Windows Keyboard Shortcut of the Day

Whenever you have an application screen with multiple sections, try pressing F6 to cycle between them.

In Firefox, it toggles between the address bar and the web page — unless you’re viewing a web page with frames, in which case each press of F6 moves you to a different frame.
In Outlook, you can switch between the header of an e-mail (where you type the To address, Subject, etc.) and the body of the e-mail.

In PowerPoint, you’ll move between the slide, the notes, and the outline on the left.

Ever think to yourself, “What was that web site I visited yesterday? Something about shoes?”

In your browser, press Ctrl+H. A side panel appears, showing a history of sites you’ve visited.

In Firefox, the cursor appears in a Search box by default, so type in “shoes” and press Enter, and you’ll find sites with that word in the title or URL.

There’s also a View button. Press Alt+W, then Spacebar, and you can organize your browser history window by site, date, most visited, or most recently visited instead of the default that shows a combination of date and site.

When you’re done with the history sidebar, press Ctrl+H to toggle it off.

In Firefox, tap the F11 key and all of a sudden, plenty of screen clutter disappears, allowing you to view the current web page without as much distraction.

Sure, there’s the tool bar (and possibly the tab bar, if more than one tab is open) on the top, and the find bar (if open) on the bottom. But other than that, just you and your web page.

Hit F11 again to turn full-screen mode off.

Ever have an annoying situation in Firefox where you start filling out a form, but when it helpfully tries to finish your typing for you with some personal information, you see a typo in there? And you think, “Woah, that’s wrong — I don’t want that text ever popping up again.”

Well, here’s how to fix it.

Next time you see the auto-complete entry appear, try this: press the down arrow to highlight the entry you want to remove, then press Shift+Delete. The entry disappears.

This works in the address bar as well!

Note: The saved text will return if you enter that text again — so either don’t make that typo again, or consider disabling Firefox’s form-fill feature under Tools | Options | Privacy | Remember what I enter in Forms and the search bar.

Since I already published a Windows shortcut today, here’s a bonus for you Mac users, with thanks again to Kevin Fox.

Suppose you’re using a Mac and you’re creating a selection rectangle in Photoshop. Normally, moving the mouse changes the size of the selection rectangle. If you hold down the Spacebar, suddenly you’re now moving the origin of the rectangle instead. (Practice this a bit to get the hang of it.)

Many of you are old hands at Photoshop and already knew that one. (You may have known it works in Windows versions of Photoshop as well, plus many other image editors on both platforms.)

Okay, so here’s the new bit: If you use OS X, as of 10.5, when you press Command+Shift+4 to capture part of the screen, you can now use the Spacebar trick to switch between resizing and changing the origin point.

Suppose you’re using Firefox, and you end up on a web page with a bunch of files you want to save. You can right-click on each link, choose “Save Link As…” then click OK, then repeat over and over. What a pain!

Here’s a faster way.

First, press Tab until you get to the link you want to save. (You may have to press Tab quite a few times, depending on the page. One hint is to first scroll down so that the link you want to save is at the top of the page. Or, click on the link and drag down a little bit before letting go off the mouse button, which will select the link without clicking on it.)

Once the link you want to save is highlighted, press Alt+Enter and the Downloads window appears, showing your progress as file is saved.

Now press Alt+Tab to switch back from the Downloads window to your main browser window, or close the Downloads window (by pressing Ctrl+W or Alt+F4).

Now you can repeat: Tab, Alt+Enter, Alt+F4, Tab, Alt+Enter, Alt+F4 — and keep repeating until all the files are saved.

(By the way, in Internet Explorer, pressing Alt+Enter just does the same thing as Enter — it follows the link as if you clicked on it. In many other applications, we saw previously that Alt+Enter opens the Properties menu.)