Does your mouse hand ever feel the strain of hours of pointing and clicking? Do you have a 'scroll' button that is going to leave you with repetitive strain injury within weeks? Well, in that case, perhaps you are not aware of all the wonderful things you can do through judicious use of keyboard shortcuts. It's not just the Internet, either. Opening and closing windows (ie getting that fiddly little mouse arrow precisely over the tiny little 'x' at the top right corner of the window) can be a lot easier! There are actually a phenomenal number of things that you can do with shortcut keys, often involving a series of keystrokes and holding down specific keys. This is not intended to be a comprehensive list, by any means. For starters, it focuses on Microsoft Internet Explorer, and not everyone is enamoured of Mr Gates' browser. Nonetheless, with luck the procedures designed below will be helpful to as many PC users as possible. For more specialised shortcuts simply look up 'Keyboard shortcuts' in the help section¹ of any Microsoft program. It was quite an eye-opener for this researcher to realise just what can be done without using the mouse!

Cat and Mouse

Some of these shortcuts are more useful than others, and there are some things you will find easier by resorting to the mouse. Initially, not simply reaching for the mouse may require some effort. Many PC users are so accustomed to the 'point and click' method of doing almost everything in MS Windows and all the associated MS progs that it can be difficult to shake those habits. You can, though, and this entry sets out to share the Joy of Keyboard Shortcuts with anyone who wants to know! Take that hand off your mouse, read on and when you need to scroll down, take a look at the six keys above the 'simple' arrow keys, between the standard keyboard and the number pad. The two on the right should be funny looking arrows. Well, if you press the one which points downwards, you should see the screen scroll down approximately one 'page' (ie screen height). Neat, eh?

Ten-finger typists may find some of these more useful than those who are less familiar with the keyboard. This is only partially true, though, because this is about navigating the web, scrolling through pages, opening and closing windows, moving around text fields, copying and pasting text and generally performing functions that can be awkward with the mouse. There is a table at the bottom of the page listing many of the most useful shortcuts and the keys that perform them. There are many more, such as the shortcuts in MS Word for producing non-standard characters. It is also possible to assign your own shortcut keys if there are certain functions that you perform often or are particularly awkward with the mouse. It may be noted that certain people or groups of people may have difficulty or be completely unable to use a mouse. That is why keyboard shortcuts are associated with 'Accessibility' in MS Help.

Different people will feel differently about the merits of using these shortcuts instead of the mouse. Some will embrace them with open arms while others will no doubt prefer to stick ( to the mouse. They can be particularly useful when working with laptops, especially the ones with that button in the middle of the keyboard instead of a touchpad! One argument against some of these shortcuts is that you may have to take your right hand off the mouse for some of them. This needn't be a serious problem; on the contrary! It is really a question of habit and preference. Nonetheless, accomplished typists may feel that shortcut keys are of more help to them than those who are less familiar with the keyboard .

Finally, the table list comes directly from MS Explorer Help. That is the browser used to compile this list and all of these things work with it. I am not familiar with other browsers and I don't know to what extent they provide similar possibilities. Anyone else know about this?

The 'alt' key - an unsung hero

How often do you use the 'alt' key? It is an extremely versatile key and is used in many of the following shortcuts. alt + space bar is a standard method for closing a window or changing its size.

Another very useful function of the alt key is that, in combination with an underlined letter, it will open menus (such as the File, Edit, View etc menus at the top of Explorer). Try it now, and you will see how simple it is. Take a look at the top of your screen. Underneath the blue strip that tells you what web page you are on, there is a grey bar with the names of various menus on it. Have a closer look and you will see that one letter (not necessarily the first letter) is underlined.

Now, let's say you want to change something in Internet Options, your homepage, for instance. Press and hold alt with your left hand. Now hit the 't' key once. The Tools menu drops down. You can use the arrow keys to scroll through the options and 'Enter' select your choice. BUT! Look again and you will see that each option on the drop-down menu ALSO has one letter underlined. To select 'Internet Options' you simply hit the 'o' key once.

How often do you use the 'Back' button when on-line? Very often? Did you know that simply pressing the 'Delete' key (the bigger one on the main keyboard) achieves the same result. And, to get back to the hero of this section, you can also go back a page by holding down alt and hitting the left arrow key. Even better, if you hold down alt and hit right arrow, you go forwards one page.

One word of warning about the alt key. If you press it once, it activates the menu bar at the top of the page without actually causing a menu to drop down. You can tell when this has happened by looking at the 'File' menu header (top left of screen). It is not obvious if you aren't looking for it, but there is a little outline around the word 'File'. No big problem but it can be annoying. The reason being that you won't be able to do most things until it is 'unselected'. This is easy enough but you have to know what the problem is before you can fix it. :-) Either hit the alt key once more, hit esc or (funnily enough) move the mouse even very slightly.

Keeping tabs on your open windows

The simplest use of the tab key is for moving forward through items in a text entry box, on a Web page, in the Address bar, or the Links bar. It does the same in programs like MS Word where it is handy for moving through the items on many types of page. An easy way to see how this works is open Internet Options in the Tools menu ² and hitting the 'tab' key once, then again, and again. You will see the selecion box move along from 'button' to 'button'. Magic. As with many of these shortcuts, it will work in reverse if you are holding down 'shift' at the same time.

