Monthly Archives: July 2021

Keychron K2


My favorite keyboard in recent memory has been the Logitech K811. I bought it reconditioned from Amazon seven years ago. It’s no longer manufactured and mine is beginning to fail. It no longer pairs reliably and at least one key has stopped working. I’ve got at least one other similar Logitech keyboard that can be used but I often have issues with it and the iPad Pro. I’m not sure why. It seems to cause conflict with the Apple Trackpad which I like to use if I’m using the iPad with a separate keyboard and a second display.

So, I decided I’d look for a new keyboard that could connect via Bluetooth and usb as well. And, while I was at it thought I’d finally take a look at mechanical keyboards. I type a lot and have heard lots of good things about mechanical keyboards. This past summer my nephew had one so I had a chance to give it a go and it was very nice. After looking at the less expensive options I settled on the Keychron K2. It seemed reasonable at around $80 and has great reviews. It arrived a few days ago and boy-howdy is this a nice typing experience!

First, I like the fact that it is Mac/iOS first. They include extra key caps for switching out 3 or so keys of you prefer the Windows specific symbols. As I’m running the iPadOS 15 beta which now makes great use of the globe key I’ve got the caps lock re-mapped to the globe key. It’s superficial but I wish that key had a globe icon. Yeah, that’s silly but whatever.

I plugged the keyboard into the iPad with the included and very nice braided USB cable and away we went. I’ve also paired it with the Mac via Bluetooth. I’ll pair it with the iPad Pro as well but with the iPadOS beta Bluetooth is currently somewhat buggy so I’ll wait till that get’s fixed.

I ordered the keyboard with the brown switches from Amazon but was sent the blue switches which are, as I understand it, the loudest of the three options. It’s not a problem as I live and work alone and they’re not that much louder. Many of the reviews mentioned that the keyboard, being quite tall, is best used with a wrist pad. I have lots of scrap wood boards that I save for projects and found a piece of cedar that was the perfect width and height to match the keyboard. I gave it a light sanding and it’s perfect. Actually, adding this a few days later, I went with a piece of wood that was both deeper, wider and taller than the keyboard. The larger and taller plank provides a platform for my entire forearms rather than just my wrist and hand. I’ve got it covered with some soft flannel and it’s very comfortable. I’m still experimenting with the best position for the trackpad.

The two things that come to mind when describing the typing experience on the K2 is that it is comfortable and efficient. By comparison, the last keyboard of this type (large, deep keys) was the keyboard that came with the iMac G5 from 2006ish. I still have that keyboard as my usb back-up for the occasional Bluetooth issue. But it’s horrible to type on as it really requires effort. There’s nothing enjoyable about the key action.

Another, more relevant comparison, would be my various recent Logitech keyboards that are much thinner and much more similar to Apple’s scissor switch keyboards used on the Magic Keyboards. Which is to say, fairly quiet to type on and with shallow key action somewhere between bouncy and mushy but not too clicky. They’ve always worked well for me. With the K2 each key press results in a fairly satisfying click and a clicky sensation to match the sound. Not at all hard to depress and with a firm bounce back. I suspect that once I’ve gotten used to this keyboard, perhaps another day or so, my typing speed will be back up to the norm with no problem. (Edit a week after initial writing to add that yes, I did get used to it and it’s even better a week later!)

The only thing I’m not quite used to yet is the slightly different positioning of the arrow keys in the bottom right corner. They’re only off a bit to the right with a somewhat smaller shift key but it’s been enough to confuse my fingers a bit. I don’t doubt that I’ll get used to it.

WIX Website Code

I recently took on a new client who had an existing WIX website. The initial plan was that I would update the WIX site. I’ve never used WIX so I told the client I’d have a look and expected it would not be a problem to update. Then I took a look and discovered that WIX is a visual editor, the sort you might get with a page layout application like Affinity Publisher or Apple Pages. I knew the code from that sort of application would not be efficient or anything close to semantic but it was far worse than I expected.

To set the context, a normal page from one of my websites might be 5 to 6 printed pages of html, code and actual content. The text content is easily readable by a human. Add to that another 1 to 2 pages of code in a linked css file. About 35 kb for the html and css combined. On the html page the metadata is right a the top followed by the content. I printed the code for one page of the WIX site to a pdf document and the result was 136 pages. The metadata description appears at page 101. The first actual text content of the page finally appears at page 116. The file was 480 kb.

Other visual website layout apps produce the same kind of code. One aspect of this is that the visual editors are supposed to make creating and updating websites easier for users who may not have the experience to build a website. In my brief use I didn’t find that to be the case at all. In the bit of time I spent in the WIX page editor I found it clumsy to use. Perhaps given enough time it would get easier but I didn’t like the feel of it at all. Of course, if someone needs a website and has no website building skills this would indeed allow them to build and update a website that mostly works.

While visual page layout for websites might provide a certain freedom to the designing of a page and visual placement of elements in a more free form process, I don’t think the ultimate rendered page works nearly as well. Certainly this client’s site was not working as well on my devices as it should have and there were a few errors on the various pages. Obviously a well coded page displays content exactly as intended.

I’ve now got the client’s website moved over to a properly coded website and have come away from the experience with a newfound appreciation for the difference beteen the approaches. No surprises or new information here, just a reminder of the quality differences. And if I’m being honest, I’m happy to be able to say that I’ve been hand coding websites with a respect for file sizes, usability and standards for 20+ years.