Although the global Windows 7 shortcuts are the headliners, you
will probably save the most time by getting to know the keyboard
shortcuts in frequently used applications such as your Web browser,
e-mail program, and word processor.
Here are links to handy keyboard shortcut reference guides for many
popular apps, along with my favorite shortcut discoveries made
researching this article:
- Internet Explorer. (shortcuts)
Try Control + Shift + P to open an InPrivate browsing window; try
Control + E to go to the Search box.
- Firefox. (shortcuts)
Select the exact tab you want with Control + 1 to 8. Control + 9
chooses the last tab.
- Chrome. (shortcuts)
Press Alt and click a link to download its target, such as a picture
or PDF file.
- Office 2010. (shortcuts)
Use the keyboard to work the ribbon interface in all Office programs.
This is a huge timesaver. Also, create your own shortcuts by first
clicking the File tab to open Backstage view. Then choose
Options/Customize Ribbon/Keyboard, then Shortcuts/Customize to enter
your own key combinations or to change existing ones, as shown in
Figure 1.
Figure 1. The keyboard customization tool in Office 2010.
- Word 2010. (shortcuts)
Press Shift + F7 to open the Thesaurus. My new favorite function key!
Lots of great formatting, selection, and navigation shortcuts here,
too.
- Excel 2010. (shortcuts)
Control + Shift + : enters the current time.
Control + Shift + & adds a border around the
selected cells.
- OneNote 2010. (shortcuts)
I’ve fallen in love with the ability to move the current paragraph or
selected paragraphs up or down in a document by pressing Alt + Shift +
up- or down-arrow.
- Outlook 2010. (shortcuts)
Enter Control + Shift + I to switch to your Inbox (or Control + Shift
+ O to move to your Outbox).
- Thunderbird. (shortcuts)
Press F8 to toggle the message pane on and off; press T to jump to the
next unread thread.
- Windows Media Player 12. (shortcuts)
Alt + Enter toggles full-screen video.
- Adobe Photoshop CS5. (shortcuts)
Adobe is kind enough to let you use theirs or
build your own shortcuts right in the program.
With a little Googling, you can find more lists of shortcuts for
most any program you use regularly.
Better than shortcuts: Windows Aero tricks
First introduced in Windows Vista, the Windows Aero interface
comes of age in Windows 7 and is part of all editions except Starter and
Home Basic. Critically, most Windows 7 PCs actually have the horsepower
to run Aero smoothly (many Vista users were chagrined to learn their
computer either wouldn’t support Aero or ran sluggishly), and new
usability features make Aero much more than a pretty face.
You’re probably already familiar with many of the Windows 7 interface
effects, especially Aero Peek, but others, like Shake, are relatively
obscure. If you haven’t discovered these tricks, you’re really missing
out.
Yes, they’re mouse shortcuts rather than keyboard shortcuts (and most
have keyboard equivalents), but give them a try. Sometimes you have your
hand on the mouse or trackpad already, which makes these mouse tricks
faster than keyboard combinations to access. And they’re much more fun.
- Peek. Hovering over a program icon in the
taskbar gives you a thumbnail preview of open windows for that
program.
- Shake. Click and hold your main window on the
screen, and then “shake” it with your mouse to minimize or restore all
other windows. This shortcut lets you focus on the task at hand. It
works like the Windows key + Home combination.
- Flip 3D. This trick is way cooler than Alt+Tab:
holding down the Windows key while repeatedly pressing Tab visually
flips you through your open windows.
(See Figure 2.) To flip backward, hold down the Shift key, too.
- Snap. Drag the title bar of a window to the
top of the screen to maximize, or drag it to the right or left edge of
the screen until an outline of the window appears to make it fill the
right or left half of the screen. The latter maneuver makes it a snap
to arrange two windows side by side. This is the mouse equivalent of
Windows key + left- or right-arrow.
Figure 2. Windows Aero Flip 3D lets you visually sift
through open windows.
If Aero effects are not presently working on your Windows 7 installation
(or only partially working), you may not have the horsepower to run the
full Aero interface. Or you may need to enable Aero effects because they
depend on your Windows Experience Index.
To enable Aero (or check your ability to run it), go to Control
Panel/System & Security/System and run or refresh the Experience Index.
