OpenOffice Keyboard Shortcuts

Writer, the word processor in OpenOffice.org, uses many of the same keyboard shortcuts as MS Word. The shortcuts for selecting, editing and formatting text follow established standards. Whereas Writer has a keyboard shortcut for 'Paste special' (Ctrl + Shift + V) - something missing in Word - it does not have one for changing the case of selected text. It is possible to set up new shortcuts in Writer, and I will show you how to set up one to make the selected text upper-case and another to make it lower-case.

In Writer pull down the 'Tools' menu and click 'Customise'.

Select the 'Keyboard' tab, as shown below.

You can see all the default keyboard shortcuts, and some spare key combinations.

I have chosen Ctrl + Shift + U to make selected text upper case, and Ctrl + Shift + L to make it lower case.

Find Ctrl + Shift + U in the 'Shortcut keys' list. Select 'Format' from the 'Category' list, and then 'Uppercase' from the 'Function' list. Click the 'Modify' button to make the change.

Repeat the process selecting Ctrl + Shift + L, the 'Format' category, and the 'Lowercase' function, not forgetting to click the 'Modify' and then the 'OK' buttons when you are done.

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Open new tabs on the right in Firefox 3.6

Mozilla have changed the way that new tabs operate in Firefox 3.6. When opening a new tab from a link on a web-page, the new version of Firefox will place it to the right of the current tab, rather than at the far right of the list as it did in previous versions.

To revert to the old functionality type about:config in the address bar and then click the "I'll be careful, I promise!" button if it appears.

In the filter type tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent and then right-click on the entry and click "Toggle".

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Linux Applications: Part 3 - Web Browsers

There are many different web browsers available for Linux. These include Firefox and Opera, but not Safari nor Internet Explorer; however, a Linux version of Chromium (the open-source browser on which Google Chrome is based) is in the pipeline. A number of less well-known browsers are also available for Linux. In this post I will list a few of these.

Epiphany
This is the web browser for the Gnome desktop environment. It uses the WebKit layout engine, as used in Safari.






Flock
This browser specialises in social networking facilities and is based on Mozilla Firefox.



Konqueror
This browser also doubles up as the file manager of the K Desktop Environment (KDE). It uses the KHTML layout engine from which WebKit was developed.




Midori
This lightweight web browser also uses the WebKit engine. It is now part of the XFCE desktop environment project.




Swiftfox
Like Flock, this is based on Firefox and is my browser of choice. It is a lightweight browser optimised for various processors that supports Firefox extensions and plug-ins.

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Linux applications: Part 2 - Music Players

In response to my last post listing Linux applications, I received a couple of comments asking whether there are any applications like iTunes for Linux. There are a number of applications that offer many of the features of Apple's music player. Here are a few of the most popular of them.

They all include roughly the same set of features such as support for audio file types and digital audio players, including the iPods. They retrieve album, submit played track information to Last.fm, and supports podcasts. With such software, look and feel are all important, so I have included screenshots and links to the homepages of each. Since they are all free why not audition them all and find the one that best suits your requirements.

Amarok

Banshee

Exaile

Listen

Songbird

Personally, I prefer a more svelte audio player like Winamp. Since there is no native Linux version of that, I use Audacious, which supports some Winamp skins. That is probably just as well because the default skins are not great.

More Linux applications soon.

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Carnival of Computer Help and Advice

Regular readers may have noticed that I have not posted the blog carnival of computer help and advice for the last two months. This is due to a lack of interest from submitters and because I never managed to encourage many other people to also host the carnival posts. As such I have let the carnival lapse and will not be hosting it on this site any more.

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Linux applications: Part 1 - Productivity

As I mentioned in a recent post, I have recently switched to a Linux distribution as my operating system of choice. Many other users may be put off from making a similar switch because they are concerned that they may not be able to use the applications that they know from the Windows environment. While some applications are not available on Linux, there are a number of alternatives that offer all the most important features and have the benefit of not costing a penny.

Office Software
OpenOffice.org from Sun Microsystems is a decent replacement for Microsoft Office. It includes a word processor called Writer, a spreadsheet package called Calc, presentation authoring software called Impress, a database management system called Base, and a vector graphics program called Draw, which doubles up as a simple desk top publishing package. Using OpenOffice.org you can open and save files in Word, Excel and Powerpoint file formats and even save them in pdf format too. So far I have had no problems transferring files between OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office, although you may be advised to install the default Microsoft fonts. For Ubuntu users the MS font package is called msttcorefonts. OpenOffice.org is not only available for Linux, but also for Windows and Mac OS.

PDF Reader
While Adobe Acrobat is available for Linux, it is as bloated as its Windows equivalent. Evince is a good lightweight alternative, with the added benefit of support for djvu files. If you use KDE as your windows manager then you may also want to consider KPDF.

Graphics software
As with OpenOffice.org, GIMP is available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS; although I have had problems using it on Windows in the past. It is a feature rich graphics manipulation program that supports all commonly used image formats.

In the next part I will look at for entertainment software available for Linux.

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By Your Command: File and Folder paths the easy way

When using the Command Prompt you can avoid typing the whole path for files and folders by dragging and dropping them onto the Command Prompt window. This video shows this time-saving feature in action.

Please note that this function does not work with all icons such as the My Documents icon on the desktop.

More Command Prompt tips soon.

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