A Celebration of The Windows Key

autohotkey is my favoritest program. one of the things i use it for is development for different languages. eg i hit winkey + V and it opens up Vim with settings for Arc. when i want to run the code i’ve written, i hit winkey + enter and it opens up a console, types in the mzscheme commands to start the arc repl, and pastes the code, surrounded by (do …) so that the code is run like a file rather than a repl sequence

then it alt-tabs back to vim. now this all happens very quickly mind you. if i hit winkey + enter again, it reuses the same console window. winkey + shift runs the current lisp form the cursor is in

just to give you an idea of the sorts of things you can do with autohotkey. some simpler things i’ve done are remapping ctrl, enter, and backspace to leftalt + letter hotkeys so my pinkies don’t have to stretch. it makes for more comfortable and faster typing

You find some nice changes in Windows Vista as it is much smarter you can type things like word and it opens word note opens note internet opens the default browser…

I have a problem with the winkey combination winkey + i which (on my newly acquired machine) has the same effect as winkey + l - that is it locks the workstation. This makes it clash with an autohotkey script that I use based on #i::

Can anyone tell me how to disable the winkey + i combination? I haven’t seen it listed as a standard code anywhere (ie like winkey + l or winkey + d, etc).

A tip for anybody who is in a hurry when working on the computer: USE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS TO LAUNCH YOUR APPS.

How to do this? Go to the Start Menu and locate your frequently-used application. Then, RIGHT-CLICK the application name. Click the Properties option, and locate the Shortcut Key text box. Click the key combination you will associate with this app, then click the OK button. The typed instructions right here seem difficult, but they ARE NOT, and once you set up your shortcuts and use them, life is quicker.

For Word, I use Ctrl + Alt + W
For Excel, I use Ctrl + Alt + E
For Access, I use Ctrl + Alt + A
For Paint, I use Ctrl + Alt + P
For Calculator, I use Ctrl + Alt + C
For Visual Studio, I use Ctrl + Alt + V
For Dreamweaver, I use Ctrl + Alt + D
For SQL Studio (used to be Query Analyzer), I use Ctrl + Alt + Q
For Publisher, I use Ctrl + Shift + P
For Corel Painter, I use Alt + Shift + P
For Firefox, I use Ctrl + Alt + I (for Internet)
For PSPad, I use Ctrl + Alt + T (for Text)

Launchy does all this and is super fast to learn. it also learns your typing shortcuts for you.

I recently upgraded (if you want to call it that) to Windows Vista 64 bit. I have been tweaking it a lot, but I ran into a brick wall while trying to create my own Windows Key + * shortcuts. I saw the above mentioned program WinKey.exe, but it hasn’t been supported in years nor does it work with 64 bit systems (or at least Vista 64 bit). I scowered the internet looking for a solution and finally found one, it’s Clavier+ (http://utilfr42.free.fr/util/Clavier.php). Hopefully this will make it easier for people like me that are looking for a program like this.

Now I can do all the shortcuts I want.
WinKey + W = Web Dev Folder
WinKey + C = custom cmd prompt

You get the point.

I type “c”, “d” and “e” to quickly launch those drives. “zip” for Winzip, “ff” for Firefox etc.

I learned about WinKey + L from a co-worker. I was in his cubicle while he was gone, and I was about to start fiddling with his desktop settings to screw with him. He peeked his head in from another room, and asked me to do him a favor while I was in his cube. He said to press and hold the winkey and then press then ‘L’ key. I did so of course, and it thwarted my attempts at mischief unfortunately.

Thanks Jeff for listing these. In particular the combination to restore all minimized windows. I knew that WinKey + M minimized them all, but I didn’t know how to get them back. Of course, from now on I’ll probably just use WinKey + D.