h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Here's something cool.

In any Internet browser on a page where there is not a form (or, in some browsers, just when the field in the form is not selected), pressing SPACEBAR will scroll down one page, and pressing Shift+SPACEBAR will scroll up one page.

*Michael Notforyou*
U113408

Hi, I'm not sure if this article is still being "developed" as it were, but if it is, here are a few pointers that I'd give some attention:

- When talking about using the ALT key, you say that you can "(funnily enough) move the mouse even very slightly" to deactivate the menu bar if you have activated it by mistake. This doesn't work, or if it does, it's XP only: ALT again or ESC are the standard ways of getting out of this.

- I'm not entirely sure how many people would use ALT+Space, but I guess that's just a personal opinion. For closing a window, though, use [with care!] the ever-useful ALT+F4. On many Windows setups, you can do this when you're looking at the desktop to bring up the "Shutdown..." screen, as though you'd asked to close the whole of Windows.

- Another one that many people will find useful is ALT+Tab, for switching windows (not WinKey+Tab, as a previous poster suggested).

- In the Windows Key things, I happen to know the (subtle) difference between WinKey+M and WinKey+D. M is for "Minimize all windows" - this is equivalent to clicking the "minimize" button on all the windows in turn; but not all windows have them, so some things will stay open ["Properties" windows, for instance, don't tend to count as proper windows]. D, for "show Desktop", on the other hand, *hides* all windows - whatever you've got open will temporarily disappear so that you can see your desktop; once you open (or switch to) another window, though, certain things will reappear [like those pesky "Properties" boxes]. Note also that WinKey+D again will reverse it (which isn't true of +M), and that it didn't exist under Win95. Feel free to try and boil all that down to the essentials, I'm not in a very concise mood right now, it seems...

- Finally, perhaps it would be best to keep the listing at the end to a minimum: if you try and list *every* shortcut, you'll take up an awful lot of space, and people might as well just look it up in help. Maybe you could stick to those that a) people are likely to use a lot, and b) are fairly common across programs - e.g. Help, Save, Find, Copy, Paste, etc. Then you can explain elsewhere (in fact I think you already do) how to look up the rest in the program's help file [oh, and on which subject, many of these aren't just limited to *Microsoft* programs, because other companies tend to set them to what they know people are used to]. In particular, I think the XP-only WinKey ones, for various kinds of User Switching, are a little on the obscure side, especially the one that requires "PowerToys", which many of your target audience will probably never have even heard of!

if this all sounds a bit picky - I like the general piece, but if you want to polish it up, these are the kind of things that need fixing, IMHO...

Anyway, that's my slightly-more-than-
[IMSoP]

ooh, I knew I'd forget something: many keyboards just have "Page Up" and "Page Down" written on their Page Up and Page Down keys, so you might confuse people if you refer to them as having arrows on all the way through.

I'd also like to add how useful I found this article. Definitely should be edited and put in the guide. I found the opening paragraphs a bit long-winded though and think a few sentences could be shaved off from there without any loss to the article. Cheers to the person earlier who has pointed out that Ctrl+Alt+E gives me € ! Result!