The Greatest Keyboard Shortcut Ever

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Ryan Vogt writes in the Mercury News that Shakespeare described death as 'the undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn no traveller returns.' Did you know there is a the miraculous way to resuscitate tabs sent to the 'undiscovere'd country,' a sort of Ctrl-Z for the entire Internet, that means 'no more called-out cusswords, no more wishing the back button had you covered when, aiming to click on a tab, you accidentally hit the little X on the tab's starboard.' For Macs: Command [plus] shift [plus] t reopens the last tab. For PCs: Ctrl [plus] Shift [plus] T. 'Try it right now. Close this tab and bring it back. I dare ya.' Melia Robinson's trick [described for Chrome] works in Firefox and Internet Explorer, too, so clumsy mousing won't send the the E*Trade tab you mistakenly closed all cued up to sell those 10,000 shares of stock or your long political post on your uncle's Facebook page on a one-way trip to the undiscovere'd country in those browsers, either." No guarantees on the stock trading.

Comments

Huh? What?

[Frosty Piss]

Maybe it's the alcohol... But I really have no idea what the summary is talking about.

Re:Huh? What?

[m1ss1ontomars2k4]

I agree. Is this just a bad /. post, or literally the worst /. post ever?

Re:Huh? What?

[greenreaper]

It's saying that "undo close tab" is a thing. Somehow this is a surprise to some people.

Re:Huh? What?

[c0d3g33k]

Thirded. No clue what this is actually about.

Re:Huh? What?

[alphatel]

Maybe it's the alcohol... But I really have no idea what the summary is talking about.

I didnt know either, but after I used the greatest shortcut ever, porn popped up. So it's a porn-regrabber!

Re:Huh? What?

[Fwipp]

It's sort of trendy here to talk about how the once-great Slashdot has fallen, and I've mostly considered those people to be whiny old men.

Today, I realize that they were right.

Re:Huh? What?

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

All I use is alt+s on firefox, and click one of the last places I was at.

Re:Huh? What?

[asmkm22]

This is one of the worst summaries ever. The topic is bad. The summary is bad. It's confusingly written, without any clear idea as to what point it's trying to convey.

TLDR: CTRL+Shift+T restores tabs you accidentally closed.

Re:Huh? What?

[Just Some Guy]

It's where some half-assed tech journalist wannabe discovers the History -> Reopen Last Closed Window shortcut (and the Chrome equivalent) and wants to blare it from the rooftops like we've cured cancer or something.

He's gonna lose his freaking mind when he discovers Time Machine.

Re:Huh? What?

[vidnet]

The summary should read "Several browsers let you press Ctrl-Shift-T to reopen a closed tab. That is all."

Why this is deserving of an article I don't know.

Re:Huh? What?

[Aaron B Lingwood]

Thirded. No clue what this is actually about.

I think this is a story about a guy who logs into some banking/trading platform only to leave it idle and proceed to random web browsing in other tabs of the same browser instance.

I'm sure the story doesn't end well.

Re:Huh? What?

[vidnet]

Somehow it claims it's "a sort of Ctrl-Z for the entire Internet".

Come back when it lets me undo posting Slashdot comments with mipselled words.

Re:Huh? What?

[frozentier]

Why this is deserving of an article I don't know.

It's not. I've been doing that with Chrome since it first came out.

Re:Huh? What?

[jrumney]

It's where some half-assed tech journalist wannabe discovers the History -> Reopen Last Closed Window shortcut

Tab, not Window. They were saving Ctrl + Shift + N for next Sunday's front page story, until you scooped them just there.

Re:Huh? What?

[demonlapin]

What do you think this is, Reddit?

Re:Huh? What?

[TheABomb]

To be fair, it's only "very well-known" by people who know how to use browser tabs, which rules out 99% of my family, cow-orkers, and (I'm guessing through extrapolation) the population at large.

Re: Huh? What?

[Anonymous Coward]

The shitty part is, if you're in incognito mode and you accidentally close a porno tab and then change your mind, thinking it deserved another shot, you're SOL - Ctrl+Shift+T does nothing in incognito mode.

Re:Huh? What?

[Nerdfest]

Something actually works in Explorer? That must be the "news" part of the article.

Re:Huh? What?

[hawguy]

I think they are talking about using a fucking up 3 finger keyboard shortcut to do what any Gecko or Chromium based browser does with a right click. Why on earth you'd want to go through a 3 finger keyboard shortcut when its just right click>reopen closed tab and unlike the 3 finger bullshit you can undo as many levels as you want, all the way back to when you opened the browser.

