10 Computer Shortcuts: Obvious to Techies but Unknown to the Rest (Plus: New World Record)

I recently discovered a tip that has saved heaps of time:

In Firefox, using the middle (or scrollwheel) button to click on links opens them in a new tab.

(Entire post showed in Google Reader 🙂

Sorry meant to add: I saw your entire post in my RSS reader.

More useful shortcuts:

M$ Button L – locks the station. Useful if you go out for 5 minutes and don’t want anyone to change your status in Skype 😉

M$ Button D (as well as M) – minimizes all the applications

For Firefox: Ctrl Tab – changes pages in new window

Get Autohotkey and make your own shortcuts!

In Firefox (and IE), to enlarge the font, hold down the CTRL button and use the scroll wheel on the mouse to increase or decrease the size of the text.

What a post!

the shortcuts…i use often…the powerlifting??? i’m not sure what to think about that. I’m going to cancel my home security system and see if Joe can just stand by my front door.

I haven’t been on a desktop machine with a mouse for 8 years now and the more I can stay away from the touchpad, the better.

In FF:

* Alt D to get to the address bar

* Alt Home to go to your homepage (Y! Home Page junkie)

* Ctrl W to close a tab

* Ctrl F5 to do a full reload of a page (bypasses cache)

Windows General:

* windows key r (opens run) … (changed a bit in vista but you can go back to the old school stuff if you want)

* after windows key r you can type in a drive letter to open a window for that drive (c:) you can type in a url and open a browser if you don’t already have one open. You can type in an app name (notepad) etc etc

*ctrl esc works in place of the windows key if you’re on a keyboard w/o the windows key.

** Always check your menus and help ( per app ) for a full list of whats avaliable. Search “keyboard shortcuts” .. A quick 5 minute read might shave 5 minutes a day off your computer time.

I am a big fan of key board short cuts. I didn’t know about control-k, so that is a nice one.

For those who don’t know about the application ActiveWords and are interested in getting some shortcuts on steroids, than you might be interested. If allows you to create your own shortcuts for just about anything you can think of that can be done with the mouse. See http://www.activewords.com/.

Point of disclosure, I am a user of AW and not an employee. Also, the app is rock solid, which is important, because their support is non-existent for the rare times you might need it.

Tim,

My favorite Obvious Shortcut is using “J” and “K” to move down or up one article in Google Reader. (Not that I don’t read every word of your posts…)

Someone already mentioned it, but I love Windows D as well to minimize everything.

Also love CTRL clicklink which opens link in new Firefox tab.

And your whole post showed up via my reader. Have a great weekend!

When browsing with Internet Explorer (I know, I know) I like to use the Ctrl T to open a new tab, and sometimes the Ctrl N opens an entire new window with the same page you are on, plus any past browser history for that session. Have not been able to figure out if a key exists for opening a new tab with all the history yet… anyone know that one?

Another oldie but goodie is F6 to get into the URL field, type the word and hit Ctrl Enter to add the www and the .com to the site you want.

When editing text, I like to use the Ctrl either left or right arrows to quickly navigate through to the front of each word. I also like Ctrl Backspace when I type a wrong word and need to just start that one over by deleting it. Ctrl Shift left or right arrow selects the word for copying and pasting purposes.

M$ key E gives a new window to browse the computer you are on.

One last one… Ctrl A to select all text in a field to paste into word for spell check so you don’t look like an idiot to Tim’s 20,000 readers 🙂

Wow, after seeing all this what a big nerd I am! Have a great weekend Tim and all!

E

One feature of Mac OSX that saves me loads of time is Expose. For those that don’t know it fans out all your open windows so you can see them all and quickly choose the one you want to go to. This works so much faster than tabbing for me. I know there are Windows apps that do this and I know Vista tried something like it but I haven’t used it. The only downside is when I find myself on a comp without it I feel crippled, I actually have to find the window I want.

Windows-E: Pop open a file explorer window

Windows-L: Screen lock your computer

Here’s a new one to me that I find extremely cool.

GET TO YOUR FAVORITE SITES FAST

When you create some favorite bookmarks in Firefox, you can then go up to Bookmarks>Organize Bookmarks and then select the ones you use a lot, right-click, select Properties and give it a Keyword (ideally just a letter or two).

From then on, all you have to do is go to the address bar, type in the code letter(s) and hit Enter and it takes you right to that site.

