Strategy: Hot Keys and Ergonomic Keyboard to speed searches
5 Keywords: Mouse, RSI, Pain, Keyboard Short Cuts, Hot Keys
Hotkeys
These are combinations of key presses that will act as shortcuts. This means less use of the mouse which is good news for users of RSI, and it can also allow you to be more productive, as you don’t have to stop typing to use the mouse and then move back to the keyboard again.
Some larger more specialist keyboards have hotkeys built into them – buttons at the top that usually take you to email, internet etc. at the press of a button. But all keyboards can be used for some hotkeys and here are some Windoes hot keys:
Ctrl + N – this opens up a new copy of whatever you have open in front of you. I use it for quickly opening up a new web browser if I am looking at 2 different things at once on the net. My homepage is set to google, so if I am reading something and come across a new idea, I press Ctrl +N and then search it on google.
Alt +F4 – this closes down any window.
Ctrl + Z - Undo
Ctrl + X - Cut
Ctrl + C - Copy
Ctrl + V - Paste
You can use the Page Up, Page Down, Home and End keys instead of scrolling up and down using a mouse.
Alt + tab (the key usually above caps lock with 2 arrows pointing in different directions) allows you to switch between windows.
The print screen key will capture the whole window you are viewing and Alt + Print screen will just capture the active window. Both options are saved in the clipboard for pasting into Paint or another graphics program.
Quote
"I use keyboard shortcuts. I don’t need to use them so much now that I have got the Quill mouse. I still like using them, but when the mouse was really hurting, I used to use as many keyboard shortcuts as possible."
- Sarah BTip
Hold down the ALT key in an MS Office program and double click on a word - the reference window will appear with the dictionary etc. Hot keys or keyboard shortcuts reduce mouse actions and save time. Microsoft offer a list of keyboard shortcut keys as do Apple Mac.
