hit meh! with your leet keyboard skills (the mouse is so 20th century)

[sophiaserpentia]

If you've got keyboard shortcut tips -- on Windows, Firefox, other popular applications, please share them! The less I have to use a mouse, the less pain I'm in.

Comments

[kellcrow7.livejournal.com]

...More than these?
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/126449

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I knew a few of these but not most.

[kellcrow7.livejournal.com]

I like using them. They make me feel all leet.

[cowgrrl.livejournal.com]

I find the best thing to do is print out a long list of shortcut commands and then highlight some of things you do most often. It's best to memorize a few at a time.

Many of them are the same from one application to another, for example, control-a will highlight all the text in a document. control-x to cut, control-c to copy, control-v to paste.

A good one, if you don't already know it -- in firefox (or IE probably) control-d takes you to the URL at the top of the screen. If you start typing a web site you frequently use, that URL will appear pretty quickly and then you can just hit enter to accept. A good way to switch from one web site to another without touching the mouse.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

This is what I've been doing... just examining my tasks as they come to my attention and wondering, "Hmm, I wonder if there's a way to do this with the keyboard instead?"

Ctrl-D -- that's very helpful. One I learned yesterday is Ctrl-K which takes you to the search field.

[cowgrrl.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I didn't know about Ctrl-K. I'm going to make that the one I try to memorize this week.

[cowgrrl.livejournal.com]

Here's another one, in case you don't know it: ctrl-N will open a new version of firefox. Then you can toggle between both firefox windows using alt-tab.

[ovary.livejournal.com]

alt+F4 to quit any program, or to troll online games. "You get 50 extra lives if you hold alt and push F4!"

Ctrl+ to zoom in in photoshop, ctrl- to zoom out. While using the magnetic lasso or other selection tools, hold shift or alt to add or subtract space from the currently-selected space.

Spamming F8 or F12 while an old computer was booting used to bypass some security things -- I forgot exactly. It hasn't worked in 10 years.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

The tips for photoshop are interesting -- I've been wondering if some of the more unlikely tasks are possible with a keyboard -- moving windows around, resizing them, and so on.

[ovary.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I am not sure. Those do seem like they would be useful.

[discoflamingo.livejournal.com]

For launching stuff without browsing and clicking, I swear by Launchy on Windows. I mapped it to Alt-Space and never looked back.

Remapping the Caps Lock key as another Ctrl key has really made my finger mileage go down considerably.
Windows-d for minimizing every open window, if you should find you have too many.
Shift-F10 usually opens a context-sensitive menu which you can manipulate with the arrow keys (try it in Firefox - it's pretty awesome).
Ctrl-+ and Ctrl-- for zooming in and out (works on most applications I know).
Ctrl-Home for the start of a document, Ctrl-End for the end.
I like to use Ctrl-F to scroll down through web pages rather than using Page Up/Down.
Alt-Tab and Alt-Shift-Tab for rotating between windows; Ctrl-Tab and Ctrl-Shift-Tab for rotating between tabs in Firefox.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Shift-F10 is, if I recall correctly, the keyboard version of right-clicking. It is very helpful to know that there's a way to do that with both keyboard and mouse.

Just curious -- why Ctrl-F over Page Down? Less need to move the hands? On my keyboard Page Down is halfway to the mouse, practically...

[discoflamingo.livejournal.com]

Since I spend most of my days in emacs (where the concept of "pages" means little to nothing), incremental search is almost always faster when chugging through medium-large files than manually paging down. It's a habit that liberally spills over from my largely text-processing-oriented computer experience :-)

ETA: If one considers that every time one reaches for a mouse a "cache miss" or a failure of my input design, then the arrow keys and the Insert::Page Down keys are roughly half failure in my mind.

[ankh-f-n-khonsu.livejournal.com]

Have you tried a different input? They have ergonomic mouses, for example. I've got a 3M one that looks kind of like a joystick but slides around like a laser mouse. But I'm also quite interested in the 'Magic Trackpad'. Have you tried one of those? Or, what about audio input? Windows, from what I understand, has these accessibility options in-built... you just need the hardware and to set up the software...

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

At work I've started using a roller mouse, which is very different. I don't know yet whether or not I will get one for home use (they are pricey). The audio input was another option mentioned by the case manager in case the roller mouse didn't help -- although I'm already seeing some benefit from the changes to my workstation.

[orb2069.livejournal.com]

[Alt]+[space] brings up the window manipulation stuff - from there, you can [m]ove and [s]ize the window with the cursor keys, but I usually just ma[x]imize all my windows and flip through them with alt-tab.

And a plug for editing in VI - Once you 'grok' it, you can just ignore the mouse for editing text.

[orb2069.livejournal.com]

Oh - When I was having problems, I installed Dragon (then) Dictate, which had a function called 'mouse grid' that allowed you to control the cursor by voice that worked pretty well - But I don't see it mentioned in the current versions. Still, it might be worth looking into generally.