Use Netscape Messenger More Efficiently with Shortcuts
You'll be amazed how easy and fast it is to handle (almost) all your email needs with the keyboard. Find out how to use Netscape Messenger with shortcuts.
"Whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster."
Edgar A. Poe
The Raven
Cheese
What do you usually write your messages with? (Those who use speech recognition technology over-qualify here.) And.. what do you use your email client, Netscape Messenger, with?
But why take your fingers from the keyboard every so often just to have them come back only seconds later? These seconds sum up over a lifetime. I believe we could do some magical math and come up with an estimation that a college student at the MIT spends more time wishy-washing between mousepad and keypad than kissing her boyfriend; or something like that.
And then everybody can use the mouse.
Menus?
What's the alternative? The menu can be traveled through with the mouse pointer, but it can be with the keyboard, too.
Apart from some nostalgic charm this has little to offer I'd say; yes, it can be a challenge, and if you like challenges...
But still those arrow keys are far, far away from the keys we "normally" use. Is there no way to use `L' and `K' for mail handling?
Keyboard Shortcuts!
There is, of course. It's not only even more nostalgic than the menus it is also better. There is no faster way (not yet at least) to interact with your computer when dealing with text than by means of the keyboard.
Note that all shortcuts in this article refer to the Windows version of Communicator. On other platforms, the shortcuts will be basically similar — but different. For example, on Unix you'll use Alt- instead of Ctrl-.
A Short-cut Email Session
Checking Mail
Let us begin with launching Netscape Messenger. Having done that, you can give your mouse some cheese so it doesn't get bored.
First, we want to see if we have new mail. In Messenger's main window we type CTRL-T; this means to hold down the key labeled "Ctrl" while pressing "t". Netscape Messenger now checks our email account for new mail.
Browsing and Deleting
This message is not particularly interesting. Let's advance to the next one by pressing Shift-N. Since this one is even less interesting (c'est la vie...) let us have another look at the one we looked at before, the previous one in the list. We can do that with the shortcut Shift-P.
Another very handy combination takes us to the next unread email: N. To go the nearest unread mail "up" in the list, we can use P. If there is no more unread message in the current folder, but other folders (mail or news) still contain new mail, both of these commands ask whether we want to go the next or previous respectively folder with unread messages. Shift-N and Shift-P will not do this for us.
Messenger, the newsreader, has quite powerful threading capabilities. These can be very useful for reading and following mailing lists, too. To advance to the next unread thread, we can hit T.
Since there is little point in keeping uninteresting message, let's delete them. To do so via the keyboard, we must use Del, unfortunately. It's just to easy to hit Insert or Home or End accidentally (for me it is).
Creating Messages
To create a brand new email message we type Ctrl-M (Ctrl-N opens a new Navigator browser window).
There are two ways to reply to a message: to reply only to the person who sent the message we use Ctrl-R. If we want our reply to go to both the sender and all recipients of the original message we can type what looks like a Moloch, but is easy to handle: Ctrl-Shift-R.
In the message window we can navigate between the To: and Subject: header fields and the message body with Tab and Shift-Tab (going "backwards").
To check the spelling of our message, we use Ctrl-K. Once the spelling is correct, we can send the message using Ctrl-Enter. This will send the message immediately. Unfortunately, no key to put the message in the outbox and send it later is available. This has to be done via the menu.
Shortcut Key Tables
These were just some of the shortcuts available in Netscape Messenger. Below you find some more complete lists.
