I would love to have an option for a touchpad with buttons - 3 buttons would be incredible. I don’t mind giving up a bit of vertical real-estate for dedicated buttons a-la older thinkpads. If we could get an input module with a trackpoint as well, that would be great, but I’m not holding my breath for that to be an official module because I imagine it would be a pretty big design cost.
Maybe a more elegant solution from a modularity perspective could be a separate input module that would fit on one of the sides of the touchpad that could offer buttons? I don’t know if the ergonomics of that would work though…
I do actually like non-clickable touchpads like the MacBook’s way more than the ones with the whole touchpad being clickable (my least favourite) or additional touchpad buttons (I’d rather have the area for the pad instead of buttons).
But it seems this is a controversial topic, maybe different options would be nice?
Now that you mention it, I could totally see Framework releasing the 16 with whatever they’re rolling with (which would probably be sufficient for the entirety of fillable pre-orders) and later coming out with an upgrade like they did with 13’s speakers, hinge, etc. I guess I would be taking a gamble if I purchased the laptop before I knew that they were going to do such a thing. However, it does seem a lot more likely than doing something similar for the 13, since the 16’s input cover is going to be way more modular (and presumably more customizable/upgradable).
Really hoping the whole input area can be easily modified and moved around not just the keyboard and numpad or side panels. The community mods could be amazing.
I’d love to have a small keyboard offset to left front and a small non clicky touchpad with buttons on the front right. Then have a macro pad and small info screen above. This would be more similar to my desktop setup in a laptop which would probably eliminate my need for an external keyboard and mouse most of the time. The couple of extra inches away from the laptop screen really makes a difference to my eye strain and I’ve never understood the ergonomics of having touchpads in the centre front, it’s so uncomfortable.
Or if there wasn’t enough space or connections for a small touchpad on the front right remove it altogether and just use an external mouse.
TIL that a decent touchpad exists off-the-shelf! Still, the language/marketing on their website makes me think that the cost of integration into the 16’s design might be prohibitively expensive for the framework team if not enough people spring for it.
+1
I was getting really excited about the Framework 16 - until I read that
a) there’s no plans to support trackpoint (which I’ve loved for 20+ years and always use in preference to lenovo trackpads), and
b) the alternative, the trackpad on the 13, seems to be deeply unsatisfying to some users.
3 buttons on the trackpad would be awesome - and hopefully sufficient connectors for the keyboard to allow 3rd party keyboard/trackpoint development?
Alternate touchpads, keyboards, and trackpoints will definitely be possible.
Each framework-16 input module just connects via usb. The Framework produced modules plan to use a rp2040 controller with qmk open source firmware. A trackpoint can just be combined with a keyboard, running off the same controller / no need for an additional connector.
Trackpoints and touchpads can be easy with qmk. github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware/blob/master/docs/feature_ps2_mouse.md
I have not found a good way to avoid click-drag, even to select the text to quote in this response. I’m on Linux, so maybe that’s part of the difference.
Tap-to-click and drag doesn’t work? I’m not on a Framework. Works for me on linux mint on a thinkpad. Not that I use it much, prefer a mouse, or failing that, 3 real touchpad buttons.
