Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Tip O' The Day

Happy Dave Has Left

09:59 / 14.06.07

Do you use Excel? Hate having to double click a cell when you want to edit the text inside it, especially when you're whizzing around with keyboard shortcuts?

Just hit F2. Found this this morning and it's making large spreadsheets a zillion times more bearable.

Bamba

10:11 / 14.06.07

In a similar vein...

Are you navigating through a deep directory structure in Windows to get to a particular folder/file? Do you actually know the name of the directories you're navigating through already and are annoyed at having to hunt through them at each level for the one you want to open next? Stop! As you open each directory, just start typing the name of the next one you want and Windows will effectively 'autocomplete' them till you hit the one you want; then you just hit Enter to move to the next level, meaning you can whizz through your navigation at a fraction of the speed that scrolling, reading and mouse-clicking will do for you.

I'm a sucker for keyboard shortcuts personally and this one seems like the daddy of them all to me.

Note: may work on OSX and Linux, I genuinely have no idea either way.

jentacular dreams

10:43 / 14.06.07

Especially helpful if you often find yourself working on a computer that almost seems to predate time itself, yet is somehow still required to run windows.

Ben Kudria

01:50 / 15.06.07

Oooh, I love these. Thanks for the tip, Bamba, that's helpful. I guess I always knew this trick, I just never used it.

My tip?

Get a keyboard launcher for your environment, and learn, or associate the names of as many applications as you can. For your Top 5 or Top 10, associate a direct key combo.

I've co-opted my Windows key for this:
Win+B: Browser
Win+T: Terminal
Win+N: Compose (write New) email
etc...

This may seem trivial, but I think of how much time I save every time I see someone navigate through 3 levels of the Start menu. No, the Quick Launch icons in the task bar do not cut it - with today's computers, using a keyboard is much faster than using a mouse.

Mac users should try Quicksilver, Windows users should try Launchy, and KDE/Gnome users on *nix can stick with plain ol' Alt+F2 (although I've remapped mine to Win+Space).

Keep 'em coming!

Sibelian 2.0

19:46 / 15.06.07

Um.

Alt + Tab = flick between windows? Everyone must know that one...

petunia

20:52 / 15.06.07

Ooooh, but if you Alt + Tab one-too-many and have to Alt + Tab all the way round again?

NO!

WAIT!

Alt + Tab + Shift and you will win the prize!

This also works with Command + Tab + Shift on the mac.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

21:02 / 15.06.07

As you open each directory, just start typing the name of the next one you want and Windows will effectively 'autocomplete' them till you hit the one you want; then you just hit Enter

Is this in the CLI? Don't you always have to press TAB to get the autocompletion?

(It works on Linux too by the way, both in BASH and when using Konqueror as a file browser in KDE).

Add Your Reply