happy seniors pc users: 1-8-07 The start of a New Year

Keyboard Short Cuts

1. Ctrl Alt Del is the mother of all keyboard shortcuts, affectionately known as the "three-fingered salute," since it's so useful when your Windows box locks up. Pressing the combo once (simultaneously) opens the Windows Task Manager. (From within the Task Manager, you can force-quit a crashed program, see a list of processes or applications running on your machine, check performance parameters such as how hard your CPU is working, or track your network usage.) Is your machine totally locked up? Reach over, grab the mouse and click Shut Down.

2. Ctrl S saves the file you're working on. Ever lost your homework, a spreadsheet at work, or some video you've been editing? Hit Ctrl S (simultaneously) to save. Hit it early and often! (Want to open a file from within the program you're running? Ctrl O universally opens the File/Open window.)

3. Ctrl C copies text, files, or icons that you've highlighted, Ctrl V pastes them where you point your mouse (hey, you can't completely eliminate using it), and Ctrl X cuts whatever you've highlighted out of the document (or folder, photo, movie clip, or whatever it is you're working on). Ctrl A highlights the entire file you're working on or everything in a folder or on your desktop.

4. Alt Tab lets you switch on the fly between all of your open windows. Press the combination once to switch to your last open window or multiple times to switch to any other open window. Holding down Alt Tab will bring up a system window that shows you what apps are running and which one you're switching to.

5. Ever wonder why almost every Windows program has the F in File underlined, not to mention the E in Edit, and so on so forth across the top of the Window? Hit Alt that letter to open that particular menu; you can either use the arrow keys to move around within that window, or keep your eyes peeled for more underlined letters to use more Alt key combinations.

6. The Windows key (the one that looks like the Windows logo, or a flag) R opens the Run dialog. From here, you can launch a command-line window by typing cmd, but you can do a lot more. You can, for example, paste in a folder path, such as C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\My Documents\Expenses, and Windows will open it automatically. You can also use the Run dialog to open Microsoft applications such as Word, Excel, or Notepad. Just type winword to launch Word, type excel to launch Excel, and notepad to launch Notepad.

7. Windows E launches Windows Explorer, defaulting to My Computer.

8. F2 renames a selected file or folder. (This is so much easier than right-clicking!)

9. F3 launches Search if you're on the desktop or in a folder.

10. Windows M minimizes all open windows, and Windows D shows your desktop. (These results look similar, but they're slightly different; Windows M minimizes all windows that support the command, while Windows D actually raises the desktop to the top.) This is a great one for when the boss pops up in your cubicle. Once the boss gone, hit Shift Windows M to bring up your minimized windows, or Windows D to drop your desktop back down again.<

Open Bookmarks toolbar with a single click

View - Toolbars - Customize ..

Look for Bookmarks button

Drag it to a toolbar.

Now, you can click on the button and work with Bookmarks.

An alternative is [Ctrl-B]

Launch your Bookmarks easily

Right click bookmark - Properties

In the keyword field, type a short word that you want to use for that bookmark (e.g. If the page is a Firefox home page, you can type ff in it)

Now, just enter that word in Location bar and click Ok and the short word will be converted in a full URL.

Save some space

You know you can auto hide the toolbars in FullScreen just like IE does. How ? By a extension :
Info and Home Page link here : http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/autohide

Text and images are small

Then zoom them by this great extension :

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2244/

OR if you just want to zoom text :

Ctrl and + (Plus sign) to zoom

Ctrl and - (Minus) to zoom out

Ctrl and 0 to restore to Default level

You can also use your mouse wheel with Ctrl key to zoom in and out

If you're OK with turning control of your spyware and malware scanning over to Spyware Doctor (and why wouldn't you be, really?), you can save even more time by scheduling Quick Scans (see tip 3) so they happen automatically. To perform auto scans, click OnGuard, then Scheduler, then Quick Scan. Make sure Activate Quick Scan is checked, then specify daily, weekly, or monthly next to Run Live Update at:. This has the added benefit of letting you run scans when you're not using your computer, like late at night (or early in the morning, if--for example--you're up late fighting crime as Commander Awesome in City of Heroes).

There are many reasons why Mozilla Firefox is our favorite Web browser, and one is because it makes grabbing online videos so easy. This tip for Firefox works with both the Windows and Mac versions.

Adding new features and customizing Firefox is simple to do with extensions. Extensions are typically created by other users and are simple to search for and add. To see your browser's list of extensions, select Extensions from the Tools pull-down menu or hit the Ctrl+Shift+E key combination. You can then click "Install" to add extensions you've downloaded locally.

A fantastic extension called Video Downloader makes it easy to download and store video from more than 60 streaming-video sites. After installing Video Downloader, you'll see a new icon in the bottom-right corner of your browser interface; click it when you have a video page open to save that video. The resulting pop-up window directs you to right-click a download link, then change the suffix to FLV. That works, but in our testing so did left-clicking the link. Plus, if we left-clicked, we didn't have to change the suffix.

Once you've saved your file, you'll need a way to view it. Mac users are in luck, because there's a great donation-ware video-conversion program called iSquint all ready for you. It's not time-limited, so you can use it indefinitely without paying, but if you like it, you should throw the programmer a couple bucks.

To use iSquint, open it and drag your downloaded file into the work area. You can choose the quality of your final video, the format (standard MPEG-4 or the H.264 codec), and optimize it to play on a video iPod. Nice. We love the program's opinionated progress messages. Don't miss the Help menu, which is clever, although not actually helpful.

We haven't found a similar free video-conversion application for Windows (if you know of one, tell us), but CinemaForge is a good, inexpensive tool (free to try; $24.95 to buy). Windows users also can download a FLV viewer, such as the aforementioned FLV Player, a donation-supported free program.