May

...as this issue has come up several times recently during my telephone training sessions with a few of my affiliates and clients, I thought as a part of the "and more" category of my contributions here at WNYwomen, I would address it with this installment  :-)

...some time ago, manufacturers of computer mice, began adding a "scroll wheel" located in between the two mouse buttons  ...this handy little wheel makes it easier to "scroll" up and down while the mouse cursor is within a given application program's window, such as word processors and your browser window while surfing the web, rather than repeatedly clicking within the scroll bar, or on the up and down arrows of the scroll bar  ...some applications and browsers also allow you to scroll left and right, if necessary, if you hold down the correct 'modifier key' while scrolling with the wheel, such as; the 'shift key', the 'command key' (Mac) or 'control key' (PC), or the 'option key' (Mac) or 'alt key' (PC) - the "correct" modifier key varies amongst applications  ;-)

...while this handy little wheel does indeed make scrolling easier compared to repeated clicking within the scroll bar or on its arrows, it has been mentioned to me several times as of late that while surfing a large number of sites, such as while performing research etc., as well as repeated 'rolling' of the scroll wheel while scanning through long web pages, leads to simply a 'different' form of "scrolling finger fatigue"

...this is what led me to reminding everyone with this article, to what in my opinion, are the four most forgotten about keys available on most keyboards today  ...they would be the; page up, page down, home and end keys  ...on most 'desktop' keyboards, these four keys are typically located in between the text keys and the numeric keypad  ...on 'laptop' computers, these keys are located in various places dependent upon manufacturer and in many cases, also double for the left, right, up and down arrows - requiring you to simultaneously hold down a function key (fn on many laptops) in order to utilize the 'page scrolling' functionality of these keys

...the beauty of the 'page up' and 'page down' keys is that they scroll an entire 'visible' window's worth of content with each press of the key, allowing you to scroll up or down long pages very quickly  ...many web sites today include at the bottom (footer) of their site, links to portions of their site oftentimes 'not' included within the general navigation located at the top, left or right hand sides of their site, such as; Terms of Use, Privacy Statements, About and/or Copyright information, etc.  ...while performing research for example, you may want to just quickly jump to the bottom of a web site page in order to review the site's terms and/or policies  ...while in a word processing program, if you regularly write articles or are authoring the next best selling novel, the next time you open your work in progress file you may just want to jump to the end of where you left off the last time you were writing - in comes the 'end' key  ...with one press of this key, you're at the bottom of the page, or the end of the document

...not all sites include "back to top" links within the content of long pages, nor do all sites include general navigation at the bottom of their site pages, which then requires you to scroll all the way back up to the top of the page to get to the site's navigation menu(s) for exploring other pages of the site  ...or again, while in a word processing program, you may just want to quickly jump to the beginning of your document so you can proof read your document from the beginning - in comes the 'home' key  ...with one press of this key, you're back at the top of the page, or the beginning of the document

...while to some people, scrolling pages using the scroll bars, or taking advantage of the mouse's scroll wheel is easy enough for the amount of computer work they perform, for those of you, like myself, that daily spend many long hours at the computer, I'm confident you'll find that taking advantage of the page up, page down, home and end keys will not only save you some eye strain and time, but will provide at least 'some' relief from "scrolling finger fatigue" as well  ;-)

...if anyone would like to know more about the types of services I can provide, you can learn more by visiting my web site at: http://www.evadware.com ...I would also be happy to set up a phone call with anyone interested in exploring how I might be of assistance - appointments can be requested through the "Request Info" page at the site, or by dropping me an email here at: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

best to all!

:-)

evad