For example, I have “4h” as my keyword for this blog. All I type in is 4h and hit enter — and I’m here.

The most used shortcut I use is – Mac OS X – CMD shift 4, this opens up a quick screen grab tool that allows you to select the area you want to copy then drops the image right onto your desktop!

Ciao!

The post showed up fine in my rss reader (thunderbird)

Here is my list of favorite shortcut keys:

alt-tab: switch between open applications

shift-alt-tab: switch in reverse order

ctrl-tab in navigator: switch between tabs

windows r: open run box

windows m: show desktop

Enjoy 😉

Hi Tim,

I just wanted to say THANK YOU for writing The 4-Hour Workweek. I can’t thank you enough for it.

The only thing I implemented so far is the email autoresponder. That was the most liberating feeling I experienced in years. That is, after I got over the hard part of forcing myself not to check email.

I’m reading your book for the second time and I’ve decided to do an experiment: follow your advice in the book word for word. I figure the worst thing that could happen to me won’t be any worse than what I’ve already experienced so I really don’t have anything to lose. I plan on logging my escapades on a website. I’ll post the reactions, results, etc. to everything I implement or try.

I graduated from Columbia University–in New York City–in May with a degree in philosophy (focus on Tibetan Buddhism) and currently I work in digital media production for a prestigious TV channel. The exposure’s been great but after a month, I conquered the learning curve and they can’t offer me anything more advanced at this time.

Not only am I extremely bored and find my job utterly meaningless, but I absolutely can’t stand the 9-5 slavestyle (I call it slavestyle because it’s not my idea of a lifestyle). I’m going bonkers after 7 years of having had relative control over my schedule while being in school. Working at the TV channel 9-5 has driven me to the brink of suicide (well, almost).

Objectively, for a 9-5 life, I have the creme de la creme of jobs given the industry and department. I sometimes wish that I could just be happy being a slave in the system like everyone else. But, I haven’t been successful in conforming myself so I finally decided to face my fears and make another major life change.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to visit every country and territory in the world (including outer space) so that’s what I’ll do: trip around the world and fly into outer space on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic–or go up with the Russians or one way or another, experience outer space. At the moment, my plans consist of getting rid of as many material possessions as possible, storing the rest in a few bins in my brother’s basement, living in airport business lounges (since my AMEX gives me access) when I’m broke and need a roof and food, creating a sufficient remote cash flow to finance my dream life (how exactly I’ll do that, I have no clue), and doing all the other things I’ve always wanted to do. That’ll include picking up more languages, continuing to train for amateur boxing competitions (with the goal of turning pro), stunt flying (I got my pilot’s license when I was 18), skydiving, and enjoying life, etc. I’m giving myself 3 months to hit the road.

To people not like me, this sounds crazy (“What the #&%^$#! You’re throwing away your glamorous job at XYZ channel!????!!!???”) but I’m a crazy person and this has me more psyched than anything since graduating. Or in years and years, for that matter. It’s an adventure almost on par with escaping the Amish.

In your book, you occasionally mention doing case studies on people and mentoring people. Would you mentor me in this adventure?

I’d be forever grateful and happily split whatever profit I make from it. (There’s GOTTA be a way to generate cash flow from this adventure but I have the absolute worst karma in history when it comes to money so maybe you could steer me in the right direction?) In addition, I’ll introduce you to the inside life of the Amish and even teach you the Amish language if you’d like. I know you can experience basically whatever you want in the world but I doubt you’ve experienced Amish culture from the inside.

I escaped when I was 15. I’m the oldest of 11, a female and from a small community. It was no easy thing to orchestrate a successful departure, one that I planned for over 4 years from the time I was 11. Where I’m at currently is not where I want to be. I didn’t leave the Amish and bust my butt to get an Ivy League education and experience what little of the world I have experienced just to end up stuck and miserable in another robotic Fritz Langian Metropolistic system. I’ve had and have a wonderful life by the average American’s standards–experiencing things that make even my financially wealthy friends envious–but it’s still not satisfactory. I want to truly live. I want to be free.

Here’s my contact info:

[removed]

If you’re not interested in mentoring me, would you be willing to recommend me to someone else?

I would very much welcome any feedback, advice or suggestions you have regarding my leap into the unknown.

Thank your for your consideration and again, thanks a million for writing this book. It’s good to know that I’m not the only insane sane person out there.

