Other "Secret" Undocumented Tips and Tricks

The entry I just posted about using Control+Scroll Wheel to change your browser's text size reminded me of some other undocumented (or poorly documented) keyboard shortcuts and other tricks:

• Hold the Shift Key+Scroll Wheel to go forward and back in your browser's history.
• Here's the official list of Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 Keyboard Shortcuts (most should also work for IE 6.0)
• For users of the Mozilla Firefox browser (like me), here's a Cheat Sheet of keyboard shortcuts and other tips and tricks
• Here's a particularly convoluted one, via digg.com, for users of Apple's iPhoto 6 software -- MacOSXHints.com found some "super-secret advanced editing modes":

  1. Enter edit mode for any image.
  2. Select the Retouch or Red Eye tool.
  3. Press Caps Lock, Control, and 9 at the same time, then release them.
  4. Press Tab. If you activated the Red Eye tool, the small cross hairs will be replaced with a large oval. If you were using the Retouch tool, your cursor is now a small dotted circle with "0.50 { }" below it.
  5. For either tool, press the "[" and "]" keys to alter the size of the area the brush covers.

  Caps Lock+Control+9. Simple, huh? Why is it so well hidden? I have no idea, though it's probably not finished, or may be unstable, etc.
• Another Mac tip via digg: Put your Mac to sleep quickly by hitting this key combo and holding for 2 seconds: Command+Option+Eject (from the Apple Pro Tip of the Week)

Most programs have features like this that lurk under the surface. Why?

Some might be alternate ways to do stuff that you can already do from multiple places.

Others may be features that are only useful for specialized situations, or appeal to a limited niche of users.

On the other hand, there's stuff that might be useful (like Ctrl+Scroll to change text size), that just may not have a home on the screen. There's a limit to what you can fit into menus and dialog boxes without making things incredibly complicated and hard to find.

Also, for some features, once you learn about them, you don't need to keep seeing reminders. So, they get left off the screen, but put in the documentation.

Unfortunately, we users have a tendency to not read the manuals, so these kinds of features stay "hidden."

Anyway, the way to finding these kinds of hidden features is pretty much a matter of mindset, which I will summarize thusly: "There's gotta be an easier way to do this!"

That statement implies a question, which you can answer by reading the documentation, poking around in power user forums, doing Web searches and asking questions of fellow users.

Thanks -- Joe
Tags: undocumented features, tips and tricks