Wicked Cool

Special Keyboard Key to Activate Right-Click Menu

Here's another tip for getting to know the right-click menu better. Hiding in plain view on the standard Windows keyboard is a special "Menu" key to activate the right-click menu for whatever is currently selected. It has the symbol for a menu and pointer, like so:

Try it out! Learning a few special keystrokes and keyboard key tricks can help you get work done faster, and it can be a life-saver if you ever have mouse problems. (Mice might work poorly when they get dirty, wireless mice can have their batteries die, and sometimes laptop touchpads are hard to control... so it doesn't hurt to know how to navigate with a keyboard as a backup.)

What's Hiding in the Right-Click Menu? "Send To"

Most programs have productivity-enhancing commands hiding in the right-click menu.  This week we'll look at the "Send To" command in Windows.  Send To allows you to move a file between directories without having to copy it and then navigate to the folder where you want to paste it.  

How to use the Send To command:  In Windows Explorer or My Computer, right-click a file, and then point to Send To. On the shortcut menu that appears, click the destination where you want to send your file. The file is sent to the destination that you select.

In Windows XP, the default Send To locations are:

• Compressed (zipped) Folder
• Desktop (create shortcut)
• Mail Recipient
• My Documents
• 3 1/2 Floppy (A:)
• CD Drive

How to personalize it:  If there is another folder where you frequently need to put files, you can also follow these instructions to add it to the Send To menu.  It's a time-saver especially when you need to move files to a deeply-nested folder.

Some examples of what it's good for:

• Copying pictures from a CD/USB drive to My Computer
• Moving downloaded files from the Desktop to a more permanent place
• Backing up files to a CD/DVD
  

Thanks to Kerri for the tip!

Tech Tips Galore from NYT

If you do only one "tech learning" thing today, make sure you read "Tech Tips for the Basic Computer User" in David Pogue's NYT blog.  I can almost guarantee that you'll learn something -- and if you don't, start reading through the comments, because you're almost guaranteed to learn something there too.

If you read through the whole article and all the comments and you still don't find a tip that's new to you, then you may just be a Computer Genius... but don't get too comfy, because there is always something new to learn!

Time-Saving Firefox Add-on: IE View

Thanks to everyone who participated in the poll last week!

In a perfect world, we wouldn't need things like the IE View Add-on for Firefox.  Every website would display equally well in every browser, in a perfect world -- you'd never see messages saying "This website requires [a different browser than the one you are using]," and website developers would only need to test their pages in one browser, since they would all work equally well.

But it's not a perfect world.  Some websites still only work in Internet Explorer (for example, the Windows Update website), and creating brand new web pages involves tedious cross-browser testing in both Firefox and Internet Explorer (not to mention Safari, and Opera, and Lynx...).  In our imperfect world, IE View is a big help for web developers and anyone who dreads those tiresome "This website requires Internet Explorer" messages.

What it's good for:  IE View takes you from viewing a web page in Firefox to viewing the same page in a new Internet Explorer window, in just one step (as opposed to copying the URL from the Firefox address bar, opening Internet Explorer manually, waiting for the default IE homepage to load, pasting in the URL, and then waiting for that to load too).   

How it works:  Once you have IE View installed (see instructions for how to install Firefox Add-ons), right-click on a web page.  Select the menu option to "View This Page in IE" and an Internet Explorer window will open with the same web page.

IE View also creates an option in Firefox's Tools menu to "Always View This Page in IE," for frequently-visited pages that don't play nicely with Firefox.

Have a favorite Firefox Add-on? Let us know what it is in the comments!

"7 Things You Should Know About..." Is Worth Knowing About

A few months ago LibrarianInBlack mentioned "7 Things You Should Know About..."  It's a series of 2-page factsheets produced by the Educause Learning Intiative, on emerging technologies gaining traction in teaching and learning. The most recent topics are Wii, Second Life, Multi-Touch Interfaces, Ning, Google Apps, and Flickr -- pretty much a laundry list of libraryland buzzwords, if I'm not mistaken!

