Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Do you want to be a Keyboard Kowboy?

I remember back in University, my friends and I used to race to see who could do things faster on a computer. I usually lost, and it wasn't because I wasn't movin' that mouse, it was because I didn't know all the short cut keys. Since then I've stayed more on the keyboard than the mouse.

Windows provides a lot of shortcuts to help you be productive, you just gotta know them. Learn your tools, they will make you productive. :)

Here's some shortcuts for you to know as an IT person

  • Win+L - Lock workstation

  • Win+E - Open Explorer

  • Win+R - Open the Run dialog

  • Win+F - Search (although I can't say I use this one much)

  • Win+B - focus on the system tray (although I can't see what's going on, but if you start pressing enter and use the arrow keys, you'll launch things from the system tray, seems like this is a good idea, but needs some improvement)

  • Win+D - Toggle minimize all, and restore all windows (I suppose it's "D" for desktop)

  • Win+M - Minimize all windows

  • Win+Shift+M - restore all windows

  • Win+U - Utility manager (pretty cool, the PC starts speaking to you!)

  • CTRL+SHIFT+ESC - Launch the task manager

  • CTRL+ESC - Open the Start Menu (you can also just press "Win", but some old keyboards don't have this shortcut)

  • Win+Break - System properties Window

  • ALT+Enter - Display the properties (commonly used in Windows Explorer)

  • ALT+Space - Window Menu (follow the keystroke by an "n" to minimize the single window)

I'm sure there are more system ones, but I wanted to share some IE ones also:

  • Backspace - Back button

  • CTRL+mousewheel - Change the font size (this only works if the font size is not specified on the page using a "pt" font size)

  • F6 - Jump to the Address Bar (Also can use ALT+D)

  • Home - Top of the page

  • End - Bottom of the page


That's all for now. Did I miss some? Drop them in the comments and let's all become keyboard kowboys together!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;q126449

enjoy

Santa Claws

Anonymous said...

Short Cuts Continued...

http://designent.com/blog/archive/2004/10/15/153.aspx

Enjoy!!

Anonymous said...

I particularly like F2, which when an icon is highlighted goes straight to rename. It sure beats the slow three click method if you need to rename a bunch of files

Anonymous said...

I like the tab function in command prompt to auto complete when typing in long directory paths.
Also ctrl + enter in ie address bar (just type google for example then hold down ctrl and press enter)