Tag Archives: keyboard shortcut

February 19, 2013, 11:00 am

Learn Your Keyboard Shortcuts

If you’ve been reading ProfHacker for a while, you probably know that one of our primary goals is to talk about those things in academia that people simply don’t talk about. If you’re here–so the logic goes–you must already understand <insert topic of choice here, like which are the prestigious journals in your field>, and so we won’t bother to teach you these things. But these things are important; it turns out that knowing the hidden information of the university is a really powerful way to make yourself more effective in your career.

It also turns out that in some ways academia is very much like the keyboard you’re probably sitting in front of right now. Sure, it’s got those familiar 36 alphanumeric keys. But like academia, the keyboard has hidden information that will make you more effective in your career: keyboard shortcuts.

Keyboard shortcuts can be a great way to get…

November 29, 2012, 3:00 pm

Ending Copy / Paste Headaches

By Brian Croxall

It can be hard on occasion to remember that we live in a time when everything is amazing. Computers are, of course, one of the most amazing inventions of the last one hundred years, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t drive you crazy as well.

Perhaps one of the most amazing / crazy-inducing parts of using a computer is copy / paste: ”Wait, you mean I don’t have to retype this entire paragraph that I would like to cite in my article? I can just select some of the text and drop it in? OMG!!!” Copy and paste really does feel magical…until you see how that new piece of text will so often screw up the formatting of the document, email, or blog post you’ve been writing: “WAIT. No, why is the text formatted like that? Why is it in a different font and in bullets that don’t line up with mine! GAH!!! I’ll just retype the whole thing!”

Fortunately, there’s a simple and quick cure…

June 27, 2011, 8:00 am

Using Keyboard Shortcuts in Google Tools

By Brian Croxall

Last month I covered an easy way to create keyboard shortcuts for anything. Using the built-in tools of Mac OS X or AutoHotkey in Windows, you can customize keystrokes for any program to help you get your work done faster. Of course, many of us do our work in browsers these days. You can use shortcuts to control the browser itself—using Ctrl-T / Cmd-T to open a new tab, for example—but that will almost never help you control the specifics of a site.

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