Who Invented The Shortcut Ctrl+W?
October 1st, 2009 by Juuso
Seriously.
I’m closing tabs by pressing Ctrl+W.
Ctrl+freaking+W.
Whose idea was that?
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I think it was always a windows shortcut to close child windows in apps with multiple document windows..
more stuff : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_keyboard_shortcuts
I knew one could blame Microsoft. One always can.
In Mac OS, cmd-w has been the standard close window command for ~25 years.
I see.
We’ve come quite a long journey from Cmd+w to touch screens.
Actually, thank you, I didn’t know that. I always use the middle mouse key.
However, what’s so bad about i? It’s just another random short key.
Somehow my brain does not understand it. The same way it won’t understand Alt+Tab.
Maybe it was invented to give exercise to fingers.
Oh well. In Blender 3D Ctrl-W is the shortcut to save your file. Now I keep closing windows in other apps when I try to save my work… :)
Actually Microsoft uses Ctrl-F4 to close child windows, even in Visual Studio 2008 C++ still. All professional software uses Ctrl-W to close windows, like NotePad++, IBM Lotus Notes, etc…
Yep, cmd-w has been closing windows on Macs since the ’80s. Whether it existed at Xerox PARC is another question.
Ctrl+S for save, that I can handle… but Ctrl+W to do ten different things… sigh.
Well, look at it this way: as a hardcore FPS gamer, your fingers go automatically over the WASD keys anyway when you use a keyboard, no matter in which business application you might be :)
And Ctrl/Shift/Alt are also ready for crouch, run, prone.
I just tested this and it closed your blog. Maybe that’s a sign… ;-p
And here you are again: maybe *that’s* a sign ;)
FYI: CTRL+SHIFT+T will reopen a tab in newer versions of Firefox.
d: okay. who the hell invented that?
In emacs, Ctrl-w is “cut”. Emacs has sort of ruined me… I keep doing Ctrl-s to try to search and end up saving.
@Juuso: CTRL + T opens a new tab so, adding the SHIFT modifier in there to change open into reopen sort of makes sense. Sort of. In some parallel reality or something maybe.
@Ryan: In the nano text editor CTRL + W is the search (Where is) function.
Ctrl+Q is quit, which makes sense. Q for quit. Then they wanted to close tabs, so they picked the letter next to Q, so W.
re-reading all the comments.
I’m now absolutely certain that all this makes no sense.. :)
Dude, what are you whinging about? Turn them off if you don’t like them. And if you can’t turn them off, buy a Mac, which does let you turn any or all keyboard shortcuts off.