The Bloog

I found myself tonight wanting to find a way to bring Vista’s Sidebar to the front and access gadgets without having to click on the sidebar icon in the system tray or minimize all windows… via some sort of shortcut. A quick google search revealed that such shortcut does indeed exist and is built into Windows: Windows Key + Spacebar.

Quick list of useful Vista shortcuts:

- Show Sidebar: Windows Key + Spacebar
- Cycle through Sidebar gadgets : Windows Key + G
- Cycle through open programs using Flip 3D: Windows Key + Tab
- An alternate way to use Alt + Tab: Ctrl + Alt + Tab (lets you use the keyboard arrows or the mouse to select an open program)

View a longer list of Vista shortcuts on Microsoft’s site: Windows Vista Help – Keyboard Shortcuts

Since tonight seems to be shortcut revelation night, here’s another one that will hopefully make your day seem shorter: use a keyboard shortcut to quickly change to another search engine in Firefox’s search box.

Why would you want that? Because, typing something in and then moving your hand to the mouse to select another search engine from the list (like IMDB) and then moving the mouse again to the search icon to click it or your hand back to the keyboard to hit Enter, can be tedious. So here’s the shortcut: make it easier by simply typing in your search term, then pressing Alt + Arrow Down until your desired search engine is selected, then hit Enter twice (once to select the search engine and second time to execute the search). Much faster and simpler, isn’t it…