So keep "7 Things You Should Know About..." in mind for current awareness of new technologies.  The factsheets handle basic questions about each subject, like what it is, how it works, where it is going, and why it matters to teaching and learning -- and at 2 pages, it's just the right size.  Now if only they published an RSS feed...

More Ways to Select Files

Selecting a single file with the mouse is easy.  You point the mouse at the file icon, click it once, and it's selected. You probably also know that you can select multiple files with the Edit menu's "Select All" feature (also found by right-clicking).  But did you know that you can skip that menu altogether?

How to Select a Group of Files with the Mouse Only

To grab a group of files together, place the mouse near the edge of the group you want to select, click the mouse, and at the same time drag it back across the group to draw a selection box.  When you release the mouse, all the files inside the box will be selected.

How to Pick and Choose Files with Shift or Control

The Shift key can also be used along with the mouse to select a group of files.  Select one file, hold down the Shift key, and use the mouse to click on another one in the same folder.  All the files between the initial two will be selected.

Next, say you want to select every file in a given folder except for one or two.  First, select all of them (with the Edit menu, by drawing a selection box, or however you like).  Then hold down the Control key with one hand, and use the mouse to click each file to exclude it.  It will de-select that file while keeping the others selected.  Miss one?  Hold down the Control key again and use the mouse to de-select it.

Thanks to yesterday's OverDrive Database Demo Workshop participants for sharing this tip!

Mouse Faster -- With Your Keyboard

Adding a few keystroke shortcuts to your repertoire can make your workflow actually flow.  Here are a few good ones to learn:

Switching between multiple windows:  Alt + Tab
Hold down the Alt key and click Tab.  This will bring up a menu with all the open windows.  Keep holding down the Alt key and click Tab until you have selected the window you want to switch to.  Faster than using the mouse to minimize one window and then maximize another.

Saving:  Ctrl + S
Less interruption in your typing means that you can save your work more frequently (and risk losing it less).

Copy:  Ctrl + C, Paste:  Ctrl + V
Both faster than selecting these commands with the mouse.

More Windows Keyboard Shortcuts

Try them and see if they help you!

Fifty Ways to Take Notes

Via Rebecca's Pocket, the Solution watch blog has posted Fifty Ways to Take Notes. Try some out the next time you're at a conference or meeting, or find a favorite to recommend to library patrons to save their research.

My favorite new find is ShortText: it's incredibly fast and easy, and requires no registration. You can set a password ("key") if you want to keep notes private.

The author also lists a few neat personal start pages - like Netvibes, PageFlakes, Protopage, Fold, and Google Personalized - where you can gather your daily info (like various RSS feeds & weather) and handy tools.

Blazing New Trails at the SCLS Annual Meeting

It was great to see many of you at the SCLS Annual Meeting in Devil's Lake last week! Jean Anderson and I gave a 10-minute talk about "Blazing New Trails" to kick off the discussion about how to stay on top of change in the library world. Below, for your convenience, is our bibliography. Jean rounded up all this great information, so all the credit goes to her; be sure to check out her new Continuing Education blog, Know More, and leave a comment saying hi!

Benefits of RSS
WebJunction’s Weekly Tips article from April 23, 2007

If I had just 15 minutes each day by Meredith Farkas

Keeping Up when you Don't Have the Time by Jenny Levine

Keeping Up with Keeping Up. Gordon, Rachel Singer and Michael Stephens.
Computers in Libraries 26, no. 9:52-53. 2006.

Keeping up with Really Simple Syndication (rss). Goldsborough, Reid.
Teacher Librarian 34, no. 3:51. 2007.

Kelly Watson's Bloglines Tutorial (pdf)

Librarians Keeping Up and Making Time

Schedule meetings with Doodle

Doodle will change your life! It's an incredibly simple, fast way to poll a group to schedule a meeting. With AnyDoodle you can make a poll on anything at all.

It's old news in and around Switzerland, where it won "Produkt des Jahres" (Product of the Year) for 2004 from InfoWeek.ch, a Swiss IT webmagazine. Lifehacker picked it up in October 2006 and we at the SCLS office have been hooked ever since.