Wow, I’ve been using ctrl-Z (or apple-Z) in every app since my first office computer in 1993. Amazing what one takes for granted that is a novelty to others!
Other posters touched on this, but were you using Cmd+Z?
You touch on it in the middle, there, but these shortcuts are part of the program, not Windows. They’re consistent, because that’s in the developers’ best interests, but they’re not built in to the OS. Otherwise, every program would have them, rather than just most. Also, consider this series of activities:
- Log in to Windows.
- Start Word.
- Start Excel.
- Format a cell.
- Switch to Word, and type a sentence
- Switch back to Excel, and press Ctrl +Z.
What happens? Does it undo the application switch? It should, since that was the last action you took. Does it undo the sentence you typed? Or does it undo the cell formatting, the last action in that application?
Quick tip, let’s say you’re on linux and you were composing a post about rutabagas and there’s a server error that caused you to lose your post. All you have to do to find the text is go: for pid in ps aux | grep chrome | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}'; do gcore -o /tmp/gcore_tmp_$pid $pid; strings /tmp/gcore_tmp_$pid | grep rutabaga; rm /tmp/gcore_tmp_$pid; end
Easy peasy.
I started writing a perl one-liner to do it with fewer system calls, but then I realized that was playing your game. =P
Me too.
If you try to Ctrl-Z and miss and hit just “Z,” then you’re screwed, and can only undo blank vs. z. I prefer Lazarus for Firefox. There may be equivalents for other browsers, Chrome and Safari I think. It keeps several undo steps, and is great for accidental deletions or cat-on-keyboard errors.
I’ve known about Ctrl-z ever since I’ve been using browser-based internet, probably 16 years or so now.
I’ve met people who still haven’t figure out that F1 is Help.
Also that Ctrl-C is copy and Ctrl-V is paste. You don’t need to retype everything. I’ll leave Ctrl-X for advanced users.
I never use ctrl+z. I have always preferred to use alt+backspace.
By the way, whenever I hire someone, one of the first things I do is teach them to use the ctrl- commands with their left hand and require they use it. Invariably they were using right-click to do all that shit. They get used to it in a few days and it speeds them up no end.