Keyboard shortcut of the week: Shut `em down

After last week's mammoth collection of word processing keyboard shortcuts, this week, I present a short and sweet way to close any window.

Simple hold down the Alt key and press F4... Hang on! Don't do it now... Oh, too late.

Five top freeware applications

Before spending your hard earned cash on software, it is always worth looking to see what is available for free. In this article I will look at five free applications that I use myself.

First up, and probably most importantly, we have a virus checker. AVG anti-virus free edition has all the features I want from anti-virus software. It loads quickly, doesn't take up much system resource, updates itself regularly, and only bothers me when it finds a problem.

After viruses, spyware is the next major problem that arises from using the Internet. I use Spyware Terminator, which has many of the same virtues as AVG anti-virus, in that it is not constantly bothering me with messages. In my opinion, such software should sit quietly in the background doing its job.

Quick tip: when you run a scan on your PC looking for spyware the software 'looks' at each file, which means that the virus checker also checks that file. So by running a spyware scan you also effectively run a virus scan.

Do you use Windows Media Player to watch video files? Do some videos not load into it? Does it complain about needing something called a 'codec'? You can do worse than try the VideoLAN VLC media player. VLC supports most common media types, both audio and video, and is available in versions for Linux and Macs too.

The last two freeware applications have been featured in previous articles here. TreeSize is a program that provides a graphical representation of how much hard-drive space each folder is using; very useful for working out where all your hard-drive space has gone. The other is Startup Control Panel, which provides a means to manage which programs run automatically when Windows starts.

Weekend website: Media Convert

Anyone who has used Windows for a while knows there are a dazzling array of file types. Maybe the word processor you use at home is different from the one you use at college; maybe your job requires all reports to be submitted as pdf files; or maybe someone has sent you an audio file in Ogg Vorbis format and you are completely nonplussed. As not all applications support all file types you need an easy way to convert some files into a format you can use.

The Media Convert site enables you to quickly convert files from one format to another whether office documents or video files. I have used it a number of times and have found it a lifesaver. Media Convert supports dozens of file types and is definitely worth bookmarking.

Keyboard shortcuts of the week: Faster word processing

Do you wish to be able to use your word processor more quickly? Do you want to be able to edit a piece of text without having to reach for the mouse every few minutes? Then this week's mega-selection of keyboard shortcuts are for you. They should work in any text editor on Windows, whether a word processor or a comments box on a web page. I have included a text box as part of this article so you can play around with the various key combinations. For those interested, the text in the box is the opening paragraph of Candide by Voltaire.

We will start with quick navigation links.

• The Home key will move the cursor to the beginning of the line (on most keyboards this key is in a collection of 6 keys located above the cursor keys).
• The End key will, unsurprisingly, move the cursor to the end of the line.
• If you hold down Ctrl and press Home, the cursor will move to the beginning of the document. Ctrl and End will take the cursor to the end of the document.
• The Page Up and Page Down keys do 'exactly what it says on the tin'; they move the cursor one page up or one page down.
  

You probably already use the cursor keys (the ones with arrows on) to navigate around your compositions, moving one character at a time. If you hold Ctrl and press the left or right cursor keys you can jump one word at a time, left or right.

You should now be able to whiz around your documents, but what about keyboard shortcuts for selecting bits of the text? To select, simply hold down the Shift key as well as the key combinations I already mentioned.

• Holding down Shift and pressing a cursor key will select one character to the left or right, dependent on which cursor key you press.
• Hold Shift and press Home to select the text from the cursor position to the beginning of a line. Shift and End selects the text from cursor to end of line. So, a quick way to select a line of text is to press Home, then Shift and End.
• Holding down Shift and Ctrl together and pressing Home will select all the text between the cursor position and the start of the document. Shift, Ctrl and End will select all the text between cursor and end of document.
  
• To select the whole document you could press Ctrl and Home to take you to the top, then Shift, Ctrl and End to select to end, but it is much easier to use the keyboard combination for selecting the whole of a text: Ctrl and A.
• Holding down Shift, Ctrl and pressing a cursor key will select one word left or right, dependent on which cursor key you press.
  

So, you can whiz through your document selecting chunks of text as you go. The last selection of key combinations in this article enable you to do stuff to the text.

• Hold down Ctrl and press C to copy the selected text.
• Hold down Ctrl and press X to cut the selected text - that is to copy it and delete it.
• Hold down Ctrl and press V to paste the copied text where the cursor is located.

Whereas, it is easy to remember the key combination for copy (Ctrl+C) the combinations for cut and paste are not so intuitive. When I first started using these particular keyboard shortcuts I remembered the cut combination because the X looks like a pair of scissors, and the V looks a little like an upturned glue pot (a little imagination is required I know).

Play around with all these key combinations in this text box.

In the country of Westphalia, in the castle of the most noble Baron of Thunder-ten-tronckh, lived a youth whom Nature had endowed with a most sweet disposition. His face was the true index of his mind. He had a solid judgment joined to the most unaffected simplicity; and hence, I presume, he had his name of Candide. The old servants of the house suspected him to have been the son of the Baron's sister, by a very good sort of a gentleman of the neighborhood, whom that young lady refused to marry, because he could produce no more than threescore and eleven quarterings in his arms; the rest of the genealogical tree belonging to the family having been lost through the injuries of time.

Some text boxes allow you to use 'rich text', that is, text that has extra formatting options such as bold, italic or underline.

• Hold down Ctrl and press B to make the selected text bold.
• Hold down Ctrl and press I to make the selected text italic.
• Ctrl and U will underline the selected text.
  

Thankfully all three of these are intuitive, so no need for imaginative mnemonics to remember them.

Weekend website: Google Groups

I doubt that anyone visiting this page hasn't heard of Google, however, some of you may not be aware of Google Groups. From this site you can search a variety of Usenet newsgroups (a forum/BBS system that predates the web), as well as Google's own groups. This page can be exceptionally useful when you are searching for help and advice about computer problems - after you have checked for help on this page, of course. The chances are you are not the only one with a particular problem. Someone has probably asked for help with it before and maybe received an answer on Usenet.

Students should also be interested Google Scholar, which can be used to search for academic books and journal articles.