this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
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Obscure button tier list (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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If you have "Help" instead of "Ins", replace it with Overgod-tier. Keep pressing it, it will come.

OC, feel free to share.

EDIT; Home is now G-od tier. I didn't know it would go to the beginning of a line, I always used macros "lol".

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago (7 children)

I use all of these keys except scroll lock. Mainly because there aren't any software vendors that support the function anymore, and nobody has had the innovation to use it for anything new.

I use insert regularly, delete all the time. Home and end, pretty much daily.... Print screen sometimes (though I usually use a screen snippet tool instead), and pause is used in some keyboard shortcuts in Windows that are very helpful.

Idk why we're picking on insert and pause when F12 is right there. Seriously, does anyone use any F keys beyond F5? If you do, is your scope then limited to F1/F2/F5? Maybe add alt+F4?

All the F keys do stuff. But in my experience, 90+ % of the time nobody knows what those things are. One of my personal favorites is F2 which is generally used as a shortcut to "rename". It's very helpful. Honorable mention to F5 for all the reasons you would expect.

Meanwhile, there's people like OP throwing shade at our good friend "home".... What are you saying OP? Are you to good for your home?

[–] mrunicornman 8 points 10 months ago (3 children)

F9-F12 are useful when you're debugging code in Visual Studio.

I sometimes use F6 to jump to my browser's address bar.

Can't imagine any uses for F7 or F8 though. And all the times I've opened a help screen with F1 have been on accident.

My main gripe with function keys on laptops is they're tiny and easy to mix up, especially since they have large brightness, volume, etc. icons on them while the function key number is a tiny label that's barely visible.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

FYI, you can also use CTRL+L instead of F6 in Most Browsers, easier to reach than F6

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Yes, but removing the focus from the address bar is only doable through F6 in Firefox. Whyyyy can't I do it through ESC??

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

No idea, but I have never felt the need to do that. Maybe CTRL TAB, and CTRL SHIFT TAB?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Nope, it returns to the original tab with the focus still in the URL bar. 😓

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

ESC works for me

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Which platform? The focus is kept on MacOS for me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Linux

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Not working for me on my Manjaro install either.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Wayland?

[–] cmac 3 points 10 months ago

If you're using Visual Studio F7 builds the solution.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

A lot of games and emulators use them for quick save and quick load functions.

[–] Heavybell 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I built myself a foot pedal that presses F14. It's super useful as a global hotkey 'cause nothing else uses it. :P

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This is good. I've been looking for a way to assign a foot pedal as a global mute toggle. This might be a good first step. I like it.

Thanks for the idea.

[–] Heavybell 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I bought an existing foot pedal off aliexpress. It came with a little dangling wire, supposedly meant to be hooked up to a piece of industrial equipment. Opened it up, removed the existing wire, soldered a wire to a suitable arduino dev board and hot glued it inside. If you want I can dig up the exact parts I used and even the code. But I also suspect maybe you want to figure it out yourself?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Some bits I can certainly figure out. The Arduino code is the part I'll be very bad at; so if you can get that without too much trouble, I would appreciate it.

I'm sure I'll use a different pedal than what you did, since I don't know if the supply availability will be the same, but honestly, it's just a fancy switch designed to be used by a foot, so I'm sure it's nothing difficult.

If it's too difficult to find the code, no worries, I'm sure there's plenty of examples around the internet of similar types of code for different purposes (like a shortcut keyboard or something). I'm certain that we're not the first and certainly not the last to want something similar in function.

[–] Heavybell 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Here's the code I wrote:

#include "Keyboard.h"

const char FUNCTION_F14 = 0xF1;
int down = 0;

void setup() {
  // make pin 2 an input and turn on the
  // pullup resistor so it goes high unless
  // connected to ground:
  pinMode(2, INPUT_PULLUP);
  // initialize control over the keyboard:
  Keyboard.begin();
}

void loop() {
  int nowDown = digitalRead(2) == LOW;

  if (down != nowDown) {
    down = nowDown;

    if (down) {
      Keyboard.press(FUNCTION_F14);
    } else {
      Keyboard.release(FUNCTION_F14);
    }
  }
}

Note that the #include was meant to use angle brackets, but Lemmy ate them. If this doesn't work, change it back to angle brackets around the Keyboard.h instead of quotes.

