The 12th Carnival of Computer Help and Advice

Seasonal greetings and welcome to the twelfth monthly Carnival of Computer Help and Advice. Another digest of blog articles that help you to avoid problems with and to get the most out of your PCs.

Dan Coveney of Print n Post offers advice to anyone thinking of Buying a laptop in the January sales. On the subject of mobile computing Nim at dixlinx reviews Logmein - “the best free remote access available" - in the article, Logmein - excellent web-based remote access to your computer.

If you want to see those Xmas TV shows that you missed streamed over the Internet on your television then fear not, ramaraobobby has written a tutorial explaining How-To Connect your Computer to your TV over at Wonderful tech. stuff.

For converts to Firefox, carol smith present a post explaining how to configure Firefox opening screen at Friendly Computer Training.

Last but not least we have two posts from regular carnival contributor, Andrew Edgington, from his Learn Photoshop Now blog: Steps In Restoring and Repairing Your Photos and Turning Your Photographs into a Work of Art. Ideal for getting the most out of those holiday snaps.

If you have a blog with posts about computer issues and would like to host the next carnival then please leave a comment on this post or use the contact form over at our Blog Carnival page, where you can also submit your blog posts for inclusion in a future carnival.

If you would like to host a future carnival but don't wish to have the responsibility for selecting articles or writing the carnival post, don't worry I can do that for you.

See you all for the next carnival in the new year...

Windows Hopping reprise

Hopping Between Windows
Have you ever needed to swap windows while you are using the keyboard? Have you needed to jump quickly from that email you are composing to the report you are supposed to be writing? Then try holding down Alt key and pressing the Tab key. Select the window you want and release the Alt key to bring that one to the front. A little dialog box will open that looks like this in Windows XP or 2000:


And looks like this in Windows Vista:


There is also an alternate way of hopping between windows that does not show this box. Simply hold down the Alt key and press the Escape key (marked Esc) to hop between windows in the order that you opened them. If you hop using this method Windows will leave any minimised windows in that state, it will not restore them like the Alt+Tab method does.

Hopping Within Windows
While we are on the subject of the Tab key, whenever you are filling in a form in a Windows program, the Tab key will generally move the cursor to the next field or button.

To move the cursor back to the previous field hold down the Shift key and press the Tab key.

Filling in a whole form from the keyboard means you get the job done more quickly and more easily, leaving more time available to 'Alt-Tab' back to that blog you were reading.

Try these shortcuts out on the following form. Click on the first field to select it, then tab between fields to your heart's content.

Field1:
Field2:
Field3:
To change the value of this press the space-bar when selected:
To change the value here use the up and down cursor keys: MondayTuesdayWednesdayYou get the idea...

[This post is an edited version of two that I originally posted on 22 August 2007 & 24 September 2008... I have been very busy writing up an assignment lately, but rest assured there will be more original material here soon]