My Ctrl Key

[Rick Altman]

I'm not sure if this is a hardware or a software issue, so please forgive
the cross-post.

For a decade now, I have loathed the arbitrary assignment of Caps Lock to
the position next to my left pinky. I'm sorry, but God intended the Ctrl key
to go there, and nobody will ever convince me otherwise. The most elegant
solution that I have found is a utility from PC Magazine's library called
TradeKeys, which makes a fairly intricate Registry tweak routine. With it, I
instruct the left CapsLock key to act as the left Ctrl key, and I have been
using it with satisfaction for about four years now, including on my
now-deposed Dimension 8300, 8400, and on two notebook PCs of various brands.

On my new Dimension 9100, however, a new behavior has cropped up, which I
cannot explain or resolve. While a simple press of CapsLock still behaves as
expected to produce a Ctrl press, any chording of keys does not. For
instance, if I wanted to delete everything in this post from this cursor
position to the end of the document. I would issue the key sequence of
Ctrl+Shift+End to select it all; however, I cannot use CapsLock in this
situation -- it will not function as Ctrl.

Control Panel | Keyboard does not shed any light on this issue; I cannot
point to *anything* unique to this system that would be causing this
situation, and if anyone has any ideas, I would be most grateful for hearing
them...



Rick A.
Pleasanton, CA

 

[Guest]

If you want to highlight everything on a web page, double click the word at
the beginning of the section you want to copy/delete and then click anywhere
in the document to highlight everything beyond that point.

Similarly, click the letter once (you won't see anything happen on the page
itself) where you want the section to be copied/deleted to begin, hold down
Shift and then click the last letter where you want the section to end. That
highlights everything in between. To highlight a sentence, click once at the
beginning, hold down Shift and hit the "End" key.

No need to touch CTRL at all

 

[Rick Altman]

I appreciate your point of view, but I am from an entirely different
philosophy: I want to use the keyboard whenever possible. If the task is one
of typing (as opposed to working an interface), I will defy anyone to show
me a faster way to get a job done than the use of keystroke commands.

Be that as it may, there are some tasks that virtually require the use of
Ctrl+Shift combinations, and for those times -- and for any other endeavor
when I have a choice between keyboard and mouse and will choose the former
in a heartbeat -- I am motivated to resolve this issue...