Recently I was asked to review the new Kinesis Foot Pedal to see how it would work in regards to a heavy Emacs user. Interesting that Emacs users is a marketing demographic, but I suppose if someone is going to learn to use Emacs, learning to use a Kinesis isn’t much of a stretch.

This new foot pedal is quite solid. Stays where I expect, and doesn’t move around either on the carpet under my standing desk, or on the wood flooring under my sitting desk. This version also connects via USB, so not only is it useful without a Kinesis keyboard, you can alter its settings through the mountable USB interface.

So, if you are in the market for a foot pedal, this one is quite nice.

Since I never really got traction with my original foot pedal, I wasn’t sure what I would use it for. The internal Kinesis application had a list of quick features:

Since the Tab is still a pinky key on the Kinesis, I have longed for easier approaches to switching apps, so my first setting was Cmd-Tab for the left button. I’ve attached a screenshot of the special settings, but keep in mind, this only switches between the last two applications, but that has proven to me to be quite useful.

The pedal has two buttons, so what should I use for the second?