She may now have retired, but Mavis Beacon is still fondly remembered at Softonic HQ. The badly-rendered typing guru has always been regarded as the digital equivalent of a favorite aunt and is part of the reason why Softonic’s blog posts are written so quickly.
The application was designed to help you learn to touch-type or improve your typing speed and accuracy. The original version taught you by displaying the layout of a keyboard along with transparent fingers to explain where your hands should be hovering. Mavis would then bark orders, getting you to type what she was saying, and gradually getting faster.
The idea was that after a few hours in Mavis’ company you’d be able to touch-type with ease. It didn’t do a bad job, but typing tutors have evolved a lot since Ms Beacon’s era. For instance, MaxType Typing Tutor allows you not only to test and practice your typing skills with any *.txt file, but to print out test ‘diplomas’ statistical data, which will give you the information about 20 parameters of your typing and even replay the mtr-record file of your own typing. For younger users, the wonderfully silly Tux Typing is full of enough fun and games to keep kids’ fingers tapping for a long time.
