The shortcuts are detailed here in full and can help you make better and faster use of Hotmail.

There are some very useful shortcuts here including Ctrl-Enter to send an email, L to flag a message and F followed by I to return to the inbox.  These shortcuts can make life for Hotmail users far simpler but the question has to be asked why it’s taken Microsoft so long to publish the list?

These examples can be modified or deleted if they are not offering what the user is looking for. One of the strengths of Clavier+ is the intuitive interface.

Selecting one of the existing shortcuts activates most icons in the interface. It is then possible to delete those shortcuts with a click on the red X button or to edit them withe a click on the pencil icon.

The plus button is used to create new keyboard shortcuts. Clavier+ displays a list of available shortcut types from launching programs and websites to pasting text into text forms. To make the configuration easier all start menu entries, favorites and special characters are displayed in the menu along with the general shortcut creation options. Helpful to quickly select a program or website.

The general choices are to open a folder, write text, launch a website or program. Part of the configuration is handled right after selecting the desired option (like selecting the shortcut key to launch the action) while some are configured in the main program interface.

A new shortcut to launch a program will for instance only display a menu to select the keyboard shortcut and activation conditions while the remaining parameters are all added in the main interface of the program.

Activation conditions offer an interesting twist. The keyboard shortcut will only launch the configured action if the Caps Lock, Num Lock or Scroll Lock conditions are matched.

The option to write text is probably the most interesting option for most users. This can be used to paste text into text forms, not that spectacular. More interesting is the ability to add commands to the text, here are some examples:

• Paste the clipboard as raw text, without formatting – warning: changes the contents of the clipboard: [[notepad.exe]][][Ctrl+V][Ctrl+A][Ctrl+X][Alt+F4][N][][Ctrl+V]
• Scroll the active program 3 lines downward: [{MouseWheel,3}]
• Launch notepad and the calculator: [[notepad.exe]][[calc.exe]]

Clavier+ offers options to simulate the computer mouse, control the volume and media players and perform complex operations as exemplified above. The developer has created a help document that explains most of the features of the software program.

Clavier+ needs to be running in the background to keep the keyboard shortcuts active. The program is compatible with Windows 7 and previous Microsoft operating systems. Both 32-bit and 64-bit editions are provided by the developer.

One of the biggest strengths of the application is the wide variety of possible actions that can be defined. It ranges from running applications, entering text, manipulating windows, changing system settings like the volume of the system. Hoekey supports multimedia keyboard keys and can control media playback on the computer system as well.

Probably the most amazing factor of this keyboard shortcuts program is its low resource usage. Once everything has been configured the application runs quietly in the background. It uses 200 Kilobytes of computer memory while running and 600 Kilobytes of virtual memory. That’s nothing compared to most other applications that allow the manipulation of keyboard shortcuts on the Windows operating system.

The Thunderbird extension adds ten keyboard shortcuts to the Thunderbird email client which can be used to archive email messages. The functions are mapped to [CTRL 0..9] which proves to be difficulty as Thunderbird uses [CTRL 1] and [CTRL 2] for different functions making those two keyboard shortcuts not working initially.

The user can basically map a folder of his mailbox to one of the keyboard shortcuts. This essentially means that any selected mail would be moved to that folder upon pressing the keyboard shortcut. The shortcut [CTRL 0] has been reserved to work with mail filters which can also be defined in the extension. Pressing that shortcut while working in Thunderbird will apply all configured filters to the selected messages.

This proves to be a very effective method of moving mails quickly to designated folders in Thunderbird. It is possible to correct the non-working [CTRL 1] and [CTRL 2] keys by installing the excellent Keyconfig add-on for Thunderbird. Keyconfig will display all keyboard shortcuts in the email client and provide the means to change them. It can be used to either change the keyboard shortcuts of the extension or to change the original keyboard shortcuts to something else so that all keys can be used when working with the extension.