how to learn shortcut keys
Most common shortcut keys are separated into 2 categories:
- The control shortcuts
- The shift shortcuts
I’m purely referring to those default shortcuts that one program enables.Because there are ways of customizing your shortcuts.Perhaps in another article i’ll explain how that is possible.
Today i’m going to help you find a way to memorize common control keys.In several posts you’ll be able to know all Chrome shortcuts.
1.The control shortcuts
As their name indicate these are the ones that perform different tasks of managing the software most common actions.
For now i’ll discuss the common shortcuts that are a combination of two keys.
So if we take Google Chrome as an example:
| Command number | CTRL+ | What it does? | Explanation |
| 1 | N | Opens a new window | N-comes from new |
| 2 | T | Opens a new tab | T-comes from tab |
| 3 | O | Opens window to select a file for opening | O-comes from open |
| 4 | 1-8 | Opens the tab from 1 to 8 | 1-8 are tabs identifiers |
| 5 | 9 | Opens the last tab | 9 is the last identifier on the upper keyboard |
| 6 | TAB or PG DOWN | Opens the next tab | Tab-is associated with tabulator-a white space that makes a jump in any editor for 8 spaces |
| 7 | W or F4 | Closes the current tab | – |
| 8 | G | Find the next match for your input in the find bar | G-comes from go |
| 9 | F | Opens the find bar | F-comes from find |
| 10 | R or F5 | Reloads the browser current page | R-comes from reload |
| 11 | S | Saves the current page | S-comes from save |
| 12 | P | Prints the current page | P-comes from print |
| 13 | L | Highlights the URL | L-comes from light |
| 14 | J | Opens the page with downloads from chrome | – |
| 15 | H | Opens the history page | H-comes from history |
| 17 | U | Opens the current page source | – |
| 18 | D | Bookmarks the current page | – |
| 19 | 0 | Re-sizes the page to its normal shape | A similar explanation to 1-8 or 9 |
Now let’s figure it out.
In the explanation area i’ve associated a premise.Most of the premises are logic due to the capital letter that the shortcut keys associates to. So, this shows that who made those shortcut used some sort of logic rules according to the keyboard possibilities . Humans learn best by associating ! So i confront you to do that. Before making an action think about its significance and then type ctrl+the designated letter.
Most of the Chrome shortcut keys starts with CTRL.
If you want to open a new window think about what you’re doing?! You are opening a new window .So then take that underlined N , associate it with CTRL and
Bravo!
The rest of the explanations have similar mnemonic reasoning.
Perhaps the CTRL+1 or 2 or 3…8 is a little bit different. This is because this shortcut was also taught according to the proximity of the upper numbers on the keyboard . That way there’s only 10 possible combinations . So the logic was to use 1-8 for 8 tabs , for a better navigation . Also in case that there were more than 8 tabs , 9 was elected to reach the last one of them. Also CTRL+0 re-sizes the page to it’s original form.Which is good cause zero is nothing , so the logic behind this is that using ctrl+0 i’m cancelling the page size to nothing or to default (whatever you want to choose).
The Tab shortcut from command number 6 is also a tricky one if you don’t know the tab function.In an editor a tab jumps 8 spaces and in a browser it jumps from an element on a page
to another element on the page.So the logic behind this is that Tab jumps , that being the logic behind this control. Because it jumps the Chrome guys put it to jump from tab to tab.
The ones that have no explanation are the ones whom i cannot find one , so they’ll have to be memorized by personal criteria.