I'll probably get hate for saying this but "keyboard commanders" seem to think its some great accomplishment when they trip over some funky fucked up keyboard shortcut and when they point it out a good 90% of the time I have to reply with "Uhhh...you know there is a button that will do that, right? See just click here, no need to twist your fingers into pretzels when there is a GUI button right there" but then they get all pissy, like we should all be amazed at the fact they can twist their fingers into pretzels to do what the rest of us can do with a single click of the mouse in the right place.;

I can press a 3 finger key sequence a lot faster and easier than moving the mouse to the narrow tab bar at the top of the browser window, right clicking, scrolling to the right menu entry (in Chrome, if you right click on a tab, it's the 6th entry on the list, if you right click on an empty space on the tab bar, it's the 2nd), and then clicking it.

Do you actually find it easier to use the mouse to do this? But then, usually when I inadvertently close a tab, it's because I hit Ctrl-W, so my hands are already on the keyboard.

Re:Huh? What?

[CronoCloud]

You must be new here. (I'm only saying this try to get some of the 4 digits to show up)

I was thinking the same thing to tell the truth...usually I dismiss those "There are no real nerds on Slashdot, it's not the same, it's turned into reddit" guys... but on this non-story... I sort of agree.

Re:Huh? What?

[noh8rz10]

doesn't work in safari on mac, so no dice.

Re:Huh? What?

[sconeu]

Will a 5 digit count?

Re:Huh? What?

[dasunt]

The summary should read "Several browsers let you press Ctrl-Shift-T to reopen a closed tab. That is all."

Why this is deserving of an article I don't know.

I just find the following part humorous: "a sort of Ctrl-Z"

Why is that humorous to me? Because I use Opera, which maps "control-z" to restore an accidentally closed tab. ;)

Re:Huh? What?

[Snotnose]

This got greenlit? Really? Maybe I should post an article about a wunnerful shortcut that almost always lets you restart your computer without power cycling. Hold these 3 keys down at the same time: control - alt - delete. I call it the 3 finger salute. Maybe I should patent the idea and trademark the name and retire?

Re:Huh? What?

[Anonymous Coward]

In other breaking news "CTRL+P" brings up the print dialog! "CTRL+S" SAVES!!!!! More news at eleven!

Re:Huh? What?

[lahvak]

Maybe it's a new "achievement".

Re:Huh? What?

[gigaherz]

HISTORY -> RECENTLY CLOSED TABS

If you don't show the menubar, I'm sure it's also there in the "one" button.

Re:Huh? What?

[Nethead]

No. Go back to bed.

Re: Huh? What?

[Mister J]

I've been using good old command-Z for that for as long as I can remember. It's just undo. Why would you need another, more complicated shortcut?

Re:Huh? What?

[Misagon]

That shortcut opens a new Incognito window in Chrome, also called "Private browsing" in Firefox.

Also very useful. Incognito windows lets me can log into my gmail account without having to log out of Youtube ... and when the incognito windows are closed, I am automatically logged out of gmail.

Re:Huh? What?

[Pieroxy]

There should be a way to punish people for stupid posts so that they cannot post anymore. Whoever is behind this story however deserves a title to have come up with the stupidest, most ridiculous /. story ever that has been accepted and published.

Re:Huh? What?

[blackest_k]

handy shortcut to know, especially when you accidentally close 2 tabs when you meant to close just the one. most of us are self taught and we tend not to go much beyond what we need to know. Probably why we tend to get pissed off with ribbons and the like as it throws out what we already knew.

Being taught is also a problem as usually there are a few methods available to do something and just one is usually taught which may not be the most convenient -the ECDL courses seem to be taught that way.

I don't mind learning something new to me, recently my young nephew taught me something (he didn't know he did) on android. I didn't realise that on the app switcher menu list if you kind of flick an app off to the right side it gets removed from the list. That is handy to know normally your only interested in reopening a few at a later point.

A recent slashdot article let me know about suspending by closing the lid on my netbook. A few years ago it was broken and wouldn't suspend or resume properly, so i closed it after a while it went quiet. with resuming in less than 2 seconds it was back where i left it when i closed the lid. It obviously got fixed at some point. Ok it takes a few seconds before it remounts my sd cards and reconnects the wifi and if it hasn't finished restoring it seems to object to suspending again but I'm using that handy feature regularly now.

echo 1 > /sys/bus/pci/rescan as root is another handy one if you have an aspire one as it brings the right hand card slot on line if you booted or suspended without a card in the slot.

So while ctrl shift T may not be new to some people, I bet many would use the recently closed tabs menu option (which seems to take longer as it has to fetch the page again) it is quite handy.

