Tip 15: When really simple really is

The web has been around for a very long time now (technologically speaking), and sometimes I find myself sticking to the old ways just because that’s how I’m used to doing things. But sometimes something new comes along that changes everything and suddenly makes routine tasks faster and easier.

For example, in the 90’s it was hard to search the web. Once you found a site, you pretty much had to add it to your “Favorites” list just to find it again. After a while the Favorites list got bigger and bigger, and it was impossible to know if a site had new content, so it became necessary to go back to the favorite sites periodically and check them again. Considering the slow speed of a dial-up connection, something had to change. And it did.

Simply syndicate it

You may have already heard of RSS. It currently stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” Early on it stood for “Rich Site Summary” and before that was “RDF Site Summary” (where “RDF” was geek-speak for “Resource Description Framework”).

In simple terms, RSS is a specification for summarizing a website’s contents. The information contained in an “RSS feed” typically includes a list of pages or articles the site contains. The file is a real-time snapshot of the website at the moment it is requested.

Tip 14: Know when the locks are changed

I used to have a problem when it came to typing on the computer keyboard, and I’m sure I’m not the only one to have run into it. The scenario: I’m typing along AT A GOOD PACE. tHEN SUDDENLY i LOOK BACK TO DISCOVER (as I just did) that I’d hit the “Caps Lock” key. Sure there are ways of correcting this in programs like Microsoft Word, but I tend to be more of the mind that I’d like to prevent these problems from happening in the first place.

Fortunately Windows provides a great tool that can be enabled to help you recognize when the “Caps Lock”, “Num Lock” or “Scroll Lock” key are pressed. But before we go there, let’s get us all on the same footing for what the purpose of these keys are to begin with.

Locked and loaded

I’m sure we’ve all had adventures with the Caps Lock key before. As I just stated, the purpose of this key is fairly straightforward: when Caps Lock mode is engaged, all alphabetic characters (“a” to “z”) are typed in upper case (“A” to “Z”). With Caps Lock mode engaged, pressing the C key results in a typed capital “C”.  Because pressing Shift + C normally results in a capital “C” being typed, consider the opposite will happen if Caps Lock mode is engaged: the case is still inverted, so if you type Shift + C, you’ll get a lower case “c”.

Tip 13: Waiter, a Menu please!

A common element to most application windows is the Menu Bar. Located below the Title Bar, the Menu Bar is the wide strip that contains File, Edit, View, Tools, Help and other options. I’m sure you’ve used Menus plenty by now and you already understand how to navigate through them with your mouse.

Before we get going too far into this tip, I should point out that if you are using Internet Explorer and you do not see the Menu Bar, press either the Alt key or F10 to force the menu to show itself. The menu can be hidden in Internet Explorer and other programs. I’ll show you how to change this behavior in IE and other programs later in this tip.

Time to take some shortcuts

You have probably noticed that menus don’t always look the same. Sometimes one letter in each word is underlined and sometimes none are. What the heck’s going on here? And what does that underline mean?

First I’ll answer the latter question: the underline is the “keyboard shortcut” for that menu. That underlined letter corresponds to the menu command that will be issued if you press that key on the keyboard. Take a look shortcut cues in this image: