Escape Quickly With The ESCape Key
Most of us are unaware of the ESC key and what it does. The best and most often use for the ESC key is to cancel a current dialogue box. If you are ever looking at a box on your screen that asks you to choose an option, you should know that pressing the ESC key is the same as clicking on the CANCEL button as well as NO, QUIT, EXIT or ABORT! Aha, nice trick isn’t it?
One little known shortcut using the ESC key is to stop Firefox or Internet Explorer from downloading the current web page. Pressing the “Esc” key in either web browser will stop the currently loading web page or file from downloading.
This works great because you not longer have to click on the “STOP” button that is located somewhere on the toolbar. Sometimes the challenge could be just finding that button quick enough. Why look for it when all you have to do is press ESC when you want the web page or files to stop downloading. It’s fast and easy!
One last tip that will help you get more use out of your computer using your new friend, the ESC key which by the way is always located in the top left corner of every computer keyboard you will find. Let’s say your mouse wasn’t working and you wanted to open the START menu to look for a program, maybe a game. Bad news, this computer has a keyboard which is older and doesn’t have a WINDOWS key (usually found on the bottom row between the CTRL and ALT keys) what ever can we do? No problem because the keyboard shortcut to open the START menu is to hold down CTRL and press the ESC key once. The START menu should open and since your mouse isn’t currently working, all you have to do is use the UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT arrow keys to move around and when you have found what you are looking for, the ENTER key will open the program.
Technology is my passion, computers are part of our everyday lives and I want to help you bridge the gap by offering you short articles and blurbs in the most recent computer related topics.