to me the reason I don't want a mouse is I need to move it on some surface for it to work, and even then it's handling is much less accurate than at the desk, and its a chore to target that little button on the screen. from this point keyboard based navigation would work better, in apps that implement it well. I can imagine using a keyboard, but most other people I know would not accept that, because it's too big.

so far the best option I heard is a normal TV remote but with a keypad and trackpad on the back. but do those work with IR, are the signals of these buttons standardized?

It is clear until that point, but how do you set up full control with that? afaik by default nothing listens to the input events generated by the IR receiver