For years I have been perplexed by the people that use their mouse for absolutely everything when are a number of perfectly good keyboard shortcuts that will do the job in a fraction of the time and I believe the reason people do this is that they just don't know there is another way. Why hunt around for an item on a menu bar if you can quickly hit a key and achieve the same effect?
Funnily enough, now that Microsoft have hidden or moved all my commonly used menus in Windows Vista I find myself relying on these short cuts a great deal more than I used to. I'm sure that trying to convey these to you in a list format probably isn't going to make this one of the most exciting Click articles that I've ever written but I do know that it's one of the most useful.
To point out the obvious, these short cuts usually require you to press two keys at once and the ALT, CTRL, Windows and Shift keys are all located down the bottom left hand side of the keyboard. I have split the shortcuts into several sections depending on where they are going to be applied and don't worry about which version of Windows you own as most share the same shortcut keys.
General
Alt+Enter View properties for the selected item
Alt+Esc Cycle through windows in the order they were opened
Alt+F4 Close the active window
Alt+ Spacebar Open the shortcut menu for the active window
Alt+Tab Switch between open windows
Shift+Insert Hold this down whilst inserting a CD and it WON'T autoboot
End Display the bottom of the active window
Home Display the top of the active window
Windows key Displays the start menu
Windows key+D Minimizes all windows
Windows key + E Opens a new Explorer window
Windows key + F Displays the find all files box
Windows key + L Locks your computer
Windows key + R Displays the Run command box
Explorer
Shift+Delete Delete the selected item permanently without placing the item in the recycle bin
Left arrow Collapse the current selection if it is expanded, or select the parent folder
Right arrow Expand the current selection if it is collapsed, or select the first sub folder
Clipboard
Ctrl+C Copy an item to the clipboard
Ctrl+X Cut an item to the clipboard
Ctrl+V Paste an item from the clipboard
Internet Browsing
F11 Full screen mode
Ctrl+Mouse forward Zoom in
Ctrl+Mouse backward Zoom out
Ctrl+0 Reset zoom level
Alt+Home Go to homepage
Ctrl+T Open a new tab
Ctrl+Tab Switch between tabs
Ctrl+W Close tab
Alt+D Go straight to the address bar
Alt+Left Go back to the previously viewed page
Alt+Right Navigate forward through viewed pages
Navigating to menu options within programs is also easy when using keyboard shortcuts. To select the edit menu press 'Alt+E' together, for the file menu press 'Alt+F' and so on then once the menu option has been opened you can navigate around them using the cursor keys then select an option with the enter key.
I did say that this wouldn't be Shakespeare but cut out the list above, have a play around, and I promise you'll find at least some of these key combinations useful. Once you've used them a couple of times it will then become second nature to hit the keyboard shortcut rather than relying solely on your mouse.
Computer Articles 2007
