DO CLEVER THINGS WITH YOUR KEYBOARD & MOUSE
14 Type long phrases instantly
How many times this year have you signed off an email with an identical turn of phrase? You can use aText (www.snipca.com/42081) to stop this becoming tiresome by defining snippets that, when typed, are instantly replaced by much longer phrases.
So, for example, to save you typing ‘thank you very much’ a dozen times a day, you could create a new snippet for that phrase and attach the abbreviation ‘tyvm’ (see screenshot above right). Every time you typed tyvm, it would be swapped for the complete sentence. You can create both plain text and rich text snippets – the latter can include images and formatting.
15 Change what certain keys do
If your volume buttons have stopped working, or you want to disable the Caps Lock key so you don’t hit it by accident when reaching for Shift, use SharpKeys to ‘remap’ your keyboard’s behaviour, changing what a certain key does.
Download it by clicking the ‘sharpkeys394.msi’ link at www. snipca.com/42082, then launch the file and work through the installer screens. Click ‘Add’ ( 1 in our screenshot below) to remap your first key, then click Type Key 2 below the left-hand column and press the key you want to change. Now click Type Key below the right-hand column 3 and press the key you want it to emulate. Click OK 4 , followed by ‘Write to Registry’, then click OK, log out of Windows, and reboot your computer for your changes to take effect.
To return a button to its original function, open SharpKeys again, select the changed key in the list on the opening screen, and click Delete. Click ‘Write to Registry’ again to save your changes, and reboot your machine for them to take effect.
16 Browse the web quickly with your mouse
If you’re anything like us, your hand will rarely leave your mouse when browsing the web, even though common shortcuts like Alt+left and Alt+right can be used in many browsers for going back and forth through a tab’s browsing history.
X-Mouse Button Control (XMBC) can help here. We’re going to use it to reprogram what happens when we press left or right on the scroll wheel of a tilting mouse. In our case, our laptop also emulates this function when we swipe left or right with two fingers on the trackpad. This may be dependent on your laptop, so check your own trackpad to see whether yours does the same.
Download XMBC by clicking the ‘Latest version’ link (top left) at www. snipca.com/42084. Open the download and work through the installer, leaving everything at its default setting. Now click the dropdown menu below Tilt Wheel Left and select ‘Simulated Keys: (undefined)’ ( 1 in our screenshot below). Click the dropdown menu at the top right of the following screen 2 , hover over the Modifier Keys sub-menu, and click Alt on the menu that appears. Click the same button, hover over Direction Keys, then click Left 3 . Finally, click OK 4 . Windows will now interpret a sideways press to the left on the tilting mouse wheel as an Alt-left key combination.
Repeat the above process, this time for the dropdown menu below Tilt Wheel Right, and select Right when choosing a button from the Direction Keys menu. Click Apply.
Test your new setting by opening a browser window and navigating to a page of your choice. Now tilt the central wheel of your mouse to the left to navigate back to the previous page.