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Who Invented The Shortcut Ctrl+W?

Seriously.

I’m closing tabs by pressing Ctrl+W.

Ctrl+freaking+W.

Whose idea was that?

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20 Responses to “Who Invented The Shortcut Ctrl+W?”


  1. yadu

    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

  2. Juuso

    I knew one could blame Microsoft. One always can.

  3. Jeffrey Rosen

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

  4. Juuso

    I see.

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

  5. Thomas D.

    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.

  6. Juuso

    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.

  7. Lassi

    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… :)

  8. Lumooja

    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…

  9. Russell

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

  10. Juuso

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

  11. Lumooja

    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.

  12. Jake Birkett

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

  13. Juuso

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

  14. d

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

  15. Juuso

    d: okay. who the hell invented that?

  16. Ryan Fox

    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.

  17. d

    @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.

  18. MD

    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.

  19. Juuso

    re-reading all the comments.

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

  20. Laurence

    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.