tips
Windows Start Menu Shortcuts
In my last article, “Windows Logo – Top 5 Shortcuts“, I gave you a few ideas on how to use the Windows Logo Key in key combinations, for example, to lock your computer. The last tip was to just press the Windows Logo Key. Of course, doing that only shows you the Windows Start Menu. This article will show you how to use this as the start to a few excellent shortcuts in Windows. (If you like, you could open the picture at the bottom of this article to see where on the Start Menu I am talking about).
Get a list of your 10 (or fewer) MOST used programs, like Internet Explorer, Outlook, FireFox, etc… and then for each one, follow the steps below:
- Find the shortcut to the program in your Start Menu
- Right-Click on the Shortcut and click on “Pin to Start menu“
It should now appear in the Top section of your Start Menu. If you know how, you could just drag-and-drop a shortcut onto this section of the Start Menu.
- Right click on the Shortcut and click on “Rename”
- Starting at “1″, rename the shortcut so that it has a number before it. For example, you could change “Internet Explorer” to “1 – Internet Explorer“
Now, to use these new shortcuts, all you have to do is press the Windows Logo Key to open the Start Menu, and THEN press a number. This will automatically select one of these shortcuts, assuming that the number is unique on the Start Menu.
The picture on the left (which will open up into a new page for a larger version if you click it) shows you what my Start Menu looks like. I’ve left the Mozilla FireFox, Outlook and Internet Explorer shortcuts in focus so that you can see what I am talking about in more detail. As you can see with my FireFox shortcut, I’ve used the letter “Q”. This is for 3 reasons:
1 – I ran out of numbers
2 – “Q” is not a common letter, and no programs I use start with this letter. If there is more than 1 program that starts with your shortcut number or letter, pressing the key will just highlight one of the shortcuts
3 – I press the “Q” with my left hand, which is the same hand I use to press the Windows Logo Key on my keyboard.
Windows Logo – Top 5 Shortcuts
These shortcuts will speed up your day by a few milliseconds, but hey, every second counts in this “time is money” world. Using the key known as the Windows Logo Button or Windows Key, it’s the key on your keyboard with a little picture on it (the Windows Logo as shown on the left), generally next to the [ALT] key.
So, here are the top 5 shortcuts that use the Windows Logo Key. Any key being pressed will be in the square brackets [], for example, [E] means press the “e” on your keyboard.
1 – [WINDOWS LOGO] – [L]
If you use a computer at work or in a public place, this is a shortcut that you HAVE to learn. It locks your computer without you having to click on the “START” button and saying lock. It’s easy enough to do, so you have NO excuse for leaving your computer unlocked when you go and get your coffee.
2 – [WINDOWS LOGO] – [D]
This shortcut is the same as clicking the icon on your task bar to show the desktop (which will minimise all your windows/programs so you can see your desktop). This is useful if you have a lot of shortcuts on your Desktop.
3 – [WINDOWS LOGO] – [E]
This shortcut will open up Windows Explorer. Windows Explorer is obviously that program that allows you to browse around your computer. I’m sure you use it quite often for searching for your files on your computer…
4 – [WINDOWS LOGO] – [R]
This shows the “Run” dialog box. Useful if you use this as a way of running certain programs. An example is typing “cmd” (without the quotes) into the Run Dialog box to open up a command window…
5 – [WINDOWS LOGO]
Strange? Yes and no. Pressing this key by itself pops up the “Windows Start Menu“, which opens up a world of possibility on your computer 
But, more importantly, it allows you to assign even more shortcuts to the Windows Start Menu, which I will show you in the next post.
Read MoreChanging your command prompt in BASH
If, like me, you want to know what directory you’re working in on Linux, make sure you visit this page: “Prompt Magic”
It shows you all the beautiful things you can do to make sure your BASH command prompt looks pretty, and informative. You do this by setting your “PS1” environment variable, and the key value I would say you need is “w”, which shows your full current working directory.
My host had mine set to “W” which only shows the last directory of you current working directory, but having 3 (or more) WordPress installs, being in the “plugins” directory doesn’t help much if I’m moving things around a lot…
Just thought I’d share this one…
UPDATE: Guess I should show how it’s done… In your .bash_profile file in your home directory (which you can get to by typing the command “cd ~”), add (or edit if it exists) a line that says:
export PS1=”\w>> “
This should make you command prompt look similar to the following if you are in the /usr/bin directory:
/usr/bin>> _
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