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MANEUVERING WINDOWS WITHOUT A MOUSE
It's much harder to do it, but it is possible to
use the keyboard to get around Windows instead of the
mouse. Why would you ever want to know how? Well, suppose
your mouse just "died" on you some day? Or got
lost? Or stolen? Then, before you repaired or replaced
the defunct beast, you might have to know some keyboard
methods for getting around. So, first, if you want to get
to the Start button without a mouse, hold down the
<Ctrl> and <Esc> keys at once. Up pops the
first of the famous cascading menus. You can choose the
menu items by using the arrow keys or by typing the
underlined letter associated with the menu item you want
to choose. Hitting <Enter> corresponds to clicking
on the item.
Suppose you wanted to choose one of the programs on your
taskbar. Well, then, after typing <Ctrl>
<Esc> to get the Start menu, press <Esc> by
itself in order to close the menu and leave the Start
button highlighted. Then hit the Tab key to get to the
Taskbar. Then the arrow keys will move you around between
the Taskbar icons, and hitting <Enter> clicks the
icon.
If you want to choose icons on your desktop, then perform
the first two steps of the previous paragraph, but hit
the tab key a second time instead of an arrow key. This
puts you on the desktop, and now arrow keys will move you
around among your desktop icons.
Now, once you have started and are in an Explorer
session, there are a few keyboard shortcuts that it's
handy to know: typing the F1 function key gets you into
the Help system. Hitting the F2 function key lets you
rename the currently highlighted file or folder. Typing
the F3 function key brings up the Find dialog box. The
Tab key will shift you between the two panes and the
Toolbar of the Explorer view. The down and up arrows will
take you around the folder tree on the left pane or the
list of files and folders in the right pane. The right
arrow expands the highlighted folder if isn't already, or
if it is, will move you to the subfolder. The left arrow
may be used to collapse the currently highlighted folder
if it is expanded. (If it isn't, you will move up the
parent folder.) On the right pane, if you hit the
<Enter> key, it will be the same as doing a
double-click on the highlighted file or folder. If you
press Shift and F10 function key at the same time, you
get the popup context menu that normally is accessed by
right-clicking.
Once you're in a Windows application that has a menu, you
can get to the menu bar by holding down the <Alt>
key, then choose an underlined letter to drop down one of
the menus on the bar. When you want to exit, you don't
have to use the File Menu and Exit, you could just hold
down <Alt> and the F4 function key at the same
time.
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