How to hide HUD elements

So let's talk about Keyboards. It's no secret I take my gaming very seriously and as a result I take my Keyboards very seriously. I realize many people don't, and that's a subjective quality I can't help you with. However, there are objective qualities that can be observed about keyboards and I'm going to go through them.

Before we talk about what makes a keyboard "good" or "bad" it's important we define our terms. There are two kinds of mistakes a keyboard can make:

1. Producing a Key-Stroke you did not mean to hit (false positive)
2. Not producing a Key-Stroke you did mean to hit (false negative)

By in large, I optimize for the fewest false negatives over false positives. The reason being that a false positive is usually easily observed even at 200 APM. If I accidentally select my Hatchery when I meant to select my Overlord I get a visual indication (something changes). In the reverse case (I think I've selected my Hatchery and I am still on my Overlord) nothing changes. Since the human visual system is built on change its easier to notice the false positive than the false negative.

Keyboard Parameters break down into 3 important qualities:

1. Tactile
2. Roll-over
3. Polling/Interrupt

You could also add Ghosting to this list but modern Keyboards rarely exhibit this behavior.

Tactile Keyboards

There are three kinds of Keyboards in the world: Mechanical, Scissor and Rubber (I'm ignoring anything based on Cameras for the moment as those are rare). Rubber Keyboards (the most common) are based on using a Rubber Dome as a spring. Scissor use a harder plastic as a Spring. Mechanical use a metal spring as the contact. I'm not going to spend time breaking all of these down I'm just going to cover Mechanical, a longer explanation can be found here.

Of the three Mechanical is by-in-large considered the most superior. Mechanical keyboards use a spring that provides for a very different tactile response when the key is considered "pressed" then when it is not. This difference (shown below) guarantees that you do not consider a key "pressed" when it has not been. This is crucial to avoiding false-positives

In many Mechanical Keyboards this also makes an audible "clicking" sound to reinforce this concept.

Roll-Over

N-Key Roll-Over is the idea that a keyboard can only tell when a maximum number of keys have been pressed. For high end USB keyboards this is usually 6+4 or 10 total keys (4 modifiers). It should be noted that USB stipulated a maximum of 6+4 key rollover but this does not guarantee you will get the full 10 on your keyboard. By comparison a PS/2 keyboard provides full N-Key Roll-Over. Because its keys use interruption instead of polling (more on this in a second) this means you will never be in a case where you hit too many keys at once and some of those keys are not transmitted. Again, this cuts down on false-positives

Polling vs Interrupt

There are two different ways key sampling can be provided. Either the keyboard can transmit a new signal every time a key changes states (using an interrupt) or the computer can poll the keyboard for its current state. Unless you're hitting 400-500 APM this is actually a philosophical difference more than a practical. Because keyboards poll very quickly it is almost meaningless to talk about the difference between a polling keyboard and an interrupt keyboard.

So after all that let's evaluate your question: I'm seriously looking into getting a ZBoard, but I'm not sure if its overkill for WoW

The ZBoard is a USB keyboard (thus limited to 10 Keys, thought they only say 7). It does not have Mechanical Keys. It discusses having built in Macros (so almost certainly polling).

Based on what we discussed this is not a high-end keyboard and certainly not worth your time.

Instead you should consider the Das Model S or a Unicomp Board

I don't know a lot about BlueTooth or Wireless Keyboards, but I assume they work similarly to USB.

Try the mods, Better Dialogue Controls and Better MessageBox Controls.

Better Dialogue Controls description:

In A Nutshell

Have you ever pressed the E (activate) key in a dialogue and it selected something else than you expected? Then you may find this mod useful. Think of it as a patch for the controls of the dialogue interface.

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This mod will be most useful for people who like to use both the keyboard and mouse, it fixes issues where the mouse just flat out prevents some keyboard controls from working as expected. If you exclusively use the mouse to scroll and click through dialogues you may not have run into some of these issues. Likewise if you do not move the mouse at all after entering a dialogue. If you move the mouse pointer after entering a dialogue, then you will run into the issues below:

• A fairly common occurrence is when you leave the mouse pointer somewhere over the menu and you want to use the keyboard controls. If you like to switch to the keyboard navigation now and then, you will run into issues where the mouse pointer just flat out prevents you from scrolling to the top or bottom of the list with the keyboard controls.
• Another common occurrence is that as you enter the dialogue, you think the first item, next to the pointy bit, is the selected item. However when you press E, you find that the 2nd or 3rd item has been selected. This happens because the mouse pointer takes the focus away from the default option. Often times, I had to move the mouse pointer out of the way when entering the dialogues because of this.

Solution:

• The mouse focus now highlights items, but does not make them active. Thus the active item is always at the center of the list (next to the arrow/pointy bit). When you enter a dialogue, the mouse pointer never takes the focus away from the default option.
• The keyboard controls lets you scroll all the way to the first or last item, no matter if the mouse pointer is hanging over the menu.
• Scrolling the list with the mousewheel, or up/down controls always maintains the center item as the active one.
• You can still click off center dialogue items with the mouse, the mouse just won’t affect the menu until you click.
• The mousewheel scrolling has a smoother transition. It happens because I changed the mousewheel scrolling to work exactly as if you pressed the up/down controls. I didn’t plan to change the mouse wheel scrolling appearance, but I thought it was nice so left it in.

^{From: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/27371/}

Better MessageBox Controls description:

In A Nutshell

This mod lets you navigate the message boxes with the keyboard. Use Left/Right controls, and Activate to select options (typically A,D and E but it should work if you remapped those controls to other keys). Fixes the clickable area of buttons so they are easier to click.

Detailed Changes

These are the changes made to the vanilla (original) Skyrim message boxes:

• Enabled the gamepad style controls, which lets you navigate between options with the Left/Right keys (usually WASD), and select an option with the Activate key (usually E) and Return/Enter keys. Now you can dismiss simple “Ok” message boxes by pressing a single key instead of being forced to click a tiny text label.
• The TAB key cycles through "Exit" type buttons, where the label matches exactly "Return", "Exit", "Done", "Cancel", "Back" or "No". This helps navigate custom menus from mods that have lots of options. While SkyUI3/MCM will alleviate this, there are still many instances where mods will continue to use message boxes (or mods that won’t update to use MCM).
• With SKSE enabled pressing ESCAPE picks the first “exit” button and selects it. Thus you can quickly exit out of most dialogs that provide an “exit” button. The recognized “exit” buttons are exactly as for the TAB key (see above). You can quickly exit out of Yes/No dialogs, and mod options. In multi level mod options usually the ESCAPE key will take you to the parent set of options, because it picks “Return”, “Back” or “Cancel”, etc. WITHOUT SKSE the ESCAPE key behaves exactly as the TAB key (I’m sorry but it was not possible otherwise to distinguish the keys as crazy as it sounds!).
• Fixed the width of the clickable area for the buttons to properly adapt to the entire length of the button label.
• Extended the clickable area also below the button labels, instead of only above. This makes them easier to pick with the mouse.
• Added a subtle highlight to the focused button.

^{From: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/28170/}