Tales of a former software instructor

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Teaching Advanced Word

by Beth Blakely · 13 years ago In reply to Tales of a former softwar ...

As promised, here's my true tale of teaching...

I was working for a New Horizons Computer Learning Center and had been assigned the delightful duty of teaching an Advanced Word class on Saturday. I was already depressed to be cooped up indoors on a bright, beautiful day. I figured that I'd be done early, though, as I only had eight students, all from the same company. Plus, this was Advanced Word, meaning that the students should have either taken the Beginning and Intermediate classes, or be extremely familiar with the program.

I introduced myself and the agenda for the day. Everything seemed to be going well. The folks were surprisingly perky for 8 a.m.

I asked the class to open a blank Word document so we could begin the first exercise. I knew I was in trouble when a woman in the front row looked very confused and asked, "What's that black line flashing at me?"

It was her cursor.

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ouch

by apotheon · 13 years ago In reply to Teaching Advanced Word

That's gotta suck.

By the way:
I'd been using that IE trick for years (the <Ctrl>+<Enter> thing). When I made the migration to Firefox (actually still Firebird at the time), I noticed that Mozilla's new baby had extended that functionality. With Firefox, in addition to:

<Ctrl>+<Enter>
for .com websites

You can also use:

<Shift>+<Enter>
for .net websites

<Ctrl>+<Shift>+<Enter>
for .org websites

It always frustrates me to be forced to use IE for a few minutes and discover (again) that the other two such shortcuts don't work there: only the .com works on IE.

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That's what I'm talking about!

by Beth Blakely · 13 years ago In reply to ouch

Little tips like that save a lot of time.

I find that most of the sites I visit are .com anyway, so at least it's the very rare exception for me to be using IE AND hit a .org or .net site.

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since you liked that one . . .

by apotheon · 13 years ago In reply to That's what I'm talking a ...

The following work in both IE and Firefox:

<Alt>+<left arrow>
same as the "back" button

<Alt>+<right arrow>
same as the "forward" button

<Esc>
same as the "stop" button

<F5>
same as the "refresh" or "reload" button.

in Firefox only:

<Ctrl>+<T>
open a new, empty tab

<Ctrl>+<left click>
open link in a new tab

<Ctrl>+<W>
close current tab (also closes the browser if no additional tabs are open)

<Ctrl>+<Tab>
cycle through open tabs in your browser

There's more, of course, but it tends to start getting more complicated and less commonly used after that.

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these

by Jaqui · 13 years ago In reply to since you liked that one ...

keyboard shortcuts work in all mozilla browsers ( I've been using them since mozilla first added tabbed browsing )
they also work for netscape

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not exactly

by apotheon · 13 years ago In reply to these

Last I checked, they don't all work in all Mozilla/Netscape browsers. Some only work in Firefox, as I recall. In particular, I think the stuff for completing URLs doesn't work in Mozilla Suite or Netscape.

I don't use non-Firefox browsers often enough to remember off the top of my head exactly which don't work where.

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