Tech Tip Tuesday - Keyboard Shortcuts

As promised I have a blog post for you all today that is actually tech related. Since it is Tuesday I am calling this post Tech Tip Tuesday in honor of a little post I used to always do on Facebook. In keeping with the tradition of Tech Tip Tuesdays on Facebook, I will try to keep these tips entertaining or at least useful without getting overly technical. The most technical I would get on Tuesdays was maybe a brief tutorial. I will try to do the same here.

This week I have a pretty cool tip that has a lot of uses. Some readers may know all about this already, but I have always geared Tuesdays toward the novice or basic user. So apologies to those who were hoping for something they didn't already know. This tip is for Windows users. I personally prefer using OS X or Linux rather than Windows, but I know a lot of people still use Windows, so this is for them. If you do use Windows, but not 7, What are you waiting for? Even though this tip works in Vista and XP, Vista is a huge hunk of crap and XP is out of long term support, so switch already, unless your computer is a dinosaur, in which case, stick with XP. On with the tip . . .

Are there certain programs that you always start up immediately after booting up your computer? I'm not talking about start-up programs that usually run down in your task bar or in the background like your virus screening software. I mean programs like your browser or photo editor that you always use, but don't start up when you boot. Now you could put these programs in your startup folder and they would start on boot, but I don't like doing this because it just slows down the booting process because all those programs are jousting for positions in the RAM plus you have no control over what gets started. Windows just starts everything in the folder. There is a better alternative for these frequently used programs that gives you full control over what you want to load.

What you want to do is assign a keyboard shortcut to the program or programs that you use most frequently. Then when your computer is fully booted you can just hit the keyboard shortcut to start the program rather than finding it's shortcut with the mouse and double clicking it. Believe me keyboard shortcuts are way faster. Here's how you do it:

1) Find the shortcut icon for the program you want to create the shortcut for. Note: This has to be a shortcut icon for the program and not the actual program or exe icon. If you don't know the difference leave a note in the comments and I will explain the difference and how to get a shortcut icon for your program if you do not have one.
2) Right-click the icon and select properties.
3) Click on the shortcut tab at the top of the properties window.
4) About halfway down the properties window you will see a box labeled "Shortcut Key". Click in that box.
5) Now simply assign any key you want to that program.
6) Click Okay or Apply to set it.

By default it gives you a "Ctrl+Alt+" combination. In other words, if you click on the box and press F your keyboard shortcut will be Ctrl+Alt+F. However, you can change the short cut to "Ctrl+Shift+" or even "Ctrl+Shift+Alt+" you just have to hold those keys in while you push the letter, number, or symbol key that you want in the shortcut. A shortcut combination I like is Ctrl+Shift+Z because the keys are all close together and I can quickly hit the combination with one hand. I use this shortcut for firing up Chrome. If you decide that you do not want to have a keyboard shortcut anymore then just press and release the Ctrl key and it will put "None" in the Shortcut Key box and then just click Okay or Apply and there will no longer be a keyboard shortcut for that program.

Now since this trick is using shortcut icons it can be very versatile if you wish it to be. I'll give you a couple of examples.

Example one: Say you are a student and everyday you start up your computer and the first thing you do is open your browser window to your student website and another to your email. Let's look at the stps this entails.

1) Start the computer.
2) Double click your browser shortcut.
3) Either enter your student website in the URL box or click a bookmark to it.
4) Either open another instance of your browser by double clicking it's shortcut again, or open a tab in the current browser window.
5) Either enter the URL for your email, or click a bookmark.

Pretty straightforward, but it can be quickened with a little preparation. The first thing that you need to do is create shortcuts to these two websites. There are several ways to do this, but the simplest one in my opinion is to open your browser to the website that you want to create the shortcut for, then re-size the browser so that you can see at least part of your desktop behind it. In the address bar to the very left you will see what is called a favicon. It is usually, but not always, a logo of the website that you are visiting. Drag that favicon and drop it on your desktop. Presto! Instant shortcut to that site. Do this with each website and then assign keyboard shortcuts to each using the method I described. Now let's look at the steps.

1) Start the computer.
2) Hit the keyboard shortcut for the student website.
3) Hit the keyboard shortcut for the email website.

Done! If you don't like having the shortcut icons on your desktop put them in a folder of your choosing. The keyboard shortcuts will still work. If you are a more advanced user, you can even hide the folder or the shortcut icons themselves.

But it's not just for browser instances. Any program that is capable of running multiple instances can be set up in the same way. Look at example 2. Let's say you are writing a paper for school and you have your rough draft and your outline that you are working with. Since you can create a shortcut to any file all you have to do is create shortcuts to these two files regardless of what word processor you use and then assign keyboard shortcuts to them. You could have it set up so that Ctrl+Shift+D opens your draft and Ctrl+Shift+O opens your outline. Cool! Furthermore, once you have finished your paper you can simply delete the shortcut icons for the draft and outline and the keyboard shortcuts go away and are ready for you to assign them to your next paper's draft and outline. Just imagine throwing in another keyboard shortcut that opens up a browser to your research for your paper. You have just created a way to open everything your need to write your paper with 3 keystroke combinations.

I Hope you enjoyed this week's Tech Tip Tuesday. I have another cool trick planned for next week that will make you a god, so stay tuned.