I don't think that's my problem. I don't move the fingers around much except when I mistype. It might be that I need to train my accuracy - maybe by not overhurrying. I have no idea what my weak words would be - I'm not even a native English speaker and haven't given it much consideration.

What I did just find out though, is that I may have been leaning too heavily on my hands. I tried lifting the hands slightly instead of the usual "lazy" position, and it felt somewhat easier on both the wrists and the typing flow even if it was a bit more work keeping the hands up. Letting the wrists remain fairly straight must be a good idea. I should probably get a better keyboard that facilitates a better typing position, but I'm not sure what would help the most.

I do use those stands on the back that angle the board slightly towards me. Maybe that isn't a great idea after all, since it makes the wrists more angled? This never occurred to me before. I'll try lowering them for a little while, just to feel what the difference is like.

I have become much better at using the opposite shift key. It was only a bad habit, and it's on its way back already.

We should have a Typing Clinic on the forums, where the experts could teach the noobs some hot tricks.

Something like this would be cool. Although since each person has typed a different number of keys, I probably should display meters *per minute*.

Sure Colemak is more comfortable, but speed is the true test and will win people over more easily ;-)

But how can the program possibly calculate the distance?  The program cannot determine what layout and keyboard (many of them change the key distances to ergonomic effect) the user used.

You'd only need to show a comparison of the distance for three standard layouts: QWERTY (US will do nicely, since the text samples are all in English), Dvorak and Colemak. All on standard boards.

On the other hand, making a selection box with only a few choices (e.g., QWERTY, Dvorak, Colemak, Other) would limit the silliness that people are entering into that field now.  :)

If people want to know their digitodometry for other layouts/boards, they'll have to use a JAVA applet like the one on this site for it.

That looks great! I watched the replay of your typing and it seemed to do something strange around where you typed "5.75%", with the left hand index finger return? Check it out.

I think that "OWCH!" would be overmuch and a bit out of style. A simple colour coding of the finger dots should perform the same thing more smoothly - green when resting or on home position, amber for the moderate stretches and red for, e.g., the number or (Colemak) JBZ stretches (corner positions); I'd mark most of the left-hand lower row red myself but ymmv. For the bad stretches the dot could become bigger as it turns red, too, to produce visually the "ouch!" effect you're after.

The finger stress indicator is a good idea too. I'd make a row of dots or little finger icons below the animated layout, with all fingers, say, a happy relaxed green at the outset and turning gradually towards, e.g., amber-yellow-red-purple-white as they travel. I'd use a cold-hot palette, but it seems from experiences on this very forum that not all non-physicists/non-medical-personel are familiar with that colour coding. Maybe a legend bar on one side could show the coding to make it clear; maybe that legend bar could also perform as a rising overall stress indicator?

Shai, if you click someone's name in the highscore list you can watch their replay. No?

Yes, I agree with Shai. I was interested in looking at what my typing did, but then I realized it only works for replay of the top of the list.  So this quite uninteresting to me.  If you are just visualizing those doing 120+ wpm all it shows to everyone else is what the distance numbers and frequency maps already show for the layouts.  What would be interesting is to see a visualizing what my typing looks like.

Thanks everyone for your comments. I have now implemented Shai's suggestions:

- A replay button
- Buttons to switch layouts
- You can now press <enter> to start the test instead of using the mouse

This finally got me implementing some buttons code which is something that I managed to avoid doing up until now ;-) I would like to release this so that Shai can use it for his purpose (thanks Shai!) but I haven't yet tested/seen it running on Windows. For example, I have no idea whether the fonts for the keyboard are the correct size and whether everything fits. Would somebody mind sending me a screenshot of it running in Windows?

Also, I looked at the strange behavior that DreymaR noticed when typing 5.75%. After typing the first '5' the index finger would start to return to its home position briefly and then by the time the '.' is typed, the index finger would realise it needs to move back to where it was for another '5'. I have made the fingers anticipate a little further into the future now so that the index finger will see that it needs to stay there for the next '5' without moving.

I think Google doesn't like pages that have too many links, though (= more than 100). However, what I could do is provide links directly to each page of the highscores so that you don't have to click next, next, next.

Done.

Ah, ok, perhaps. I will think about this one for next weekend.

That code will not solve the problem for Java or Flash applets. As far as I am aware, there is no solution which is why Java and Flash games generally have "click to begin" buttons if they are keyboard-controlled games, or else the game is mouse controlled in which case keyboard focus is not an issue.

When you say you have to click too many times, I'm also not quite sure what you mean. For me, you just click the start button "once" and then start typing. If you have to click more times than once, then I suspect it could be some weird feature of your web browser. I will, however, keep an eye out for solutions to this problem and implement one as soon as I see one.

I think Escape is fine. Counting down makes more sense to me too.

The beta is finally released (hooray!), and I shall now return back to my normal work for another week ;-)

http://www.ryanheise.com/typing-test/

Ryan the new version is simply amazing.
If you put the "submit highscore" button with the other options of what to do after finishing the test, it would become even more consistent and nice, I don't know if that is possible though.

An unexpected observation that I have made: Dvorak had the longest travelled finger distance for me! Not sure, but is that because of the extensive use of punctuation in the text and/or the backspace in the normal position? (compared to cmk)

How do you end a replay by the way? (If you can't wait to try and beat your new record...)