Over at What’s The Next Action,they’re doing this feature called Shortcut Sunday. The first installment talks about the hidden shortcuts you can use to avoid your mouse when working with Windows XP.
I know, a lot of you really like using your mouse (mouses? mice? meese?) but it slows you down. Reach over, grab the mouse, run it around the screen, click something, then go back to the keyboard. Repeat often. Waste, waste, waste.
Lots of these shortcuts work really well because they become second nature after awhile. For example, most people know that hitting the key with the Windows logo on it will bring up the Start menu – no-brainer there. But most people don’t know that Win+D will minimize all windows and show your desktop.
Or my favor one is that when you hit the ALT key and then any of the underlined letters on your top menu bar, it makes the menu pop down. For example, in Microsoft Word hit ALT+F. You’ll see the File menu drop down, and you can roll through it using your arrow buttons reather than dragging your mouse all of the place.
Some other shortcuts I use a lot you might find useful:
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Alt-Tab: Switch between applications
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Shift-Del: Delete a file immediately without sending it to the recycle bin (you’ll still be asked for confirmation)
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Ctrl-Esc: show the startmenu
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Ctrl-Shift-Esc: Open the taskmanager to quickly kill a frozen application
Make sure you check out Microsoft’s own list of keyboard shortcuts you never knew even existed!
Photo courtesy of m e r c e n a r i o.
