Mixing the Old with the New

Did you know there are a host of time-saving shortcuts built into their computer keyboard? This article will introduce you to these great little tools to help you be more efficient with the PC.

The History

When the IBM Personal Computer came on the scene in the early 1980’s, the computer mouse did not exist. All interaction with the computer was done through the keyboard. The display screens were mostly text based with fields for data entry. The cursor moved from field to field with the aid of the Tab key. You navigated through parts of an application by using a series of menus. This was slow and tedious.

Since the computer keyboard had special keys like the Ctrl, Esc, Alt, and Function keys, programmers developed shortcuts using key combinations to perform repetitive tasks more quickly.

The Present

The mouse and the graphical interface are now familiar and commonplace to all of us. Most of us take it for granted that the mouse is how you get things done. For example, if you want to select all of the text in a document you probably do one of the following:

Hard Way – Click the mouse at the beginning of the document, hold down the left button, and drag the mouse to the bottom of the document.
Better Way – Click the mouse on the File Menu and choose Select All.

Did you know that you can do the same thing by simply pressing two keys on the keyboard? That is what this article is about.

The Shortcuts

Most of these shortcuts involve using the Ctrl key located at the lower left corner of the keyboard.

Acting on text or files and folders: