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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Microsoft

Switch power management profiles with Hotkeys

Power Management ShortcutsFinding the proper balance in your power management scheme can be challenging; sometimes you need all the horsepower you can get, while other times battery life is your top priority. If you find yourself regularly navigating to your power management settings as your priorities change, you might benefit from being able to create hotkeys that will instantly switch you to a different power management profile.

A poster at How To Geek outlines how to create a shortcut that will switch your system to a specific power management profile. Once you have the shortcuts you need set up, you can then either set a hotkey in the shortcut itself, or use your favorite hotkey utility to launch each shortcut based on your preferred hotkey.

[Via Lifehacker]

Reopen closed tabs in Firefox with your keyboard

Firefox Download Squad Cinematical Tabs
It happens to everyone, and it's annoying. Sometimes the wrong tab gets closed in Firefox, but it's OK. There's a solution to the problem, and it comes in the form of CTRL + SHIFT + T in Windows or COMMAND + SHIFT + T in Mac OS X.

We've covered other solutions in the past such as Unclosetab, a Firefox extension that adds a right-click option to reopen a closed tab. Another easy way to reopen a closed tab is simply to visit the Recently Closed Tabs menu under History.

And if you'd like to close the tab currently up, CTRL + W or COMMAND + W should do the trick. Now you have no excuse for your lady to catch you browsing the Apple Store late at night.

Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Productivity, Mozilla

Master bookmark keywords in Firefox

Firefox and the art of keyword bookmarkingAdam Pash's latest "Hack Attack" column over at Lifehacker is a great guide to making the most of bookmark keywords in Firefox. In case you're not familiar, Firefox lets you assign keywords to your bookmarks which serve as shortcuts: For example, if you assign the keyword "dls" to your Download Squad bookmark, from then on you can just type "dls" in your address bar to get here. But if you're going for super-speed, you'll want something shorter, like just "d". Anyway, Pash's guide covers more than just that, of course, including quick searches (I'm up to 50, how 'bout you?) and a cool extension called OpenBook that streamlines this stuff even more. If you're a fan of keyboard shortcuts and are interested in speeding up your browsing in Firefox, don't miss this article.

Filed under: Windows, Productivity

Tab completion on the Windows command line

Windows command line tab completionHave I mentioned that I use the command line a lot? Yeah, I'm pretty sure I have. At any rate, one of the most useful features of the Windows command line, which I'm sure many of you use very day, is tab completion. In short, instead of having to type out an entire long filename, you can just type the beginning of it, press tab, and its name will be completed for you. This is especially handy for file and folder names that have spaces in them, which can otherwise be a pain. In case this is new to you, you can acquaint yourself with the feature with this guide from Microsoft blogger Derek Dysart. Oh, and in case you use Windows 2000, for which this feature is mysteriously disabled by default, Dysart tells you the magic registry setting for turning it on.

[Via Lifehacker]

Filed under: Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Productivity, Mozilla, Freeware, Browser Tips

Conkeror, a.k.a. Firefox for Emacs

ConkerorBill Clementson calls Conkeror "Firefox for Emacs," which, while not entirely accurate, is an apt description. In actuality Conkeror is an extension for Firefox that makes it possible to control it exclusively by keyboard with keystrokes that match Emacs, the popular text-editor-and-then-some, as closely as possible. But Conkeror goes way beyond keystrokes, making Firefox behave like Emacs as well, complete with (very) minimal GUI.  Clementson has some notes on getting started with Conkeror on his blog, or you can head straight to Mozdev to download it.

[Via Anarchaia]

Filed under: Office, Productivity, Microsoft

Excel tip: Show formulas with a keystroke

Excel formula viewI've been using Excel for a long time and might even consider myself a power user, so I'm surprised I never came across this tip before: You can toggle a formula view to see all of a spreadsheet's formulas at once by pressing Ctrl+`. That little fleck, in case it's not entirely clear, is a backtick (or, as this site takes way too many paragraphs to explain, a gravé), i.e. the seldom-used character that shares a key with the tilde just to the left of the 1 key on most keyboards. Press Ctrl+` once to show all of your formulas, press it again to switch back to the regular data view.

[Via Digg]

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Productivity, Mozilla, Open Source

More keyboard shortcuts for Firefox power users

Keyboard shortcutsAwhile back I featured Keyconfig, a Firefox extension that lets you customize all of Firefox's keyboard shortcuts and one of my favorites. As powerful as Keyconfig is, though, it turns out there's a lot more you can do with it. Out of the box, Keyconfig only lets you change shortcuts for functions Firefox already has keyboard shortcuts for, but there's a couple ways to introduce brand new keyboard shortcuts to the system. First is Functions for Keyconfig, an extension that adds keyboard shortcuts for things like copying a page's title, opening the JavaScript Console, and going up one level in a site's directory structure. It even lets you redefine keys for scrolling. If you're willing to roll up your sleeves, there's even more you can do by editing the good old prefs.js file. This page at the MozillaZine Knowledge Base lists 28 handy entries you can add to prefs.js to enable Keyconfig settings for fun stuff like viewing a page's source in a new tab or opening a bookmark. And if you know some JavaScript, making your own is pretty straightforward, so the possibilities are endless.

Filed under: Developer, Windows, Web services, Microsoft, How-Tos

Shortcut to the Microsoft Knowledge Base

microsoft knowledge base shortcutA long time ago (in a blog far, far away) I lamented the lack of documentation on Apple's knowledge base. It's gotten better, but still is nowhere near the comprehensive nature of Microsoft's KB. Granted, MS has a lot more to say since it makes more tools, but to call their KB labyrinthine is putting it nicely. Worse, just jumping to a particular KB article, even if you know the specific number (and some messages will give you this). Annoyances Central has a quicker way to jump to KB articles. It requires IE6, and the TweakUI PowerToy. Essentially you're just creating a shortcut for the search string. You can do this with any search site, so it doesn't just work for MS's KB.

Filed under: Business, Developer, Office, Productivity, Mozilla, Freeware, Browser Tips

Add Shortcut keys to Basecamp

Hi, my name is Jason, and I'm a shortcut key addict. I'm also a fan of good user interface design, which is why I have had a love/hate relationship with Basecamp. For such an insanely useful site from a group of guys that value usability, it drives me crazy that there are no shortcut keys to navigate within Basecamp. Or at least there weren't.

To solve this problem, a Greasemonkey script for Firefox has been developed called Quickcamp. The site for Quickcamp looks as if it is a property of 37 Signals, but they make it extremely clear in big red letters that they are in no way affiliated.

[via Lifehacker]

Featured Time Waster

Graveyard Shift - zombie-busting Time Waster

With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

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