When I'm composing a long post here, I use Word and make use of the office clipboard for my italics, bold, and

In reply to:

---

quotes

---

by simply pasting them in as needed instead of retyping the code all the time.

Do any of you Windows experts know a way that I can just create shortcuts that I can use without being in the MS Office environment?

In my video editing and Photoshop work I have created many keyboard shortcuts for commonly used actions that save me an awful lot of time. Is there something within Windows that works system wide…at least as far as pasting common text commands? I'm hoping I can dot an alt+i for example to give me the italics "directions" necessary… if that makes sense!

If you have one of those horrid Microsoft "ergonomic" keyboards they used to be able to program macros into the keyboard itself, ie your PC just saw more keystrokes coming in the keyboard connector.

Hey! You shush, I <3 my Ergonomic keyboards, and they're not "old", they have models that are just a year old *holds up his black and silver wireless model*, bite me

Anyways, you're not really looking for a windows shortcut, but more of a keyboard shortcut. If you're content with word, I can help you setup macro's that will type [ B ] and [ /B ] and stuff.

- D

Hi Daph:
Thanks for the offer, but I'm "OK" in Word... I just use the office clipboard. It's when I'm typing short posts within this "reply" window in the forum that I wish I could just hit ALT+ something for bold, italics or quotes.

It seems like a pretty basic function and I really would have thought that there was some sort of option for people that frequently use the same awkward series of keystrokes in their work or something....

I guess I've just started relying on them so often in Adobe products that I want to start using them globally...!

For a GOOD programmable keyboard, try Cherry Keyboards, when I migrated from Pinnacle's Deko character generators to Inscriber's Inca Studio CG suite, I really missed the custom Deko control surface with extra keys for common tasks - CG operators shouldn't have to touch a mouse or other pointing device except to launch the application in the first place. And in a production environment the difference between hitting the "Clear Program" key and finding CTRL-F1 is huge.

Inscriber suggests and directly supports Cherry products, though I've never used one.

Bren R.

I poked around for some Windows freeware that can do this and found AllChars. It's main purpose is to give quick shortcuts to foreign characters, but it also comes with a nice macro feature. You set up a sequence of characters (your shortcut) and tell the program what to translate it to. The program waits for you to press and release the macro key ("/" by default) and then translates your shortcut into the full text for you.

I changed the default macro key to "[", since that's the key I'd be using anyway. Then I set my shortcuts as follows:

u = [ url= ][ /url ]
b = [ b ][ /b ]
i = [ i ][ /i ]
q = [ quote ][ /quote ]

So all I have to type to get the codes is [ plus the first letter of the UBBCode I want.

I poked around for some Windows freeware that can do this and found AllChars. It's main purpose is to give quick shortcuts to foreign characters, but it also comes with a nice macro feature. You set up a sequence of characters (your shortcut) and tell the program what to translate it to. The program waits for you to press and release the macro key ("/" by default) and then translates your shortcut into the full text for you.

I changed the default macro key to "[", since that's the key I'd be using anyway. Then I set my shortcuts as follows:

u = [ url= ][ /url ]
b = [ b ][ /b ]
i = [ i ][ /i ]
q = [ quote ][ /quote ]

So all I have to type to get the codes is "[" plus the first letter of the UBBCode I want. Of course, I still have to move the cursor back between the brackets, but it still saves a little time.

the macro also makes it more convenient to double post too. lol

LOL:) Oops! I don't think the macro did it.