What do you do when you’re confronted with the aforementioned problem? You use a keyboard shortcut to hack your way out of it, of course!
When you set your homepage to the Wikipedia Random article link, you run into the problem of getting a new random article every time you open a new tab. But we don’t want to put a roadblock in this newly-forming habit of daily learning, so once you hit Control-T to open a new tab, follow up immediately with another keyboard shortcut, Control-L. For you Mac users, go figure it out on your own; you’re smarter than us Windows users. Put another way, generally where I say “Control-“ I mean “Apple button thingy-“. You knew that, though, you pompous jerk.
I kid! (Mostly.)
There are a bevy of keyboard shortcuts that work with the two browsers that matter most – Chrome and Firefox. (Again, Mac users – get a better browser than Safari, would ya?)
Here’s a list of some of the more common browser keyboard shortcuts that work in both Chrome and Firefox. Try these, they’re AWESOME. And all kidding aside, these work for all browsers J
Enjoy!
Control+1-8 – Switch to the specified tab, counting from the left. For example, say you have 3 tabs open, you’re currently on the 3rd tab, but you want to go to the 1st tab without moving your hands away from your keyboard – simply hit Control and the number 1 simultaneously.
Control+Shift+T – Reopen the last closed tab.
Control+T – Open a new tab. I hate to say it, but a lot of people don’t know this one or at least have not committed it to muscle memory and reach for the mouse instead. Waste of time!
F5 – Reload the page.
Control+F5 – Reload and skip the cache, re-downloading the entire website.
Control and + – Zoom in.
Control and – – Zoom out.
Space, Page Down – Scroll down a frame.
Shift+Space, Page Up – Scroll up a frame.
Home – Top of page.
End – Bottom of page.
Those are just a few of the ones I use most often. There is a much bigger list over at HowToGeek.com.