Bluetooth keyboard shortcuts 14
by Adam Marks Fri, 23 Sep 2011 10:00 am EDT
Of all the features of the official (or any other) Bluetooth keyboard, the dedicated arrow keys to move the cursor in a text field has got to be one of the best enhancements to your typing experience on the TouchPad. However, just as on your PC's keyboard, you can also use the Shift and Control keys to further improve you typing.
- If you hold down the Shift key and then press the arrows, this will allow you to highlight text one character at a time. This can be a lot easier than relying on the press-and-hold method of selecting text on the TouchPad.
- If you hold down the Control key and then press the arrows, this will allow to you move the cursor one word at a time, instead of one character at a time.
- You can also use both Shift and Control together to highlight entire words at a time
- There is one quirk/bug of the TouchPad that can cause some frustration when using the Shift or Control keys. If you have more than one full page of text, trying to move the cursor or highlight text will cause the screen to scroll back up to the top. There is nothing you can do about this
One other shortcut that works on a Bluetooth keyboard is the same Shift+Backspace combination that works on the virtual keyboard to delete entire words at a time.
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14 Comments
Using ctrl-arrows seems to have other strange effects in some apps like Typewriter Beta (it is a beta after all). I use these combos by instinct but it hasn't always worked out....
I can't believe arrow keys don't flip between cards after you press the card button on the keyboard, or that the card button doesn't zoom you back in on a second press. Half Baked.
Does anyone know how to just scroll using the keyboard on the Touchpad? I can almost do everything - except scroll.
You forgot international characters, I don't have the HP BT keyboard, but I can get accented characters with an USB keyboard
yeah kind of disappointed that the arrow keys can't move cards and scroll on pages up and down .Like when browsing the web your sitting using the keyboard and then you have to reach over and flick the screen to scroll. More features would be cool like zooming in by holding ctrl+up arrow to zoom in and ctrl+down arrow to zoom out. Or simple shortcuts that everyone knows with the ctrl on a regular pc like ctrl+a/c/v/e/r/w/z/n/o/s/x/l...
I just don't want to think of it as just for creating documents.
for some reason I think that the HP Bluetooth keyboard IS capable of all those shortcuts and functions, but the HP TouchPad wasn't programmed to understand or respond to them. Maybe someone should ask HP to add those great options into the next TouchPad update. Someone should contact the webOS software developers. Or I think I might just give them a call/ live chat.
Thanks for the article and tips.. although the real use for a keyboard is editing and composition. Unfortunately without any decent keyboard shortcuts like copy, paste and so on its pretty useless for any speed editing. in addition to switch between cards/screens
Out of interest I have a small bounty (beer money , charitable donation) to get this patched although no one so far has taken the challenge:D
Forum Link: Bounty for Keyboard shortcuts - copy paste etc
Does anyone have experience with the german QWERTZ layout of the HP Touchpad wireless keyboard? In my opinion, the QWERTZ layout of the keyboard does not correspond with the hp touchpad (e.g. key "Z" and "Y" are exchanged). Hopefully this is corrected in a future update of the hp touchpad webOS software.
how do you make the card, in card view, come back to full screen using the keyboard?
tap the card on the screen! sadly, no keyboard shortcut for that
I just got a keyboard and was disappointed that I couldn't use the arrow keys to navigate cells in a Quickoffice spreadsheet. Bummer.
I know, this is a bumb....
No shortcuts for browsing? (ALT-right or CMD-] type stuff?) The media keys and brightness are cute, but I wonder if someone could come up with a way that they could be assigned to random stuff (Cut, Paste, start an app, etc). That would be way more handy to me. Yes, and a way to get back from the card view w/o reaching for the screen would rock!
What's the deal with no tab? I take notes in class with my tp and keyboard and it would be really useful if I could use the tab function to organize my notes.