-ergo.com/shop/savant-el ... ple-pedal/
I've been trying it for a few days, and I already got perfectly used to it.
It feels quite solid and sturdy. It connects via USB, and it works right out of the box, with pedal 1 for right-click, pedal 2 for double-click, and pedal 3 for right-click.
Clicking and holding for dragging is a breeze, and it really allows the arm/hand to relax. Like this, all you have to do is "push" the mouse around and it provides great relief.
It's very easy to use, and acquiring the right coordination is a non-issue.
After a while, sometimes it's nice to cross one's legs behind. When this happens, I go back to clicking with a regular mouse, but I use the one for the other hand for a while. So the one in the left hand clicks and the one on the right hand moves the pointer around and drags stuff. Sometimes I switch hands too.
Another GREAT THING to do to provide relief and avoid stretching and twisting the hand when pressing (DP or otherwise) shortcuts is to turn on Sticky Keys in OS preferences. This allows one to NOT have to keep the Shift-Option-Control-Command keys pressed as one types the rest of the shortcut keys.
For instance, DP's default shortcut for Solo mode is Control-Shift-Command-S... a total hand twister. With Sticky Keys on, you just press the modifiers "as if playing a 3-note melody", take a small leap as if you were playing staccato, and drop the arm to press the letter S. It takes a fraction of a second longer to do the shortcuts like this, but it's totally recommended, since the hand can be kept in its natural relaxed position.
Pressing a series of 2-3 keys by doing arm rotation (as if playing the piano) also insures the best possible movement with a natural hand position.
Sometimes one needs to go through long lists to command-select a bunch of non-contiguous tracks... If you double tap the command key it sticks until you press it again, so you don't have to leave it pressed as you select your tracks. It's very useful and comfortable (just don't forget to unstick it when finished).
HOWEVER> BE VERY CAREFUL if you use it!
Sticky Keys have 2 levels of “stickiness”: sometimes by accident you may tap Command or Option twice and not realize it and that can wreck havoc with your DP session!!! (if you pressed letter z now it's really command-z, a completely different DP action).
I really can't stress how important it is to be careful with this, and it does take a few days to get totally used to it. It DEFINITELY helps to use the option to show in a preferred screen corner the keys that are being "stacked". I think this is a must.
So the combination of the foot pedal and Sticky Keys really really provide great relief and prevents developing CTS and/or tendonitis. It prevents tension and all the bad hand moves when composing for hours. Also, I really like this workflow much better than with any Track Pad. Track pads, unless used in very specific ways, can injure the hand even worse than a regular mouse. I use mine mostly for scrolling around (but making sure my hand/arm position is correct).
The pedal is supposedly programmable for anything... shortcuts, scrolling, etc., but that requires digging a little deeper. For now, with Sticky Keys that won't be necessary for me, but I will investigate it further next week. As it is now, I could not be happier with this combo, and this completes my quest for things to improve hand/arm usage for typing/mousing/DP-shortcutting as safely as possible.
So far, I give the pedal 5 out of 5 stars. Now I don't click without it
