Tech Day: Windows Short Cuts

I've had this pet peeve when working with computers over long periods, particularly when working. When you're job is IT related, and you work more than 8 hours a day staring and typing at the computer, you want to make the work as smooth as possible, without disruptions, particularly when you have the ball rolling faster and faster and you physical capabilities is trying hard to catch up with the ideas in your head.

I also like to have things MY way. This means that someone slightly obssessive compulsive as I am, (I am not yet clinically diagnosed with OCD) I DEFINITELY want things to go my way. If there was a technological mind reader that could translate thoughts into commands, then I would definitely be the first ones lining up for it.

Here are a couple of handy things that I've taken note of while forced to work with Windows. If i could get away with unix type systems, I would, hence I have cygwin installed to alleviate my grievances short term. But while Windows rule the system, I will have to bend a bit to be able to use it fruitfully and efficiently without having resorting to periodic tantrums of dissatisfaction.

One thing I hate the most about graphical based systems? The complete reliance of switches between your hand on the keyboard and on the mouse. It gets terribly tiresome, particularly when cutting and pasting between windows, selecting or highlighting objects/text, opening and closing programs, and the like.

Thus one of the handy things I like is the short cut keys you can enable in windows. This is _VERY_ important! It reduces the amount of time that you have to do with your hands from clicking/pointing and typing text/commands. When you're just surfing, you just hold on to the mouse, point and click away. But when you're doing serious business, you don't want to type something, switch to another program so then move you hand to the mouse to highlight a section, then click ctrl-C, and then back. To have this happening X number of times ticks one off. Thus these short cut keys are one of the more enjoyable alternatives to have.

Secondly, although Alt-Tab has been highlighted as a very important key to yuppies everywhere to hide that out-of-work funny business from the boss or supervisor, its also one of the very essential key combinations when you're working on several windows. It saves the trip from the keyboard to the mouse, and its readily accessible.

Another one is having to open windows explorer and not having it to greet you with nonsense like "My Computer" , "My Network Places" , "Control Panel" and other unimportant things. This is terribly irritating, and given the chance, I'd like to do away with them already. Completely useless. But since I still cant find a way to remove them, (yes i know some of these "My Documents" can be removed by tinkering with the control panel folder settings, but I cant get them all removed, and I frankly think its still not enough. Whatever happened to the explorer just showing the available drives only? now its just so cluttered.) Thus im pleased to find out about the switches explorer has available for users. Its not really advertised since Windows attempts to sneakily let users settle for point and mouse clicks and double clicks, but its not very robust either. Not unlike a lot of unix functionalities and switches, but, it gets the job done.

Customizing Windows Explorer
Source: Microsoft site

Command line call windows explorer with the ff switches (all first line commands starts with a slash):

switch - result
/n - new single pane window for default selection
/e[, object] - starts windows explorer using its default view [focus on specified folder]
/root, object - opens a window view of specified object
/select, object - opens window view with specified folder, file or program selected

Shortcut keys
right click program, select shortcut tab, enter key combination in shortcut box. NOTE! This does not work when the program resides in the quick launch bar.