The Golden Rules Of Windows

(You can read a bit more at http://www.chrisgreaves.com/Training/motivational/GoldenRulesOfWindows.html)

Golden Rule #1 You can always Escape from an awkward situation.

Golden Rule #2 If in doubt press Enter.

Golden Rule #3 Never close, Never minimize.

Golden Rule #4 Use the keyboard.

Golden Rule #5 Always click on a Click-me.

Golden Rule #6 All of life is spent doing one of two things.

Golden Rule #7 Doing something is always Goto, Select, Action.

Golden Rule #8 There are at least four ways of doing it.

Golden Rule #9 The Tab key will take you on a guided tour.

Golden Rule #10 You're not paying for the electricity.

Altered states

Usually we are working within an application keying in data in the form of text, numbers, formulae, or in a graphics application, creating drawings.

We are working on the content of the document.

When it is time to work on the structure of the document, we need to switch into a different mode of operation. We need to continue using the keyboard or mouse to communicate with Windows, but we need to say "This concerns the structure, not the content".

With the keyboard we use the Alt key to switch into the menu state.
With the mouse we click on the menu bar.

Use Alt-F to switch into the menu system, specifically into the File menu.

Use the right-arrow key repeatedly to move amongst items in the menu system.
Continue tapping the right-arrow key until you return to the File menu.

Use the left-arrow key to move leftwards through the menu system.

Use the escape key twice to exit the menu system completely.

Alt-letter takes us into the "Action" area.

The Action is the Alternate thing we do with content.

Use Alt-File Open to enter the File Open dialogue box.

The Golden Rules Of Windows

Golden Rule #1 You can always Escape from an awkward situation.
Golden Rule #2 If in doubt press Enter.
Golden Rule #3 Never close, Never minimize.
Golden Rule #4 Use the keyboard.
Golden Rule #5 Always click on a Click-me.
Golden Rule #6 All of life is spent doing one of two things.
Golden Rule #7 Doing something is always Goto, Select, Action.
Golden Rule #8 There are at least four ways of doing it.
Golden Rule #9 The Tab key will take you on a guided tour.
Golden Rule #10 You're not paying for the electricity.

The Tab key

Tap the Tab key repeatedly to go on a guided tour of any dialogue box.

TAB takes you on a guided tour of any dialogue box

While holding down the Shift key, tap the Tab key repeatedly.

Use Shift-Tab to reverse through the dialogue box.

Shift-TAB shifts you into reverse gear through a dialogue box.

Most-Used Commands

Shamelessly cribbed and clipped from Jensen Harris: An Office User Interface Blog . PLEASE read the full article at http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/04/07/570798.aspx



Top 5 Most-Used Commands in Microsoft Word 2003
Paste
Save
Copy
Undo
Bold

Together, these five commands account for around 32% of the total command use in Word 2003. Paste itself accounts for more than 11% of all commands used, and has more than twice as much usage as the #2 entry on the list, Save.

Paste is also far-and-away the number one command in Excel and PowerPoint, accounting for 15% and 12% of total command use, respectively.

A few people asked in comments about the top "actions" done in Word 2003. Here they are:

Cursor Right
Cursor Left
Cursor Down
Backspace
Cursor Up

Even the last of these (Cursor Up) is done about 8 times more than Paste, so people are doing a lot of cursoring around in the document (as you'd expect.) We don't collect letter and number presses, but I expect you would find that they line up along expected frequencies ...

Why do I post this here? Chances are that you fit the curve, and whether or not you realize it, these are YOUR most used commands and actions.

I have provided hyperlinks to my posted articles about each such command