#36: Navigating Windows by keyboard

Posted on July 19, 2024 by ewand

Now and again, it’s useful to be able to use Windows without mouse or touch, especially should the unexpected happen. Accessibility needs aside, it’s been possible to move around and control Windows since the very early days, just by using combinations of keystrokes.

ALT+F4 is maybe the most memorable (for closing a window), apart from CTRL+ALT+DEL.

A few other window management keystrokes worthy of mention:

WindowsKey+up/down/right/left arrows – maximize the current window to fullscreen (up), back from fullscreen to previous size or minimizes it (down), and snaps the window to one side of the screen or back (left/right).

ALT+TAB / SHIFT+ALT+TAB – cycles through the current open windows (and add SHIFT to go backwards). Releasing the ALT+TAB combo then jumps to whichever window is highlighted; press CTRL+ALT+TAB to just display the open windows, let you move between them and jump to one by clicking on it or pressing ENTER.

ALT+left/right arrow – moves back and forward, as in clicking the back/forward arrow icons in a browser

WindowsKey + number – jumps to the nth application on your taskbar; if you pin an app/window to the taskbar and it stays in the same place so you could use WindowsKey+1 to jump to Explorer, Win+2 to go to the browser etc.

See more here. Many more.

Powered Up

As previous ToWs have mentioned (here, here, here etc), the collection of utilities called PowerToys is well worth installing; one of its default apps is a shortcut guide showing some key WindowsKey + nnn options. (Press WindowsKey+SHIFT+/ to display temporarily).

On the topic of PowerToys, one of the utilities is a special “Run” app which does a good bit more than the standard WindowsKey+R command which displays the old fashioned Run dialog;

PowerToys Run has a load of special characters to make special searches; enter ?? something will search the web using your default, or (optionally) put o: something searches your OneNote notebooks for that term.

Somewhat controversially, the default activation keystroke for PowerToys Run is ALT+Space, which has been a Windows shortcut to display the context menu of the current window. Pressing that combo followed by M or R would be used to move / resize (using the arrow keys) or N and X would minimize / maximize that window.

In a curmudgeonly article, El Reg complained that old school keyboard warriors would be most upset. The also suggest that the pre-Win95 icon for that corner of the window was a Spacebar, supposedly to illustrate that you press ALT+SPACE to open it.

Never fear, keyboard fans – you can simply remap the activation key to something else (like WindowsKey+Space) and the ALT+SPACE combo will continue to work like it’s 1987.

Tip o’ the Week 435 – Symbols, reprised

Posted on June 27, 2018 by ewand

When the late purple paisley musician Prince restyled himself as a squiggle (or “Symbol”), nobody knew quite how to reference him or his work, so he was given the monicker “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince”. The new “Love Symbol” logo that represented his “name” was not a regular symbolic character, and after first trying to get everyone to download a special font file that had that character in it, eventually he relented and rebranded back to Prince again.

Working with special symbol characters was covered back in ToW #362; there are lots of less esoteric characters that are in regular use: but have you ever stopped to think how they came to be?

The Ampersand (&) has been around for 2,000 years, starting as a single character to join the letters e and t, ie the Latin for “and”. It’s a surprisingly common symbol, often used in company names and logos … but not universally loved by writers, or the odd legal secretary in days of dictation typing (the lawyer doing the dictation might record the company name as “Smith & co” since that’s the legal name, but more than one typist has produced the letter addressed to “Smith Ampersand co”…)

What about the @ symbol? Popularised by accountants and keepers of ledgers, the “Commercial At” (short for “at the rate of” – eg. meaning 10 units at the price of 1 shilling – 10@1s), was part of the relatively limited character set of a standard typewriter for over 100 years. It’s arguably called the Asperand though has many other names; contemporary usage has meant the symbol is either the key conjunction in an email address or the start of a digital invocation in the way of a mention.

The Asperand has nearly as many alternative names as the Octothorpe, though modern users wouldn’t necessarily think about the history of the symbol, even though it has variously been used to denote “number”, to be “pound” on your telephone keypad, or the “hash” symbol (a corruption of hatch, as in the hatching pattern) and hence, hashtag.

Tip o’ the Week #246 – The least-used key on your keyboard

Posted on October 24, 2014 by ewand

clip_image002 The computer keyboard will probably be with us for many years to come – it’s just such an efficient way (once you get used to it) of text entry, that it’s hard to imagine it’ll be replaced entirely with gestures or by speech.

There are some pretty obscure keys on the standard PC keyboard though – many of which date to the very earliest implementations of the IBM PC. What does Scroll Lock do, for example, other than annoy Excel users who think they’re moving the cursor around inside the sheet, only to find the whole thing is scrolling up and down?

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The Pause key (often doubled up with Break, which dates back to the days of the telegraph) has one interesting modern side effect – press WindowsKey + Pause, and your machine will jump straight to the “System Properties” page – a handy way of checking the config of a machine you’re using.

These kinds of tips were once redolent of the doyen of desk-side PC support, where every second spared in visiting a user was time better spent in the pub. All of this is of course lost now, what with the risk in desktop sharing via Lync or Remote Desktop software.

The AltGr key normally found to the right of the space bar has a few odd functions that are not often needed, from a way of setting formatting in Office to a means of entering accented characters. Try AltGr+e for example to chuck an é into a name, and keep people with extravagant names happy that you’ve bothered to spell them correctly. There are other ways of doing the same thing, too – Office apps all have a means of using “dead keys”, eg CTRL+ ‘ followed by an appropriate letter would render an acute accent, or the CTRL+ ` (generally found on the key below Escape) will render the next letter with a grave. CTRL + Caret (^), Colon (:) or Tilde (~) will accent the following letter with the appropriate accent. See here for more international Office fun.

Finally, there’s the strange “menu” key, sometimes referred to a “application” or “right click” – usually found to the right of AltGr. It’s generally used as the equivalent of right-clicking a clip_image006 mouse, though can be followed up with other keys to quickly perform functions that might otherwise need a few clicks or menu commands.

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One example – if you are looking to paste some text in a document or email, you can quickly press the menu button then follow with T if you only want to paste the text only (ie plain text, not the formatting) or M if you want to merge formatting.

In a ~~Metro~~ Modern application, the menu/application/right-click key also has the same effect as swiping up from the bottom of the screen (or pressing WindowsKey + Z).