Sincerely,

Torah

###

Hi Torah,

I unfortunately don’t do any mentoring or coaching at the moment due to sheer volume, but I am interested in the Amish. To be continued…

Thanks so much for sharing,

Tim

It’s awesome to so many useful tips and tricks for windows. In windows you can switch between different programs with the alt tab which we’ve covered.

With a Mac you can do apple tab to switch within programs, BUT you can also do apple ` which switches between windows of the same program.

This can save a ton of time with multiple windows of multiple programs open.

I think Quicksilver is an amazing time saver for Mac system.

http://www.blacktree.com/

If you want to go beyond shortcuts to specific productivity issues you might want a technology coach.

Seth Godin mentioned this in his blog. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/01/a-shortage-of-d.html

AH!!!!!

Heres something that makes your MAC run faster. I did this while i was getting some tutoring from a mac Genius. Go to utilities and then to go to disk utility and then hit verify permission. This basically takes 2 mins and is the equivalent of defragmenting on your apple.

Jose

Tim-

Re: weird characters showing up. I assume you’re using a different program to write up drafts of your posts, and then copy/pasting? I’ve had this happen before when a word processing program uses “fancier” characters (such as opening/closing quotes instead of the plain ol’ tick marks, or proper “em” dashes, etc). You can still display those on your site, but they have to be replaced with special little codes.

From a great little article at A List Apart:

“Don’t ever trust the 8-bit representations to be correct, because they almost certainly won’t be. The biggest problem is that many web browsers assume that 8-bit characters refer to the local character system, translating your curly quotes or dashes into Greek or accented Latin characters on other platforms.”

http://www.alistapart.com/stories/emen/ (scroll down to “Newspapers of (broken) record”)

For those of you using the “slow” ctrl-f for searching, try “/” instead. I dislike the search-when-i-type-automatically, since sometimes I am trying to type in a field, and miss the focus (or the site purposely directs me elsewhere, even worse) and then the page starts scrolling around since it thought I was searching.

For those of you without a middle button, you can use ctrl-click to open a new tab in firefox. (I think that works without an extension, though I always have tab mix plus installed – it comes with an insane amount of customization if you like that sort of thing).

Thanks for the tip on ctrl-shift-t, I am shortcut weenie, and that was the only shortcut given here that I don’t use. Very nice.

One of the little known shortcuts (even for nerds) I use regularly are bookmark keywords (in Firefox) and strategically named favorites in IE.

In Firefox, when you create a bookmark, you can enter a keyword for easy access. For example, when you bookmark http://fourhourworkweek.com/blog you can set its keyword to be ‘tim’. Next time you use Ctrl L to get to the location bar you can just type ‘tim’ and the browser will load the Four Hour Work Week blog.

The really lesser known incarnation of this is in IE. You can add the site to your favorites, which will give it a name based on the title of the page, then rename the favorite to be ‘tim’. Next time you type tim in the location bar, IE will look first in your favorites for a bookmark named tim and load it if found.

If you need to commonly do things on your computer that don’t come with built in shortcuts, you can try out a program called Direct Access from Nagarsoft (http://www.nagarsoft.com/). The program lets you assign your own shortcuts to various actions including replacing text and starting applications. The interesting part is that you can type the keys into any application that takes keystrokes and then hit your hotkey and it will do what you told it. I bought the program over a year ago and I couldn’t be happier.

Disclaimer: I am not associated with this product or company, other than having purchased it and sent some emails back and forth with the owner (I’m also a programmer, so we talked about programming).

dear sir ,

as i want to ask you as a questions regarding the shortcuts key ab- out the computer for the general purpose only which i can’t use my hands to my mouse respectively………………..????

hi, how r u? this shortcut really helped me and let me tell u that my favorite shorcut is shuding down the computer which double press on windows key then a press on u.

I have a request from u to sent lots of useful shortcut in my email add, please.

I use my own custom-defined emacs-like text-editing keyboard shortcuts in all cocoa apps. And I navigate among interface elements, tabs, windows, apps, desktops, etc. – all with my keyboard. I’m obsessed with interfaces that don’t torture me. I’ve tried all Windows interfaces, several linux window managers, and Sun. OS X lets me get more stuff done. And it only took me a few weeks to become a keyboard ninja in OS X because it is well designed.

all such shortcuts are now known by almost everyone

plz update ur list