I’m surprised no one added this one yet, which is VERY helpful.
If you want to see how adaptive your web design is or if you have problems seeing a tiny font:
Hold down the CTRL key and use the mouse wheel.
It increases/decreases the size of the font.
It works on Firefox and IE. Nice testing utility to see how fluid your design is.
Great Post, Jeff!
JD
I only need to memorize one shortcut (Alt+BackSpace) which launches Launchy. Everything else is simple from there on. No need to configure different keys for different apps.
Catto
Cntl Q - Quick view of all tabs
erm…not in opera…it closes all tabs in opera, be aware.
and thanks to whoever wrote about using / for incremental search, thats excellent, works in opera too,
ctrl mousewheel, doesnt work in opera.
i use the shift key when im navigating using Alt + Tab or Ctrl + Tab, as it will go through the list in reverse.
Also using tab to go through forms, but surely everyone knows that already.
I couldn’t agree more with the underlying idea of using keyboard shortcuts for common tasks. However, there’s the drawback of having to memorize a new bunch of them when you switch applications, even if they share identical navigation conventions.
I’ve never seen the point in that. Actually, as a user I often miss a World Keyboard Shortcuts Consortium devoted to the standardization of keyboard shortcuts in all applications. If you have to give focus to the address bar or the search box in IE and Firefox, why use different shortcuts? It’s the same functionality! Let the user customize them if they wish, but please use a standard default. The world would be a happier place with a WKSC.
Also, in my experience, one of the most efficient ways to access your apps is by using a command line tool that supports aliases, such as SlickRun. I think I use it to get started with 90% of the tasks I have to deal with daily. And the advantage over shortcuts is that you don’t have to learn them, you can create arbitrary names that are friendlier for your brain, much in the way doskey works under CMD.
I only want to add a small Opera tip, which I think is one of the most useful features ever: in Opera, you can use the address bar like a search bar.
So, wether I want to look for something in any search engine or type in a specific addres, I just it F8 (address bar shortcut in Linux Opera). All one has to do is left click on a search field in any search engine or site and assign a search alias to it.
My most common task:
Ctrl+T (new tab)
F8 (focus address bar)
‘wp search term’ (look for something in wikipedia)
"Hold down the CTRL key and use the mouse wheel."
Ctrl+0 (top row or number pad) restores text to it’s default size. Very useful in combination with this 
“Hold down the CTRL key and use the mouse wheel.”
That’s just zooming (magnifiying) the page, isn’t it, rather than changing the font size. (IE here at work - won’t let me install FF)
I use Launchy to quick open any application, so usually:
Opera is my favorite browser, and the shortcuts I use the most are:
For everything else I use the mouse, even if I never got used to advanced mouse gestures.
Keyboard shortcuts are nice but there’s one thing in the post that I don’t get: using the windows-key + l to launch your favourite browser. That shortcut is much better left as standard: lock the computer (on Windows, obviously).
I second the use of windows-key + r for start–run, it’s very nice (mainly for running cmd in my case, though). Another one I use a lot is windows-key + m for minimizing all open windows.
Regards
Fake
Forgot another very useful one:
Windows-key + E opens Windows Explorer
Fake
CTRL+ENTER is still my favorite. I see some people who claim that your browser does this already when you do not add this in the location bar. That is incorrect… you are actually doing a search (like Google’s I feel lucky), defaulted to your default search engine.
If you want to go directly there, CTRL+ENTER saves a lot extra typing.
Be careful using these shortcuts in Explorer though: Alt+D might go to the address bar, but Ctrl+D deletes files. Oops!
Mouse Gestures FTW
Another shorcut I use sometime, CTRL+scroll to change the font size =)
Chris H.: CTRL-Enter is the 6th shortcut I’d recommend - I use it 50 times per day.
“Boss is coming” shortcut. Windows key + M
Forget the middle mouse button. Turn on the “search for text when I start typing” option in Firefox. Then when you see links you want to navigate to, you just start typing some of the letters in that link and the focus will go there. Then you hit ctrl+enter to open the link in a new tab.
Much more efficient than mousing all around when you’re reading.
“Ctrl + [ENTER] will place the leading http://www. and the trailing .com ONLY if you have a English OS… if Danish it will place .dk if French will place .fr”
Ctrl + Alt + [ENTER] will place the leading http://www. and trailing.com and open in a new tab.
They should make middle click anywhere inside a tab that isn’t a link or otherwise active close the tab. I usually waste one of my extra Logitech mouse buttons for ctrl-f4 because being able to close inner panes without mousing up there is so handy.
For people who don’t have a middle mouse button:
Ctrl + Left Click : Open link in new tab
Shift + Left Click : Open link in new window