When I was in high school, the only people who took typing were the girls who were going on to secretarial school. Those of us on the college track were never offered a crack at the keyboard; and, if the truth be known, we would have disdainfully turned down the chance to lake such a stigmatized course. Never mind all those term papers we would have to type in college; never mind that some of us would become writers; never mind that we might eventually wind up at a computer terminal.
Now an awful lot of us need typing skills. Despite the Mac's mouse, keyboard input is an all-important element of computer use. If you're a hunt-and-peck artist or a two-finger speed demon, you can use a program like Broderbund's Type!
I’ll say right up front that the only fault of Type! is that, although it takes great advantage of the computer to test and analyze your keyboard skills and faults, it forgets that the computer lets you do more than a typewriter does. You can backspace in a word processor to make a quick correction, but not when you're at a typewriter. Type! doesn't let you correct mistakes; once made, a mistake is forever. And, on a more minor point, the program forces you to use two spaces after each sentence, which is more and more outmoded as computers become front-end typesetters.
Its hard to think of anything Type! leaves out. You can start with the basics of finger position at the home row, work on the letters there, then add the QWERTY row, and so on, gradually adding shifted keys, numbers, and punctuation. Training is in drills of short words and phrases. You can also approach drills from a different perspective; Instead of choosing the groups of keys (home row, QWERTY, numbers, and so forth) you can drill according to left or right hand or any specific finger. There are even categories like "Common words" and “Mirror images.”
Type!'s analysis of your practice sessions is extensive, yet every aspect is useful. Words per minute, of course, is always available. But you can get analysis graphs by key, hand, or finger: Is your right hand better than your left? Are the little fingers on both hands weak? Do you keep missing the Q or the Z? Analysis pinpoints your weak spots in easy-to-read graphs that note both speed and accuracy by every category. And, in case you can't decide what to do next, the program suggests specific lessons for you to work on.
No computer typing program would be complete without a skill-building game, and Type! has Type-Athlon. In the game, you're running hurdles against the computer; each of you has a figure at the bottom of the screen. As long as you type the phrases in the window, your figure keeps running and jumping; if you make a mistake, your figure falls with an amusing "splat” sound effect. When you fall, you lose a few precious seconds because the other runner keeps going.
Type-Athlon lets you play in any of the drilling categories (such as hand, key groups, common words, specific fingers). The speed of the "other” runner is automatically set at your last Words-per-minute drill speed, but you can reset the speed at any time. If you lose, the game automatically notches down the speed by five words a minute.
Type! is a complete typing tutor. The “weak spots" analyses are great, the game is fun, and even the drill phrases are interesting. You can't lose.
Zardetto Aker, Sharon. (October 1988). Type! MacUser. (pg. 77).
Soft Press
Games
out of 10 (0 vote)
48 / 
2014-04-14 / 
49d74a1bfd98d28a03b6fda0a2f27a839dcc44dc / 
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Type.img_.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Mini vMac
