Blogging Tips

You want to know what the fastest way is to get things done on your computer as
you’re blogging or surfing the web?

Keyboard shortcuts!

By the time you have found the mouse pointer, found where you want to click,
moved the mouse pointer onto your target, and (finally) clicked, I could’ve
executed several keyboard shortcuts. Time and productivity are precious to a
professional blogger. Over the long haul, keyboard shortcuts will save you a
tremendous amount of time. Many people already know the keyboard shortcuts for
cut, copy, and paste (Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V), but they
don’t help you much without some of these other ones to accompany them.

If there’s two activities bloggers spend a lot of time on, it’s writing blog
posts and surfing the web. Here are some invaluable keyboard shortcuts for these
two tasks.

Text Editing & Text Navigation Keyboard Shortcuts

1. Tab and Shift+Tab
   The Tab key moves you from field to field in a form, or from link to
   link on a web page. Since your blog post composition screen is really a web
   or software form, use Tab to move from text box (field) to text box.
   Want to go backwards? Shift+Tab. You can tell a web designer really
   knows what she’s doing when the tab order on a page is perfect.
2. Home and End
   On a full-sized keyboard and most laptop keyboards, there are keys labeled
   Home and End. The Home key jumps your insertion point
   instantly to the beginning of a line of text, and the End key jumps
   to the end of a line.
3. Ctrl+Home and Ctrl+End
   On a PC, there is a key labeled Ctrl, short for Control. On a Mac,
   you have a Command key that does the same thing. Ctrl+Home moves the
   insertion point to the very beginning of a text area, while Ctrl+End
   sends it to the very last line at the end.
4. Ctrl+left or right arrow
   This is one of the best ones ever: I can’t live without this one.
   Ctrl plus the left or right arrow keys moves you to
   beginning of the next word in a line of text. This is perfect for quick
   positioning of the insertion point in order to insert, backspace, or delete
   text.
5. Shift
   The Shift key, when used in combination with any other movement
   shortcut, selects text instead of moves the insertion point. For ultra-quick
   selections and edits, it can’t be beat.
• Shift + left/right arrow: selects one character at a time.
• Shift + Ctrl + left/right arrow: selects one word at a time.
• Shift + Home or End: selects from the current position up to the
  beginning or end of a line of text.
• Shift + Ctrl + Home or End: selects from the current position to
  either the very beginning or the very end of all the text in a text area.

Web Surfing Keyboard Shortcuts

1. Alt+D
   Places the insertion point in an empty browser address bar or selects the
   existing URL in the address bar. Selected text can be replaced without
   deleting by simply typing.
2. Ctrl+E
   Places the insertion point into the built-in search box for Firefox or
   Internet Explorer 7. Ctrl+K is the official search box shortcut in
   Firefox, but Ctrl+E seems to work as well.
3. Ctrl+T
   Opens a new, blank tab in either Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox, with the
   insertion point in the address bar.
4. Ctrl+W
   Closes the currently active browser tab or window for Internet Explorer 7 or
   Firefox.
5. Alt+Left arrow and Alt+Right arrow

   Back and Forward button equivalents.

6. Home and End
   On a web page (not in a text area), Home and End go to the beginning or the
   end of web pages. Great for when there’s no “back to top” link or for
   jumping down to the bottom of a blog page where the comment form is.
7. F5 or Ctrl+R
   Reloads the current web page.
8. Esc
   The Escape key does one of two things: if a web page is in the process of
   loading, Esc is the same as clicking the Stop button on your browser
   toolbar. If a dialog box is displayed, Esc is the same as clicking
   Cancel or Close.

These are shortcuts that I use everyday as naturally as breathing. This isn’t a
complete list, by any means! What are some of your favorite, can’t-live-without
keyboard shortcuts? Tell us in the comments!