Then choose Advanced system settings/Advanced/Performance settings to
see what Aero effects are enabled for your system.
If not all effects are enabled, click Custom and check the additional
effects you want to use. If these effects perform poorly, you can always
go to the same settings to disable them.
How to play God and create program shortcuts
If you spend any time following Windows news, you’ve probably
read one or more of the recent stories on the Web about the so-called
GodMode, the Windows 7 tweak du jour.
This is nothing more than a searchable/clickable list (see Figure 3) of
all system and Control Panel tasks, produced when you create a special
folder. (Ed Bott describes similar shortcuts in one of his
blogs.)
GodMode has no extra powers or capabilities. But it does let you easily
assign keyboard shortcuts to any task in the list, which is undeniably
cool.
Figure 3. The GodMode folder contains a searchable list of
system tasks.
So you could create keyboard commands for tasks such as adjusting your
monitor resolution, showing hidden files and folders, blocking or
allowing Internet Explorer pop-ups, or viewing network connections.
To do so, simply create a folder on your desktop with a name and a
globally unique identifier (GUID) number, such as GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}.
(Warning: Creating a GodMode folder reportedly crashes 64-bit Vista
systems. Use at your own risk in any OS but Windows 7.)
Next, open the folder and right-click the setting for which you want to
make a shortcut. Finally, right-click the newly created shortcut, choose
Properties/Shortcut, and enter your choice of key sequences to invoke
it. Press Apply and close the dialog box.
When you create your own sequences, try to stay away from anything
already used by Windows or by your main programs. The Control + Shift +
Function key territory is relatively uncharted.
Note that you can use this last trick to create keyboard shortcuts for
any programs or documents you use frequently, not just the GodMode
tasks. Simply right-click the program name in the Start menu and choose
Properties/Shortcut/Shortcut key. Do the same for documents by first
creating a clickable shortcut and then a keyboard shortcut.
Using KeyText and AutoHotKey for shortcuts
Want even more shortcuts? Start rolling your own with a keyboard
macro utility. These apps let you create standard shortcuts not only for
menu items but also for sequences of actions, including tasks such as
entering text and clicking buttons in a dialog box.
Macro utilities for Windows 7 are not as plentiful as they used to be
for XP. (And my all-time favorite, QuicKeys, has not been updated for
Vista or Windows 7.) But I found a couple that do the job for little or
no money.
The first is MJMSoft’s KeyText 3 (U.S. $29.95,
info page). KeyText (see Figure 4) is an amazingly versatile program
that can automate tasks such as opening your e-mail program and creating
a new message using an e-mail address you’ve selected in another
program.
It even supports regular expressions and if/then/else logic, so you can
conduct search-and-replace operations or batch-file renaming, as well as
perform different actions that depend on the result of a search.
Figure 4. KeyText 3′s macro menu can be invoked from the
system tray or via a hotkey. You can also assign direct hotkeys to any
item.
Learning how to harness all this power requires a little work, but you
can use both the contextual help and a very good PDF manual (albeit one
not updated since Vista). You’ll have no trouble learning simple tasks
such as assigning trigger text to an action. A trial version of this
software is available.
AutoHotKey (info
page) is another versatile option for creating your own shortcuts.
This free and open-source utility requires significantly more effort to
learn and use than KeyText, but it has a very active community forum
where you can get help quickly; it also has good documentation.
AutoHotKey is basically a macro scripting language that requires you to
write simple programs for your shortcuts using a text editor like
NotePad. After saving your shortcuts with the .ahk extension, you can
then run them in the background by double-clicking them, or you can set
them as startup items.
AutoHotKey’s command list (page)
is quite versatile, and programmers are likely take to it in a flash.
The rest of us can get by with the included AutoScriptWriter macro
recording utility, which — as advertised — “watches where you type and
what you click, and keeps track of which window is active.”
KeyText is considerably easier to use than AutoHotKey, and both
powerfully fulfill almost every Windows 7 automation need. Even so,
there’s room for a simpler utility with a great graphical user
interface, such as the old QuicKeys. If you know of one, please tell us
in the Lounge. In the meantime, try out some of the preprogrammed
suggestions above.
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