Browser Keyboard Shortcut Basics

I was recently conducting a workshop on some of the methods and tools being described as part of this series and someone asked me how I was opening pages in new tabs. It made me realize that as we are so wedded to our browsers for many of the things I'm describing, I really should point out a few browser keyboard shortcuts that everyone should know:

• Ctrl+T – new tab
• Ctrl+click on a Link – open in new tab
• Ctrl+Shift+click on a Link - open in new foreground tab
• Shift+click on a Link - open in new window (use for videos you want to play on the side while you continue to surf)
• Ctrl+Scroll wheel – larger/smaller font size
  
• Ctrl+= : Increases font size.
• Ctrl+- : Decreases font size.
• Ctrl+F – Find
• / - Quick Find
  
• Ctrl+G – Find again
• Ctrl+Tab – Next tab
• Ctrl+Shift+T - In Firefox, (re)opens the last tab that you closed
• Ctrl+L : Gets you right up into the Address/URL bar.
• F5 : Reload the page.
• Ctrl+K : Takes you to the Firefox search box.
• Ctrl+U : View the page’s source.

If you are not using any of these, go practice these and come back in a week and practice again.

Other Posts in the Series

• Tools and Methods 2009
  
• Work Skills Keeping Up
  
• Top-Down Strategy
  
• Better Memory
• Information Radar
• Processing Link Pages
• Network Learning
  
• Collaboration
• LinkedIn Guide for Knowledge Workers
• Twitter as Personal Work and Learning Tool
• Search
• Browser Short Cuts
• Work Skills Workshop

Best eLearning Blog 2008

I want to thank everyone who voted for and reads this blog - eLearning Technology. It was announced that we won for Best elearning / corporate education blog.



I previously had some commentary on the edublog awards. I also lobbied for a few of my fellow bloggers who did not win.

The bottom line is that none of us do this to win awards. It's nice to be recognized, but it's not going to change what we do.

In a way, each of us votes every day for blogs. We spend time reading them. Commenting on them. Blogging about them. You can see the ones that I most actively engage with either in the sidebar of this blog or in the sidebar of eLearning Learning.

With the Crisis of Attention, when any of us gives someone our attention, we are spending a valuable resource and giving a gift. I very much appreciate the gift of your attention and your votes.

Personal Learning Books

Brett Miller has taken me up on my 100 Conversation Topics which you can see what's happening at eLearning Learning - 100 Conversations. His post were some book recommendations for learning professionals. I must say that his list of books was quite interesting and come from a bit outside where I normally think. I went and ordered:

• How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day

just based on Brett's comment:

Gelb looks at what made the greatest learner of all time the, um, greatest learner of all time;

I wasn't as sure on the others:

• Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment
• Way of Aikido, The: Life Lessons from an American Sensei: Life Lessons from an American Sensei
• The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance

I still have the horrible habit of ordering a lot more books than I can ever read. I once took a personality profile and the feedback person walked into the room and started with, "So you like going into bookstores" - which was not one of the direct questions on the profile. And, yes, I do.

Thanks Brett for the suggestions.

Holding Back

As part of some renewed discussion on blogging such as in New Blog, No Trust, and Audience Member, I had in my notes to go back and discuss the issue of holding back.

When is holding back better than posting?

Clive posted The world's a safer place today (talking about the Obama victory), took some flack about posting something political, so he wondered if things were a bit too serious.

One anonymous reader commented that he or she was "close to dropping you from my feed list, as I've had about enough of the irrelevant political commentary. Please get back to online learning, instead of pretending to be a political pundit."

He mentions something that I just felt through my poor choices with Little Sandwiches. A time when I should have held back. Clive tells us:

But the response to my Obama posting has made me think that perhaps the situation does change once you get a wide readership, and that this probably does places an extra responsibility on you, the blogger. Having a readership gives you power, not to influence voting in an election of course, but certainly to influence buying decisions and choices as far as e-learning is concerned. If you don't take that responsibility seriously, you can hurt people that don't deserve to be hurt.

What that gets us to then is having to decide what we can/should write. We need to censor ourselves. Dan Roddy talked about the issue of holding back:

There are posts that I've started that I've never published since they run contrary to my employer's position on the matter, or pieces that I've re-read and dropped since they could be interpreted as a critique of work by colleagues and clients (or even my own) that some people may not interpret as being helpful. There posts where I've simply not been comfortable with the way that I've articulated by point and I've left them with the intention of coming back to edit them and, well, they're still waiting. Heck, there are even comments that I would like to have made on other people's blogs that I've pulled after typing.

My guess is that most of us have gone through a bit of transformation learning when holding back makes sense. I probably suffer from not self censoring enough. But hopefully I'm learning to hold back.

When do you find yourself holding back?

Write for Skimming

Back in January 2008, I suggested that people Stop Reading and instead Skim Dive Skim. It received some passionate replies - although not quite what I expected. Most people proved me wrong and they actually read things - see the survey results about whether people found a small bit of text embedded in the middle of my post:

• 74% of the people saw it
• 21% missed it
• 5% not sure

I'm still convinced there's lack of ability to get people's attention and have them focus on any details - see Corporate Learning Long Tail and Attention Crisis or better yet read the comments in Stop Reading where they passionately discuss people not reading emails. So while you may be a reader, likely a lot of the people you are writing for are skimmers.

Writing for Skimming

To me this means that we all have to work on our ability to write for skimming. I can't say that I'm all that great at this, but here are some things I try to do.

• Break Up Text - Write relatively shorter paragraphs with the main idea called out in text.
  
  
• Use Headlines - Breaking up content into major sections and label those sections with headers.

• Use Bullets - Bulleted lists makes it much easier for a skimmer to get useful information.

• Bolding- Within copy on the page, it's good to bold words or phrases that you want to jump out. Skimmers' will pick up that text first and then may read the rest of the words around it. Don't make everything bold or it will make nothing jump out.

• Hyperlink Text - The text that goes along with the hyperlink will also jump out to the skimmer. Change the text to fit what you are trying to say.

There's a ton more on this, but these are the basics for me. What do you do to try to write for skimming?