This being Slashdot, and the comments being better than the stories, I expect there will be more useful tips mentioned in the comments. Yes a particularly garbled story with little value in its self, as a starting point for useful comments it isn't that bad. Would you rather read another Balmer story?

Re: Huh? What?

[somersault]

Because undo is used in other contexts too, and it may confuse certain users who wouldn't think to click outside of a text box before hitting ctrl-z for example.

I'm not sure why this is on Slashdot though. I'd expect people here usually actually look at the options on menus. I usually just right click a tab and choose "reopen closed tab" rather than use the keyboard shortcut.

Re:Huh? What?

[cbiltcliffe]

...which rules out 99% of my....cow-orkers,.....

Tell me something:
What is orking, and how do you do it to a cow?

On second thought....I might not want to know the answer to that...... :)

Re: Huh? What?

[Your.Master]

Ctrl-Z is already used if you're typing into an input field. Say you're typing an email, then you close background tabs for whatever reason. Then you realize you accidentally moved a paragraph. Should you have to reload those tabs to undo the operation?

You could validly say yes to that based on user expectation, even though reloading tabs is expensive (hits the network and CPU and everything). But then what if you switch tabs? Now your undo stack corresponds to a different tab's actions (try it! Try typing in two tabs and see that ctrl-z is local to each tab). Where do you "insert" the close tab undo?

Further consider: what if the previously-active tab was closed. Do you insert the undo operation into the new foreground tab arbitrarily? Into every tab's undo stack?

One option is if keyboard focus is in one place (like on the tabs themselves), then undo behaves differently. But then it's not really any easier to use, is it?

Ctrl Z works best if you literally never type into any field, or perhaps if you only type usernames and passwords. Which is valid but not universal.

It's really easiest to use a separate command. It's a very different action and it exists in a different scope.

Re:Huh? What?

[Charliemopps]

I just closed this tab and tried it... I was very sad to see this article return.

Re:Huh? What?

[rwise2112]

Somehow it claims it's "a sort of Ctrl-Z for the entire Internet".

So it suspends the internet. Wouldn't the rest of the world find that annoying?

Re:Huh? What?

[nedlohs]

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/C/cow-orker.html

I guess don't click if you really don't want to know.

Re:Huh? What?

[vidnet]

The quality of this article did make me suspect that, yes.

Re:Huh? What?

[rjstanford]

Prior art. The "3 finger salute" is already covered by the "blue screen of death" patent.

That's the "1 finger salute." Its subtly different.

Re:Huh? What?

[rjstanford]

How about "All browsers have had keyboard shortcuts since the days of Mosaic"

Hell, for that matter lynx had nothing but keyboard shortcuts.

... Keyboard shortcuts are news?

[DavidClarkeHR]

I'm not trying to jump on the "slashdot has gone down-hill" bandwagon, but ...

KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS ARE NOT NEWS.

Re:... Keyboard shortcuts are news?

[Samantha Wright]

Wait till they discover Ctrl-Shift-N, and gain the power to recover whole windows!

Also, minus 10,000 points to the original author and those who quoted him without (sic) for writing "undiscovere'd." Seriously, what the fuck do you think that apostrophe is doing? Get rid of that last E!

Re:... Keyboard shortcuts are news?

[pspahn]

While I don't know an equivalent on Mac (though I'm sure there is one), I've always been fond of the evil Windows key sequence:

Winkey + D, Ctrl + A, Enter, Enter

It's not going to do any damage, but I think it's great.

How did this pass moderation?

[Bringer128]

How is a combined keypress (Ctrl+Shift+T) that is supported by the major browsers worthy of a news article? Even with my low UID this is the lowest of the low I've seen on Slashdot...

Re:How did this pass moderation?

[c0d3g33k]

My UID is lower, and this is indeed the lowest of the low.

Re:How did this pass moderation?

[Just Some Guy]

N00b.

Re:How did this pass moderation?

[hutsell]

My UID is lower, and this is indeed the lowest of the low.

2^0 + 2^1 + 2^1 + 2^3 + 2^3 + 2^1 + 2^3 = 2^5 - 1

Being low may not always be indicative of being better.

Re:How did this pass moderation?

[Tom]

be nice to each other, kids. no fighting. and get off my lawn.

You've Got to be Kidding Me

[bill_mcgonigle]

Go home, timothy, you are drunk.

Re:You've Got to be Kidding Me

[aliquis]

You've Got to be Kidding Me
Go home, timothy, you are drunk.

Wait for the dupe in a couple of hours.

And...

[guruevi]

You discovered a keyboard shortcut in your browser that may or may not work on any other browser in existence and has been in use by yours truly since the invention of tabs? Woohoo, you rock, now go help your mom connect to that YouTube video you posted...