For an illustration of how this works, next time you are writing a posting for h2g2 and it is nearly ready, before reaching for the mouse and clicking 'Preview' ³, resist the temptation. Then simply hit tab once. You should see the selection box appear around the 'Preview' button. Press enter to see how your posting is going to look. There is a drawback, here - your cursor is now the mouse arrow and you will have to move past quite a few options to get back to the text if you want to edit it. There is a solution though. You can simply go back to the previous page by pressing delete (or alt + left arrow) and you will return to the editing box. You will still be on the 'Preview' button so you then need to hold down shift and hit tab to get the cursor back in the box. It will sometimes be easier to reach across to the mouse and simply click on the editing box. Both methods are valid, depending on what seems easiest. If, for instance, you can't see the editing box on the screen right away because the text is too long, the shortcut keys can be effective.

Another general rule which applies here is that if you are holding down control and hit tab you move along the different subsections of the Internet Options menu. ie General, Security, Content, etc. If you are simply looking at a Web page, tab on its own will move between items and control + tab will move between frames. In MS Outlook control + tab will move between sections of the page. This may all sound a little confusing but when you see the principle in action you can see why it is the same shortcut for apparently different functions. They are all similar and it is really a question of hierarchy. Control + tab will be a 'bigger step' than tab alone.

Here's one I opened earlier

Now, this is really useful. Hold down the alt key with your left thumb and then hit the tab key (don't let go of alt). A little screen appears with some icons (representing all the individual windows you have open at that time). Keeping the alt key held down all the while, press tab again. You will see the box move along the row of icons. As it moves, the text underneath the icons tells you what that window has in it (handy when you have 7 copies of Explorer open each open at a different address, plus half a dozen PC programs running! The Explorer icons all look the same but the text tells you what's what.). When you let go of the alt key, you should find yourself looking at whatever window you had the selection box on last. Want to try it in reverse? Follow the steps above again but don't let go of alt. Now, if you go past the window you want, press and hold the right shift key (still got that alt key held down?) and, with these two keys held down, hit tab again. Yep, you can backtrack to the one you wanted. Neat, eh?

Are you a control freak?

If not, you probably should be! The control key can be very handy for scrolling through text one paragraph at a time. This avoids that 'rolling scrolling' effect that can be rather hard on the eyes. You simply place the cursor in the text ⁴, hold down the control button and hit the down arrow. Hold down control and hit the up arrow to go in the other direction.

Similarly, if you hold down control and hit the right arrow, the cursor will move along a line of text word by word (although GuideML tags confuse things a bit in that respect - the poor cursor just doesn't understand where one word ends and the next begins!). It may be useful to mention here that if you want to highlight text, you can do so by holding down the shift key and hitting one of the arrow keys. Any of the forms of movement described in this paragraph combined with the shift key will highlight the appropriate chunk of text. You can highlight text much more quickly and easily if you master these techniques.

What are those wierd-looking keys on the bottom row that no-one never uses?

Do you ever use the 'Windows' keys? They are on the bottom row, one on either side of the space button. They aren't difficult to recognise, because they have a Windows logo on them! They can be useful for making the start menu appear. I'm not sure what else they can be used for, although it seems they can have a similar use as the -alt key for some purposes. Any help available on that one?

And what about the key with a funny picture on it just next to the right control key? Well, it has the same effect as right-clicking with the mouse. For this reason it will be referred to as the Right-mouse button key (RMB key). Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is most useful for calling up menus that would normally appear when you right click with the mouse.

And finally... Six of the best!

As mentioned earlier, there are also some handy things you can do with the six keys that are placed above the arrow keys, between the keyboard and the number pad. From the left, we have the Ins(ert) and Del(ete) keys. The insert key toggles between overtype mode and 'insert' mode. The delete key deletes the character in front of the cursor instead of behind. This can be surprisingly useful. The home and end keys require more explanation. If you press home when viewing a web page, you will be whisked straight to the top of the page. End will send you hurtling all the way to the bottom! If you press alt + home you will go to your home page. Nothing appears to happen if you press alt + End! The two 'crossed' arrows, as mentioned above, scroll vertically one screen height in either direction. This too can be PD useful.

Call that a shortcut?

Well, that is about the lot for now (who said 'Phew'?). Some of these may sound as though they take a lot more time and energy than your average point and click. In some cases, especially when users are unfamiliar with them, this is probably true. They all work though and some of them are only useful for specific situations or groups of people. It may also be said that it is just too much hassle to start changing PC habits now. This researcher did and is glad to have adopted some of these shortcuts on a regular basis. There are probably at least one or two that are relatively little known and yet could be very helpful to the majority of PC users. Mouse culture is deeply ingrained in the world of personal computing and that is unlikely to change overnight, if at all.

A final word to say that the intention of this article is not to have people throwing their 'mice' out of the window screaming 'good riddance to bad rubbish'. It is just something that seems not to be as widely known or used as it could be. It simply seemed that it might make useful and interesting reading to the uninformed. Perhaps this underestimates how much use people already make of this kind of thing. If that is the case, let's hear from you!

Table of functions and their pre-assigned shortcut keys