While it may not be limited to a multimedia world, keyboard shortcuts can be an incredibly helpful way to get things done and done quickly. Here’s just a sample of some of the more common shortcuts that can help you increase productivity. Or at least, that’s what I hear the office folks are calling it these days.
Note on OSes:
There are some differences among keyboard shortcuts among the different operating systems. Most Windows shortcuts work fairly well on Linux machines as well. Of course, when you get to the Mac world, the first thing people will tell you is “We don’t use Control here. We use Command.” Trade secret: it’s the one with the Apple on it. For this list, assume the Mac version of the shortcut substitutes Command for Control unless otherwise noted.
Universal
Undo – Ctrl+Z - One of the two single most important keyboard shortcuts you’ll ever use.
Save — Ctrl+S - The other most important shortcut. It is a very good idea when you start working on projects (of any kind) to get in the habit of pressing this when you pause for even a second. Make yourself your own built-in autosave.
Close window (tab) — Ctrl+W - While other shortcuts will close entire programs, this one allows you to close a single window or tab in that program. It’s even better on Macs, where a window is not the entirety of the program.
Rotate Windows — Alt+Tab - One of the most helpful shortcuts, press and hold Alt and then press Tab to begin cycling through windows. As long as you have Alt held down, you can keep pressing Tab to select the open programs. I find this makes even more sense on the Mac OS, as it doesn’t cycle through each window, just each application (you can use Expose to see multiple windows within a single program). Holding down Shift while cycling through lets you move backwards.
Browsing
Due to the ADD nature of the internet, a lot of times being able to do tasks quickly without thinking helps a lot. The following shortcuts have been tested with Firefox. I don’t know if they’re the same on other browsers, but if you’re not using Firefox….use Firefox.
New Tab — Ctrl+T - Self-explanatory. Oft-overlooked. WAY better than the menu.
Search Box — Ctrl+K - A quick way to get to the Google (or other search engine) box in the upper right corner of the browser. Combine Ctrl+T and Ctrl+K for quick searches. If you have multiple search engines, you can use Ctrl+Up and Down to cycle through them.
Download box — Ctrl+J - Pulls up your current/recent downloads box. This can actually be pretty handy, especially if you have your download box set to close once a download completes, but forget where you stashed your pretty new file. Also, remember that you can double click the items in the download manager to execute them without having to find them on your computer (may leave your computer a mess).
Cycle Tabs — Ctrl+Tab (All systems) - Much like Alt+Tab for entire programs, Ctrl+Tab and its counterpart allow you to move between Tabs. Word on the blogs is that in soon-to-be-released updates for Firefox 3, you’ll also get the heads-up-display of all tabs like you do with Alt-Tab for programs. This shortcut uses Control on Mac as well.
Bookmarks Menu — Ctrl+B - Opens the bookmarks sidebar. I don’t frequently use this, but I’m told it’s helpful. Shortcut veterans will notice that this overrides the Bold shortcut. Interesting, on the Mac, in a text editor (like the one I’m in to write this post), you can actually use Ctrl+B, +I, or +U for the text modifiers. Windows/Linux users are kinda stuck as far as I know. Unless you remap your keys.
Switch Tab — Ctrl+1-9 - New one to me, you can use this one to go to a specific tab you have open, “numbered” horizontally. Fine got a little finicky when I got to 9. But if you’ve got ten tabs open, and you use these shortcuts, I think you can figure out how to handle yourself.
Word Processing
It should go without saying that these are some of the most fundamental shortcuts that everyone should know.
Bold, Italics, and Underline — Ctrl-B, Ctrl+I, Ctrl+U - One of the biggest drags when making a document is when you want to italicize or bold a single word, and you have to take your hands off the keyboard, move the mouse up to the little “B” button, type really and then mouse up to…..yeah, even writing it is too long. Plus, it reduces the likelihood you’ll use CAPSLOCK for emphasis. Which is always good form. And you do want to use good form, don’t you?
Copy — Ctrl+C
Cut — Ctrl+X
Paste — Ctrl+V
You notice these most used shortcuts are all together on your keyboard in one little spot? Yep. They thought about this.
Miscellany
The rest of the stuff.
Screenshots — PrintScreen/Cmd+Shift+3 - Windows and Mac handle screenshots entirely different. On a Windows machine, press PrintScreen to copy an image of your entire desktop to your clipboard. You can then paste it into an image editor, like Paint. If you don’t paste it into an image, you will never see that screenshot.
On Mac, however, you take a screenshot with Cmd+Shift+3. This will actually create a .png on your desktop with the screenshot image.
You can also use Alt+PrintScreen/Cmd+Shift+4 to take a picture of a single window (Mac users will then select which window).
Show Desktop — Win+D - Similar to (but less pretty than) the Expose feature in Mac OSX, this shortcut will minimize all your windows to…well….show your desktop.
New Explorer Window — Win+E - Self-explanatory. To get (roughly) the same effect in OSX, Cmd+Tab to the Finder program, and then Cmd+N for a new window.
Wrap-Up
Next time I’ll go over some more power-user quickness methods. But for now, this will suffice, I think.
Aww, what the heck. One more.
Quit — Alt+F4 (Cmd+Q)
(Thanks to Thrash and Elmo Q. Shangnaster for teaching me some new shortcuts for this article.)