December 27th, 2007

A couple of lesser-known Windows-key shortcuts

I’m a die-hard keyboard user, and always like to know when there’s a keyboard shortcut to accomplish something that might otherwise take a few strategic mouse clicks. The Windows key, while a bane to gamers’ existence, actually provides us with some useful functions.

I’ve known about several Windows key shortcuts for years, but there are a couple that I learned about more recently (sometime in 2007, I think), which I now use on a daily basis. The title of this post refers to these as ‘lesser-known’, but I base that purely on the fact that *I* did not know about them, not on any sort of user experience testing or published statistics.

Windows-D: Show Desktop

Hides all open windows, bringing the Windows desktop to the front. This duplicates the functionality of the ‘Show Desktop’ icon that exists in the Quick Launch toolbar by default, and the ‘Show the Desktop’ option in the context menu that appears when you right-click the taskbar. It does not actually minimize the other windows, and those windows can be re-focused via Alt-Tab or by clicking their taskbar entries.

Windows-L: Lock Computer

This duplicates the functionality of the ‘Lock Computer’ button in the Ctrl-Alt-Delete Windows Security dialog. On Windows XP systems that use Fast User Switching, it takes you back to the screen that lists user accounts.

I make it a habit of hitting Windows-L whenever I’m done using my PC at home, so that when my wife sits down to use it, she can just click her name and login (or resume her existing session). At work, it’s always a good idea to lock your computer, so I hit Windows-L whenever I get up to leave my desk.

Now, here are a few more well-known (i.e. I’ve known about them for a long time) ones:Windows-M: Minimize AllThis minimizes all open windows. Programs that hide out in the system tray when you minimize them will be sent to the system tray. Everything else will be minimized to the taskbar. This has the same effect of clicking the ‘Minimize’ icon in the top-right corner of all of your open windows.Windows-F: Search for Files and Folders

This pops up the Windows file search feature. This duplicates the functionality of clicking the Start Menu, clicking the ‘Search’ menu option, and clicking the ‘For Files or Folders…’ sub-menu option.

Windows key (by itself): Open the Start Menu

This pops up the Start Menu, just like what happens when you press Ctrl-Esc or click the start menu. I use this all the time.

Please note that I’ve still never used Windows Vista, so I am unfamiliar with any Windows-key shortcuts which may have been introduced with it. The shortcuts I’ve described, above, are valid in Windows XP Professional (and most of them were usable in previous versions of Windows as well). I did read about a change to the way the Start Menu works, in Vista, with the introduction of a smart search box.

If you know of any useful Windows-key shortcuts that I may have missed, for ANY version of Windows, please leave a reply and let me (and other readers) know!

Posted by spugbrap at 01:22pm EST 6 Comments 

Categories: reference, useful, keyboard, user_interface, hotkeys, windows, tips, lists, geek

October 14th, 2005

Web pages that capture keypresses are evil!

I hate it when I encounter a web page that tries to be fancy and make its own hotkeys to navigate within the page. Well, I usually hate it anyways. I like that gmail has keyboard shortcuts, and the most important thing is that their keyboard shortcuts are simple (letter keys) and only affect the behavior of the gmail site. They don’t capture keypresses that would ordinarily be handled by my browser, like Alt-F (I’ve depended on that to open the ‘File’ menu in every web browser since 1995 or so, and most desktop apps as well.

But someone at AOL/Mapquest thought it would be clever to intercept Alt-[key] events (probably not a complete list, just what I noticed):

Alt-F: redirects you to their ‘Find It’ page (should open browser’s ‘File’ menu)
Alt-D: redirects you to their ‘Directions’ page (should put cursor focus in browser’s ‘Location’/'Address’ bar, with current location selected)
Alt-M: redirects you to their ‘Maps’ page (I’m not aware of any default browser behavior for this)
Alt-H: redirects you to their main (Home) page (should open browser’s ‘Help’ menu)

While I applaud them for thinking about keyboard navigation, I don’t like their choice of keys.

Another site, Uncyclopedia, captures Alt-keys as well:

Alt-H: move cursor focus to their ‘history’ tab at the top
Alt-F: move cursor focus to their ’search’ box in the sidebar
Alt-E: move cursor focus to their ‘view source’ tab at the top (should open browser’s ‘Edit’ menu)

Now, there are certainly workarounds that I could use to allow me to continue controlling my browser with the keyboard:

  1. Some browser features have multiple keyboard shortcuts; I could force myself to learn different keys.
  2. I could try to find/create a plug-in/add-on/extension for each of my browsers, to allow me to either:
    1. reassign my browser’s keyboard shortcuts to work around these web sites(see #1 above)
    2. prevent web pages from being able to capture these keypresses, perhaps with options to toggle this feature for the current site, etc.
  3. Stop using web sites that steal my favorite keyboard shortcuts
  4. Use a different browser, such as Opera (which seems to be immune to the evil put forth by the 2 sites above)

But I just feel like I shouldn’t have to do extra work because of these sites… their web developers should respect the common keyboard shortcuts used by the big players in the browser market today (IE and Firefox).

Posted by spugbrap at 02:32pm EDT No Comments 

Categories: keyboard, browsers, annoyance, geek, web