Slashdot? News for nerds? Stuff that matters?

seriously?!!?

[larry bagina]

Next on slashdot: Did you know you can read the paper while taking a shit?

Re:seriously?!!?

[MattskEE]

The paper that I have next to my toilet doesn't have anything written on it...

Safari

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just Command-Z for Undo (Close tab)

Daaaa Whaaaat ?

[giorgist]

I have always simply right clicked on the toolbar and select"open closed tab". The shortcut has always been there to see, I could not bother to memorise it.

Re:Daaaa Whaaaat ?

[VortexCortex]

Do this: Click the "Reply to This" link below the post. Then type something, then close the tab. Now restore the tab. Note that the text you typed is gone (at least on Chromium and Firefox, can't bring myself to care about other browsers off the clock). The TFA acts as if this will save you some headache, and perhaps it does if the form fields were not dynamically generated via DOM manipulation... Otherwise you lose your shit. Especially if you use Dvorak, where the Ctrl+V is dangerously close to Ctrl+W (which closes the current window / tab). Sadly the plugin that allows you to remap / disable Ctrl+W no longer works in Firefox. I could make a new one to re-add the feature, but it's no big deal to remove it when merging the other changes prior to browser compilation.

Do this instead: Middle Click the "reply to this" link, or right click it and select: "open in new tab". Now Navigate to that tab (Ctrl+Tab for toggling tabs like Alt+Tab does for applications). Now enter some text in the box, then close that tab (Ctrl+W). Re-open it (Ctrl+Shift+Tab).... Aha! There's your content, still typed in the box, and even survives restoring from crashes in most cases.

The only downside is, you can post text without being forced to preview it... Which I'm doing right now because I still like to live a bit dangerously.

Re:Daaaa Whaaaat ?

[mdenham]

A little bane.

Is he fighting a little Batman?

On Safari for Macs

[DavidinAla]

If you close a tab that you didn't mean to close, just hit Command-z and the tab will reopen. It was the last thing you did, so it makes sense that Command-z would undo that. This isn't exactly rocket science.

Re:New Slashdot feature: RTFM Sunday!

[_merlin]

That said: There really should be an easily-identifiable way in Firefox to restore a closed tab without using a keyboard. Perhaps an entry next to "New Tab" under the now-hidden-by-default file menu would suffice.

There is - in fact I never use the keyboard shortcut: History menu, Recently Closed Tabs, choose the one you want back from the submenu. Of course you actually have to make the menu bar visible to find it, but doesn't everyone do that anyway?

Seriously?

[gman003]

OK, I can see this becoming a filler article on some crappy "tech" website (coughcoughgizmodocough). But Slashdot? Seriously?

And it's not even written for our audience. I could see a "top ten keyboard shortcuts users don't know (but should)" or a "comparison of undo buttons between every program" (I can never remember the Emacs one... it's ctrl-x u, right?). But a "dude, check out this awesome keyboard shortcut I just found" for something I've been using at least daily for years?

Normally I don't say this, but maybe Slashdot really is starting to go downhill...

Re:Seriously?

[vlueboy]

OK, I can see this becoming a filler article on some crappy "tech" website (coughcoughgizmodocough). But Slashdot? Seriously?

And it's not even written for our audience.

To be fair, I recently asked someone about what forum someone could point me to where slashdotters could freely talk about encryption. We can only talk about something for about 2 days here, and then container story gets buried no matter how important the topic. When the Journal system debutted here it sort of provided that, but besides technolust there was very little eyeball traffic.
Your post made me realize that what /. is missing is a forums.slashdot.org. Imagine a PHP-like board where we can post freely and start our own new topics or questions without needing to mind how long ago something was added. Stuff like reddit comes to mind, but it's too mainstream and joke-ish. Others have stringent rules where everything must be on topic (stackexchange et all) and moderation is too in your face, causing competition (down to editing, moving and closing other people's threads) / there's no real community, unless you count meta.

Netscape called...

[waddgodd]

ctl-shift-t has been a staple of all tabbed browsers since quite literally they came out. While this IS "stuff that matters", it's hardly news for many nerds

The greatest shortcut is Ctlr-Alt-Delete

[mykepredko]

It should have been used on the computer before submitting this article.

Disappointing,

myke

This gibberish gave me a fucking headache.

[Type44Q]

This gibberish gave me a fucking headache. Enough said.

uh, it's right there

[50000BTU_barbecue]

in the menus. Hey, does pressing Windows + X blow your mind too? (on a laptop at least).

Safari?

