Chris McKeon wrote:Once again, I am asking anyone Who might have a Manual Typewriter to contact Me if You will consider selling Me Your Typewriter, Thanks Chris McKeon 925-497-1059
Hi Chris,
Back in the mid-90's I wrote a typing practice program in QBASIC for DOS. Since DOS is long gone, and QBASIC isn't easy to find, I recently rewrote it in Javascript so it should run in almost any web browser. I have attached the latest version below. You will need to download the file, then unzip it, and finally double-click on the file named "TypingTutor.html". If you do it right, you should see something that looks like this:
- Screenshot_2023-12-16.png (41.63 KiB) Viewed 3420 times
Here's how to use it:
The top line shows the text that you will be typing. The white letter with the gray box around it (in the center) is the next key to type. That key is also highlighted on the keyboard (with the yellow border). When you type the proper key (including upper and lower case) the top line will advance to the next character (letters already typed will be blue, and letters yet to be typed will be green). If you type the wrong key, that key will show up in red below the small gray box, and the top line will refuse to advance until you get it right. The program keeps track of your statistics and shows your keys per second typing rate.
The program starts out with the (in)famous typing sentence: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." You can type that over and over and over as long as you want. But the program also includes a number of other exercises shown in the green buttons ("Quick Brown Fox", "Home Keys", "Random Alphabet", "Random Numbers", and "Random All"). It also has exercises for each finger shown in the gray buttons ("L Little", "L Ring", "L Middle", "L Index", "R Index", "R Middle", "R Ring", "R Little"). In addition to these specific exercises, the program also has some pre-loaded passages ("Declaration of Independence", "Constitution/Bill of Rights", and "Gettysburg Address").
All of these exercises and texts are loaded into the text box at the bottom when you click each button. But they are not loaded into the program until you click on the red "Load" button. The "Load" button loads whatever is in that bottom text box ... regardless of how it got there. This means that you can paste anything you want into that bottom text box and load it for typing. If, for example, you want to read an article from a web site, you can simply select all the text of that article, copy it to the clipboard, and then paste it into the text box. When you click "Load", that text will be ready for typing. This is especially helpful as motivation. If you copy and paste an article that you really want to read, you'll be motivated to type it ... in order to read it.
Here's the file to download, unzip, and open with your web browser: