A Consuming Experience

I love keyboard shortcuts - they help me be much more productive - and it's great that Blogger have implemented some, having added the much needed "Save but keep editing" earlier this year: see the Blogger keyboard shortcuts list.

I just discovered that, at the start of a list item in a numbered or bulleted list in the Blogger Post Editor, the Tab key will create a new list nested inside the current list. And Shift-Tab moves a "lower level" list item back up to a higher level.

See:

• I'm a list item.
• I'm another list item.
  
• And I'm a lower level nested list item created by using the Tab key
• And another one.
  
• I've Shift-tabbed back now.
  

Could there be other undocumented or "secret" keyboard shortcuts? Does anyone know at all?

My biggest wishlist items for Blogger currently are (still!) to have hotkeys for:

1. switching back & forth between Edit HTML and Compose view (and if the cursor would just stay in the same position when you switch views, that would be perfect!)
   
   
2. a bulleted or numbered list (Ctrl-Shift-l perhaps?), and
   
   
3. (a new one) the Add Image command.
   

Hey, it's nearly Christmas. I can wish, can't I?

Modest needs, moi.

Labels: Blogger, productivity

If like me you're a keyboard shortcut fan, did you know that you can automatically generate a document listing all your keyboard shortcuts in Microsoft Word, which you can then print or save etc?

Microsoft has provided a howto, but it's slightly different in Word 2003 which I have, so here's a step by step on how to automatically produce a comprehensive list of keyboard shortcuts for that version (for other versions it will be similar).

1. Go to menu Tools, Macro, Macros:


2. For the "Macros in" dropdown, choose Word commands (you can ignore the Macro name bit):

3. In Macro name, choose ListCommands (quicker if you just type or copy/paste that in rather than scrolling through the long list in the box):


4. Then choose Run and you'll get this List Commands box. I'd pick All Word commands as it's a bit more comprehensive:




5. Then hit OK, and the document listing the Word keyboard shortcuts is generated, which you can save or print etc as you wish:



I've updated my original keyboard shortcuts paean to link to this post.

Labels: computers, productivity, tips, Word

I've already blogged some tips on how to speed up Internet Explorer 7 in Windows XP with some registry tweaks you can do by just clicking a couple of reg files (also seems to work on Internet Explorer 6, Windows 98 etc). The first hack is the most well known, and works by increasing the number of simultaneous connections IE makes to a Web server, which speeds up downloading a web page and its accoutrements i.e. images etc. (For those who've not tried them: get the tweaks.)

But IE7 was still too slow for me, especially in opening new tabs. And unlike my fave browser Firefox (), if you try to open a new tab in IE another annoyance is that you can't keep working in the existing tab in the meantime - the concept of multitasking seems alien to IE, everything you're doing in the current browser tab like scrolling, clicking a link etc grinds to a halt till the new tab has finished opening. How to open new tabs in Internet Explorer 7 more quickly became my next quest.

Well now I've found some further IE7 hacks, from Reliance PC - and they really work to speed up opening new tabs, yay! They involve a combo of things: disabling the phishing filter, feed checking, ClearType in IE (which by the way I have turned on generally and it really helps visibility and reading) and the SSVHelper Class plugin, none of which tricks I'd heard of, and then doing the same popular max connections tweak I'd mentioned before and had already done so didn't try again.

Try these tips yourself: Tuning IE7 for Better Performance; plus registry tweaks (You then need to close down and restart IE7.)

I don't know which one did the trick, it's probably the combo, but they sure worked for me. New tabs open and do their startup thang on average about twice as quickly as they used to. Which to impatient me makes a helluva difference.

Many of us hopefully know enough to avoid falling for phishing scams anyway (and it's a bonus that info on sites you're visiting stops being sent to Microsoft if you turn off the phishing filter). If you like reading RSS feeds you're better off getting a separate free feed reader anyway, rather than doing it through IE 7. And obviously if you need ClearType in IE don't do that particular hack, but most of us shouldn't notice much difference.

I'd add that while I was at it, I also decided to disable some other Internet Explorer 7 add-ons or plugins. I figured if I wasn't using a particular addon it was better to turn it off and that might speed things up further, so I did. So far nothing's complained about missing plug ins but I can always re-enable an add on if necessary.

If these tricks worked for you too I'd be glad to hear about it. And if anyone has further tips for even more speed speed speed, please let me know. Faster, IE7! Go! Go!

Labels: internet explorer, optimisation, productivity

I have a Blackberry via work. Its keyboard isn't as good as the Psion 5mx's (nothing is, yet, wail - it's my top gadget wishlist item!).

But I'm a huge keyboard shortcuts (or hotkeys) fan. I'm still more productive with a keyboard, even a small one, so I always like finding out about hot keys.

I found these Blackberry keyboard shortcuts which are very handy indeed - that page gives useful descriptive tips on the functioning of the Blackberry keys, although without any pics.

I also found another site, Blackberry Tips, which lists hot keys for when you're:

• viewing emails in the message list
  
• viewing an individual email - navigation with the keys etc
• in the calendar / diary / scheduler
  
• using the address book for contacts
• viewing a Word document or an image
• in the task list
• viewing a memo.

Many of the hot keys are the same, but it's useful to have a view-based list.

As well as generic Blackberry hot keys, that site also lists keyboard shortcuts for the Blackberry Pearl 8100 e.g. messages.

Labels: gadgets, mobile, productivity

I posted about Blogger's cool new autosave and keyboard shortcuts before I saw Pete's Buzz post about it.

Pete adds a useful tidbit which wasn't on the Blogger Help page:

"We do this [i.e. autosave] about once a minute, unless you type a lot, in which case we'll save as soon as you stop typing, just to be on the safe side."

Cool cool cool, autosaving the moment you stop typing, yeah! Though it doesn't seem to be doing it on this post, maybe it's only after the first 1-minute save that it starts doing the "save when stop" thang? But ctrl s is my friend, I laugh at browser freezes now, how I laugh, hah!

(Team Blogger have clearly been busy working on this as well as no doubt other stuff they're working on behind the scenes. They're even looking for a Visual Designer, Interaction Designer and User Interface Software Engineer. Pity they don't need someone who has strong ideas about user interface design but isn't officially qualified in it, can just about manage to spell Javascript and HTML, and lives in London! Well if they're ever looking for a help/tutorial writer-upper, just maybe... yep I'm open to offers...)

OK, so I'm all excited and squealy about this new feature, but I've had so many harrowing experiences of losing long posts or accidentally posting before I was ready, that I just love it (and the reassignment of ctrl s to save), it's one of the most useful things Blogger could have done, in my book.

Not wanting to look a gift horse and all that, but (at the risk of repeating myself) I'm now eagerly awaiting ctrl shift l for bulleted lists, and a hotkey combo for toggling between Compose and Edit views - pretty pretty please, Pete & co...?

Labels: Blogger, productivity

Fabulous. I just noticed that if you're using Blogger's post editor it now automatically saves a draft in the background as you go along, once a minute, without your having to do anything - just like with draft emails in Gmail.

But it doesn't do that when you're editing an already-published post, which is fair enough and very sensible.

I've been wanting something like this like, forever, because I've lost too many long posts to browser or PC crashes. I'd taken to drafting long posts offline using e.g. the open source Web editor NVU, or if I was using the post editor I'd regularly hit Save as Draft, then go back into the post from the Edit Posts page, which slowed me down some but was better than tearing my hair out or weeping because a difficult post had vanished with a crash.

As a keyboard shortcut fan, I'd had in mind ctrl-s as a hotkey for saving and continuing, but automatic is excellent, thank you thank you thank you Team Blogger, bless all your little cotton socks!

And, you know what else? I just checked and they have added ctrl-s as the hotkey for "Autosave and keep editing", too. And ctrl-shift-p to toggle between Preview and Compose view (that's not so new, but still).

And changed "publish" to ctrl-p - yes yes yes, far too often I've accidentally published a post when I didn't mean to, because I tried to use ctrl-x and slipped and hit s instead. My cup positively runneth over!

Now, if only they'd introduce (1) a keyboard shortcut to toggle between Edit and Compose tabs, and (2) ctrl-shift-l for a bulleted list, my happiness would be complete. (Yep, give me an inch and... )

Thanks again, this is absolutely marvellous.

Labels: Blogger, productivity