I have always been fascinated by how fast you can do things when you work on computer(especially, desktop computers). You have the keyboard and the mouse, and you will have to juggle between these two to get what you want. I have been searching for ways where I can negate the use of Mouse completely and work fully with just the keyboard. And I am not disappointed, because there are a lot of keyboard alternatives for the functionalities of mouse. So lets see those keyboard shortcuts. You all will be knowing most of these basic shortcuts, nevertheless, it will help you refresh things…

 

Windows Shortcuts

Ctrl+C  —  Copy

Ctrl+X  — Cut

Ctrl+V  — Paste

Ctrl+B   — Bold

Ctrl+U  — Underline

Ctrl+I    — Italics

Ctrl+Z   — Undo

Ctrl+Y  —  Redo

Ctrl+A  —  Select All

Ctrl+S   —  Save

Ctrl+P   —  Print

Ctrl+N   — New Document

Shift+Arrow keys(left & right) — Select the text.

Ctrl+Arrow keys(left & right) — Jump to next/previous word.

Ctrl+Shift+Arrow keys(left & right) — Select texts word-by-word.

 

Alt+F4   — Close the currently opened window

Esc key  — Exit dialog boxes

Home key — Move to the beginning of the current line

End key — Move to the end of the current line

 

Tab key — Jump to next field/section, jump 5 spaces forward

Shift+Tab  — Move back to the previous field/section

Alt+Tab — Cycle through the different windows which are opened

Alt+Shift+Tab — Reverse of Alt+Tab funtionality

 

Win key — Start Menu (Also use Ctrl+Esc)

Win key+D — Show Desktop

Win key+R — Open Run

Win key+E — Open My Computer

Win key+F — Open Find/Search

Win key+Pause-break — Open System Properties

Alt+Enter — Goto properties of the currently selected icon/file.

 

Browser Shortcuts

Ctrl+T  — Open a new tab

Ctrl+Tab — Cycle forward through the tabs opened

Ctrl+Shift+Tab  — Cycle backward through the tabs opened

Ctrl+(Num-key) — Switch to the tab coming at the order of the number entered. Ctrl+2 will take you straight to the second tab.

Ctrl+W — Close the currently active tab

Ctrl+Enter on a link — Opens the link in a new tab

Shift+Enter on a link — Opens the link in a new window

Ctrl+B — Bookmarks

 

F6 — Select the tabs (and use tab key to cycle through the different fields)

F6 — Select the address bar

F4 — Open the drop-down list at the address bar

Press Space key at a browser window — Automatically scroll down the window

Shift+Space key — Scroll up a window

 

Time for a couple of useful mouse scroll-wheel tricks

1. Click on a link with the mouse scroll-wheel and it will be opened in a new tab.

2. Click any blank portion of a webpage with the mouse scroll wheel and you will get a marker displayed for auto-scroll option. Now you just need to move the mouse around without clicking anything or scrolling the scroll-wheel, and it will follow the mouse pointer and will scroll through the page up-down-left-right. The distance between the marker displayed and the mouse pointer will determine the speed of scrolling. The farther you keep the mouse pointer from the marker, the faster will be the scroll speed.

 

You got any cool keyboard shortcuts missing from the above list that worked wonders? Share them also with us….. 🙂