The Key(s) of F

[beamjockey]

I just realized that, although I use a Windows machine every business day, I never touch the function keys. I mean the ones labeled F1 through F12, above the number row on the QWERTY part of the keyboard.

I don't even know what the F#-keys do, though I am perfectly capable of finding out.

To me, the most significance they have is that the number keys and the F#-keys form a nice little trough I keep a pencil in.

In the past, I have been a power user on Macs and on VT220 keyboards. Just never bothered, I guess, to figure out the possibilities on a Windows keyboard.

What's your favorite F# key?

Comments

[rono-60103.livejournal.com]

What's your favorite F# key

In my saxophone playing days I generally preferred to use the main keys on the left hand and a forked fingering for the right hand when playing F♯. But I don't remember what the individual keys were called.

Seriously, many or most Windows programs have function key mappings. But the functions in question usually (or always) also can be performed through the menus and toolbar.

I use F5, F7, CTRL-F7, F10, and F11 regularly in visual studio. They are "Start/continue debugging", "Build Solution", "Build File", "Step over", and "Step Into" respectively.

[agoodwinsmith.livejournal.com]

Back at the dawn of time I used the F keys for commands in WordPerfect (oh, how I still pine for WordPerfect 5.1). I can't remember what any of them do, but I have a residual attachment to F5 for some reason.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

They mostly have some function in Oolite, though you can use the number keys instead. It's mostly fairly old software that uses them, which is why compact keyboards often minimise their size.

[sraun]

F5 defaults to Refresh for Windows Explorer and most web browsers - it's probably the one I use most.

[tandw.livejournal.com]

Likewise here. I don't tend to use any of the others any more.

[blufive.livejournal.com]

As pointed out by others, the function key functions tend to vary wildly from one program to another, which is why I mostly don't use them these days, because I generally can't keep track of what does what in all the different programs I use.

I suppose I do use F2 (which is "rename this thing" in several programs I use, including Windows Explorer, and "edit this cell" in Excel) quite a bit. And often curse as I fat-finger F1, which is mostly "help" - usually in the form of an intrusive, slow-to-launch, extra window which just gets in the way.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

I don't think I used them any more either, not for years, though I have a laptop pc.

I do use the alt and ctrl keys a lot though, with the alpha keys and with the numeric pad.

I think ... I used the Fkeys way back in the DOS days in documents that I was creating in the frequently lamented word processing program, what was it called? Word Perfect! I wrote my second novel in it (first one was written on my home IBM Selectric, but during the day worked on the text at work in a law firm on an IBM mag card word processor).

This last book even has excel spread sheets as part of keeping track of everything that's in it.

Love, C.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

They're unfortunately not as consistent as Microsoft could have encouraged them to be, but my favourites are (I won't say what programs I'm referring to):

F2 Edit
F3 Find Next
F4 Repeat Action (Ctrl-Y often works for this)
F5 Refresh Contents (F9 sometimes does this instead, see note on inconsistency)

F1 is Help, but Microsoft Help is so useless I never use it. The majority of times I open a Help dialogue it's because I meant to hit F2 and missed. [and incidentally, I'd like to know how much lost productivity the decision to put "caps lock" right next to the "a" key is responsible for, over time]

[maiac.livejournal.com]

It depends on the program I'm using. In my favorite text editor, NoteTab Pro, it's F2: it executes the text macros that save me a heck of a lot of typing. In Firefox, it's F3, the Find/Find Next key. In Microsoft Word, it's F7, the spelling check key. In Microsoft Excel (and the open-source LibreOffice's Excel-equivalent spreadsheet), it's F2, which I press to edit a cell's contents.

[kevinnickerson.livejournal.com]

Favorite is hard. I have several in heavy use.
Ctrl-F4 - Close Window
Alt-F4 - Close Program
Ctrl-F6 - Next Window
F3 - Find (for those programs that use it)

In my preferred text editor (Crisp),
F5 - Search (and shift)
F6 Replace (and shift)
are tops, but I use most of them in it.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

On MacBooks, the F keys by default perform various labeled system functions (volume and backlight adjustments, window navigation) unless you use the "fn" key with them. But I've used some programs that actually did map important stuff to them (I think the most recent was the developer's Android simulator) and got a little annoyed with having to press "fn" all the time. Still, it's probably better this way.

[laurel]

When I've used keyboards with function keys, I've rarely used them unless I programmed them to do something in particular and I can't remember when I last did that.

This year I realized that I never use the shift (or alt or ctrl) key on the right side of the keyboard. Total waste of space for me.

[scarfman]

My favorites are for Excel, where F2 is edit and F9 is calculate.

[erik]

Definitely F5.
AltF4 is also useful.

[henrytroup.livejournal.com]

in Microsoft SQL Studio, F5 is "execute". i use F keys in Visual Studio and SQL, occasionally in browsers, and hardly at all in anything else.

The keys of the numeric keypad are also bound to commands, if Num Lock is off. Possibly some people know what they do.

[carbonel]

F5 (refresh screen) is the one that sees the most use, because I use it all the time in browser windows.

In Word, F3 (change case), F4 (repeat last command), F5 (go to previous position), and Shift-F7 (open thesaurus to selected word) are the ones I use most often.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

The F keys could stop at 8 for me.

If the F keys stopped at F7, you could cast your F8 to the wind.