20 thoughts on “Who Invented The Shortcut Ctrl+W?”

1. Laurence Nov 24, 2009 at 9:27 am

   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.

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2. Juuso Post authorOct 20, 2009 at 8:45 am

   re-reading all the comments.

   I’m now absolutely certain that all this makes no sense.. :)

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3. MD Oct 19, 2009 at 10:07 pm

   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.

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4. d Oct 6, 2009 at 5:06 am

   @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.

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5. Ryan Fox Oct 3, 2009 at 5:39 am

   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.

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6. Juuso Post authorOct 2, 2009 at 4:49 pm

   d: okay. who the hell invented that?

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7. d Oct 2, 2009 at 3:59 pm

   FYI: CTRL+SHIFT+T will reopen a tab in newer versions of Firefox.

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8. Juuso Post authorOct 2, 2009 at 7:38 am

   And here you are again: maybe *that’s* a sign ;)

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9. Jake Birkett Oct 2, 2009 at 12:22 am

   I just tested this and it closed your blog. Maybe that’s a sign… ;-p

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10. Lumooja Oct 1, 2009 at 7:51 pm

    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.

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11. Juuso Post authorOct 1, 2009 at 6:05 pm

    Ctrl+S for save, that I can handle… but Ctrl+W to do ten different things… sigh.

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12. Russell Oct 1, 2009 at 4:27 pm

    Yep, cmd-w has been closing windows on Macs since the ’80s. Whether it existed at Xerox PARC is another question.

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13. Lumooja Oct 1, 2009 at 4:04 pm

    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…

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14. Lassi Oct 1, 2009 at 2:19 pm

    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… :)

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15. Juuso Post authorOct 1, 2009 at 1:55 pm

    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.

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16. Thomas D. Oct 1, 2009 at 1:15 pm

    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.

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17. Juuso Post authorOct 1, 2009 at 9:04 am

    I see.

    We’ve come quite a long journey from Cmd+w to touch screens.

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18. Jeffrey Rosen Oct 1, 2009 at 9:00 am

    In Mac OS, cmd-w has been the standard close window command for ~25 years.

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19. Juuso Post authorOct 1, 2009 at 7:59 am

    I knew one could blame Microsoft. One always can.

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20. yadu Oct 1, 2009 at 7:32 am

    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

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