I pretend to be tech savvy.
Sure, I’m comfortable on my computer. It’s where I spend most of my time, after all. I can install blog plugins, I know a few keyboard shortcuts, and I’m pretty good at Googling answers to my questions.
But really, I’m just pretending to know what I’m doing. I can’t code. I’ve tried to learn Photoshop and just can’t figure it out. I’m sure I’ve barely tapped into the full functionality of my iPhone.
Every now and then, though, I do something by accident that teaches me a new skill, and IT IS AWESOME.
The primary place where this happens is Adobe InDesign. InDesign is not a particularly complex piece of software, but for me it’s the apex of my capabilities. I’ve stumbled through figuring it out over the last 5 years, as I use it nearly every day for prototyping games. Most I’ve what I’ve learned on InDesign comes from the clicking around to see what stuff does.
Today I was working on the latest Charterstone prototype on InDesign. There are lots of cards in the game, so some of the files are at least 10 pages long. Typical I scroll, scroll, scroll using the wheel on my mouse as I travel up and down the document.
As I was doing this today, something happened. While I was scrolling, I suddenly whipped through multiple pages. I then realized that my pinky finger was resting on the shift key. It hit me:
Shift + scroll = MEGA SCROLL!
This is spectacular. It’s just a little thing, but I love that I discovered it by accident even more than if I had intentionally learned it.
Have you ever had this happen? What’s your greatest accidental computer shortcut discovery?
Hi Jamey. Try Ctrl + Scroll on a webpage… not funny when you do it by accident and have no idea what you did, but handy if you do it intentionally!
Adam: Oh yeah, I’ve loved Ctrl + Scroll ever since I discovered it a few years ago. I like that it works across most software.
I LOVE finding things like this. Do you know about Format Painter in Microsoft products like Word or PowerPoint? The little paintbrush at the top left lets you apply a style from something (text, photo, etc) to something else. MAGIC.
Emma: I’m a huge fan of the format painter! It’s magical. That and the “undo” button. 🙂 Whenever I learn new software for the first time, I always look for the undo button. I wonder if there’s a shortcut for that…
Ctrl + Z is the standard undo 🙂
Awesome!!!