[singingjim1]

Nope. My Macbook Pro just clicks at me pointlessly with this "miracle" shortcut. Doesn't work with Safari.

And next week... The Greatest Keyboard Key Ever!

[MOSFET Explosion]

Wow with the backspace key I can remove my mistakes without having to put whiteout all over my monitor!

Re:New Slashdot feature: RTFM Sunday!

[EvanED]

There really should be an easily-identifiable way in Firefox to restore a closed tab without using a keyboard

Firefox Menu -> History -> Recently Closed Tabs not "without a keyboard" enough for you? :-)

I thought /. stories were moderated

[wisnoskij]

But apparently any idiot with a keyboard can get on the front page.

Re:There's a magic new command you can use...

[TooTechy]

For those that don't get it. Please don't actually try it at home!

Command-Shift-T = Reopen Closed Tab

[James McGuigan]

The one line summary of this article is: Command-Shift-T (or Ctrl-Shift-T) = Reopen Closed Tab (in some browsers)

Doesn't fix the real problem.

[cnaumann]

I cannot count the number of times that I have been filling out a form on a web page and hit the backspace to edit only to discover that I had lost focus on the form and had the tab slammed shut and all information on the form lost. This is a problem on EVERY version on EVERY browser that I have ever used. Unfortunately this little shortcut does not fix that issue. I don't find backspace to be a useful navigation tool. I want to be able to turn it off or at least have a way to recover the information.

Re:Doesn't fix the real problem.

[silver]

I cannot count the number of times that I have been filling out a form on a web page and hit the backspace to edit only to discover that I had lost focus on the form and had the tab slammed shut and all information on the form lost.

To solve that problem, you need the Lazarus Form Recovery addon
http://getlazarus.com/download

Thank you

[nettxzl]

Well, it was news to me, and something I've been wishing for, for a long time, and didn't know how to do. So, I appreciate it.

Re:New Slashdot feature: RTFM Sunday!

[strength_of_10_men]

There is. Right click on any tab->Undo Close Tab. It's similar in Chrome.

Re:New Slashdot feature: RTFM Sunday!

[SeaFox]

Recently Closed Tabs not "without a keyboard" enough for you?

Hold on... I think we've hit on something patentable.

Ignore other commenters, this was very useful

[Tyr07]

I didn't know about this! I've been the IT career for most of my career life!

I tried it today and it blew my mind! I first went around showing all my co-workers this. They were super amazed and thought I was extra smart!
They told my manager how incredibly smart I am and I gained +1 to salary! Thank you Slashdot!

Now all the cute blondes at work worship me to! Knowing this has made me more attractive and successful, and gets me laid!

Please post more articles like this, a few more and I will be the CEO of a major corporation by being the super office hero guy.

Re:Ignore other commenters, this was very useful

[whoever57]

Now all the cute blondes at work worship me to!

It's such a shame that the set of "cute blondes at work" is an empty set!

Re:And next week... The Greatest Keyboard Key Ever

[steelfood]

It's like, a sort of Ctrl-Z for the dcument.

Luckily,

[tpstigers]

I was born knowing every keyboard shortcut ever in use, so I can rationalize being a snarky dick about this.

noobs of the 'net

[l3v1]

"Melia Robinson's trick [described for Chrome] works in Firefox and Internet Explorer, too"

I think I'll make a feature request for the next Firefox, to rename the Recently Closed Tabs menu to Melia Robinson's Trick Parlor.

Some people are just idiots. And the Sun is shining again today.

Middle click can do the same on Firefox

[anss123]

Firefox has a IMO more useful shortcut: Middle click with the mouse over the area right next to the rightmost tab will open the last closed tab.

Since I close tabs using the mouse I find it more convenient than reaching for the keyboard.

You can also close tabs with middle click, which is how I discovered the feature.

Re: Middle click can do the same on Firefox

[instagib]

Wait a minute. You are saying you have an "area right next to the rightmost tab"? How do you do that?

*puzzled*

[Tom]

Uh... yes?

I've been using this daily for so long I don't remember when it was added to Firefox.

But, who are you and what did you do to slashdot, the news for nerds site. You know, people who know how to use Google. People who don't look a piece of software and think the main menu is all there is to it. People who *gasp* might think about looking up keyboard shortcuts to a program they use every day just because.

And most importantly: Are we going to run individual articles for one keyboard shortcut from now on? Seriously, at least do what every other online magazine does when it doesn't have a good story for the day and lump 10 or so of them together into an article.

I think this is a personal low-point in the history of /.

So wrong

[Livius]

The greatest keyboard shortcut ever is:

control-F1 : minimize Ribbon.

Not merely convenient, but prevents a host of mental health disorders!