Learning to lose the mouse!

I always used to marvel at people who were able to use a computer almost solely from the keyboard. But it never seemed worth learning all the keyboard shortcuts to be able to become a keyboard wizard!

Over the years I have picked up the odd shortcut here and there - mainly for things like Photoshop where you tend to be constantly chopping and changing between tools. But one area where I've been quite slow to pick up keyboard habits is, oddly enough, web browsing, despite the amount of time I spend doing it!

Only with increasingly using a laptop (and finding that the right 'mouse' button is wearing out!) have I started to take browser keyboard shortcuts - and general keyboard navigation - more seriously.

Lifehacker have a useful article (rather old now actually but still just as useful) introducing the most useful Firefox keyboard shortcuts.

As something of a Firefox extension addict, the Keyconfig extension is certainly highly recommended by me - simply to resolve the inevitable conflicts over shortcuts that arise from installing multiple extensions.

Keyword bookmarking is another very handy feature. In relation to my last post, it's really handy to be able to simply press Ctrl+L and type 'gm' (as I have set it up) to get an instant Gmail Compose window pop up. About 10 times quicker than any other way of doing it!

I think it's one of those things where you have to make a bit of an initial effort (old habits die hard, of course) but in very little time that effort is repaid many times over in time saving. The same lesson has been recently learned in getting used to using Launchy - at first I was continually wanting to use the mouse and click on programs in the Quick Launch bar. Now 'Alt+Space' is second nature! Similarly, using 'Alt+Tab' to switch applications rather than constantly having to move down to the taskbar, etc. etc.