markus’ blog

The hard way to discover keyboard shortcuts

February 2nd, 2006

Ok, this is not another stab at a Microsoft product. To be honest, this time it does apply to many products, M$ is this case is really just an example.

I’m currently running the MS Visio 2003 Trial version, limited to 60 days. Visio is really great at visualizing things quickly. I haven’t yet found anything else which can be used with that ease. If anyone has some suggestions about alternatives, let me know.

To really get to know to a product you need to be able to utilize it and learning using keyboard shortcuts is a part of it.

For Visio, the first thing I wanted to is: how can I switch to the Pointer Tool? This is essential, whenever you use the Connector Tool at some point you need to go back to the Pointer Tool. I was hovering over the Pointer Tool in the toolbar. Nice, it was telling me it’s name. But it doesn’t give a hint about its keyboard shortcut. Maybe it has none?

So I searching through all the menus. I couldn’t find the Pointer Tool there. Why did I search the menus? Usually in the menus the name and the keyboard shortcut is written.

Asking the Help Assistant for keyboard shortcut luckily revealed the page for the first hit. The help page started out to be small but this is just because it has quite some categories which can be expanded/collapsed which are all collapsed initially. From this state I was searching for Pointer Tool but didn’t find anything because all categories where collapes. I had to expand all and then search again. Finally I found it. It’s CTRL+1.

I’m wondering why the keyboard shortcut can’t be next to it’s hover popup?

Entry Filed under: Software,Usability