Highlighting Text
21st January 2004 · Last updated: 5th October 2016
Today I discovered this tip for Mozilla users: double-click on the first letter of a word and it highlights the word, plus the one before it.
Also, on Simon Willison's Weblog I read in a series of comments on a post about Macs how you can use CTRL + SHIFT plus the arrow keys to highlight words. The more you use the arrow keys, the more words are highlighted. In Windows, just the left and right arrows work, but on a Mac you get more control:
Macs have a whole slew of in-line selection/movement tricks. Your "ctrl+shift+arrow" is now "opt+shift+arrow". While holding option, right or left jumps by word, and up or down jumps by paragraph. While holding command, right or left jumps to beginning or end of line, up or down jumps to beginning or end of the document. Shift can be added to any of the above commands to select while moving.
Windows has similar tricks but not as many. Its main advantage over the Mac as sold has to be the extra mouse buttons. (It's worth plugging a Windows mouse into a Mac to get these.) I've set my mouse wheel button to act like a double-click. Great for opening folders and uploading files in a hurry. Plus using the wheel to scroll up and down documents and web pages is something I couldn't live without.
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