Keyboard Shortcuts
Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas, the Pragmatic Programmers, highly recommend that you learn one editor very well. By this, they mean to learn the keyboard shortcuts! A former teammate of mine had an obsession with keyboard shortcuts. Any time you did something with the mouse, he would yell at you (well, almost yell) about the keyboard shortcut you should have used instead. This led to times when we would deliberately (and slowly) perform actions with the mouse just to get him riled up. It was great fun, but he did raise awareness of the increase in efficiency one can gain by keeping your hands on the keys.
To get you started, I have assembled the following collection of keyboard shortcut references:
- Learn the basics of all Microsoft products' keyboard shortcuts.
- Become expert in Visual Studio .NET keyboard shortcuts.
- Serve some speed with SQL Server shortcuts.
- Mozilla browsers go here, IE browsers go here and select your IE version.
- Do you use Google? Of course you do. Check out Google Labs' experimental Keyboard Shortcuts searching.
That should make you a Shortcut Samurai.
One way to really force yourself to learn the shortcuts is to reverse your mouse. If you are right-handed, make it a left-handed mouse and put the mouse on the left side of the keyboard, and vice versa. And if you insist on using the mouse, at least crank up the speed so you don't have to move your hand so much. I have done both, and trust me your arm will thank you for it.
Still Want More?
Not good enough? Take your game to the next level with WinKey. This little utility allows you to assign keyboard shortcuts using the Windows key (you know, that key that does almost nothing except to take up space on your keyboard?). You can add keyboard shortcuts with 100's of combinations of keys. For example, I use Windows-V to start Visual Studio .NET. Best of all, it's free! (I get nothing for promoting WinKey)
Special thanks to Paul, who vowed never to use his mouse more than twice per day. I think this was mostly because it got in the way of his Starbucks / Mountain Dew drinking hand.