Also, the parts I used:

I wired it up like in the photo, and just laid it on a bed of hot glue so the USB port sticks out the hole. I had intended to get a mini USB extension cable inside the pedal, but the one I ordered turned up defective, and this worked out just fine.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Excellent. Thanks for digging this up.

I'm just wondering what you used to bind F14 to do something on your PC? Some companion application?

[–] Heavybell 2 points 10 months ago

Discord push-to-talk. :P

[–] Heavybell 2 points 10 months ago

I just noticed lemmy didn't like the #include statement because it uses angle brackets. I tried to update it but it doesn't look right, so I'm going to change it to quotes which should work the same, I believe. I'm not a C expert, I usually code in C#.

[–] Gumbyyy 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

F12 opens dev tools in most browsers, so I use that one all the time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Good one. I forget about this one unless I need it, which isn't very often...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm pretty certain Excel supports scroll lock. It lets you scroll the sheet with the arrow keys instead of moving from cell to cell (also last time I tried you could go to the ribbon menu with the slash key, like in the good ol' Lotus 123 days). Wouldn't be surprised if it also works in other spreadsheet programs.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

These are good tips. I wish I know this when I was in college. I may have been able to get more than the over 100% I got in the excel unit.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

IT here. I use the F keys any time I have to change bios or bootloader settings, which is about once a month. Worst part is that no manufacturer uses the same F keys for getting into the bios/boot settings, and no bootloader either, windows and Dell change theirs over time. One Generation it's F6 to get into the bios, the next it's F8, and then a generation later it's Del. Sometimes it's F2 and F10 or F11 and F12; and almost never F3, F4, F7.

On a more positive note, Autodesk uses the F keys as hotkeys to toggle settings quickly, which is nice when I put on my drafter hat. I imagine a lot of technical software has figured this out.

I remember using F2 quite often when I was younger, but I can't remember why. I think it might have been New Game in a lot of the Windows built-in games?

That all being said... I get that these keys were originally intended for software to assign to whatever software-specific functions, as a kind of "Function keys," but we've evolved since then, and I much prefer the laptop scheme of having an extra key on the bottom row that modifies all other keys as a kind of "Function key" instead of 12 that don't do anything specific. Of the uses listed above, BIOSes/bootloaders don't have to use F keys instead of regular ones--except possibly standards requiring the other keys to always output specific characters even when the software can't use it, but if that's the case I'd love to see the devs all agree upon which keys open bios settings and which accesses the boot order menu.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I'm also IT, hello brother.

I use the F keys all the time. I would argue that they were, and still are, function keys. They're a built in set of hotkeys to functions. F1 was, and often still is, the hotkey for help. Most people simply default to the menu, about, help or whatever. Using their mouse instead of the keyboard. I find most help dialogs in Windows applications to be fairly useless. They're often populated with incomplete and/or out of date information.

F2 in operating systems is most often used for rename, in my experience. F4, specifically alt+F4 is close, F5 for refresh, F6 varies; the one I know is for the address bar in Chrome. Also in Chrome, F7 is caret browsing, and F12 for developer tools or diagnostics. The keys are not universal and change from app to app, as they should.

IMO F-keys are unsung heros of advanced users, where the majority don't even know what they are there for.

I will agree and commiserate about bios being some selection of F2/F6/F8/F11/F12/delete. Often on a system I have not used in a while, I'll just bang every one of those keys in an effort to get to some menu that will allow me to enter the BIOS/UEFI. It often works, other times I'm just staring at the screen until it tells me what to press, or frantically googling it while the system is shutting down, trying to find the right key before it gets to the BIOS loading screen.

Good luck out there brother.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Blender uses F11 to view render, F12 to render, and F9 to adjust last operation. Shift+F1 through F12 switches through different editors.

And yes of course noone knows that, there's not a single person in the world who knows all Blender shortcuts. More importantly though most F keys are unassigned which means you can bind something to it without unbinding something you never heard about.