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  #1  
Old July 1st 18, 08:20 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Nil[_5_]
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Is there any key combination that does NOT involve the Windows Key
that will minimize all windows and reveal the desktop? Win+D would be
the best solution of course, unless like me your keyboard does not have
a Win key.
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  #2  
Old July 1st 18, 08:36 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Rene Lamontagne
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On 07/01/2018 2:20 PM, Nil wrote:
Is there any key combination that does NOT involve the Windows Key
that will minimize all windows and reveal the desktop? Win+D would be
the best solution of course, unless like me your keyboard does not have
a Win key.


not keyboard, but there is a taskbar setting to do this by dragging the
mouse cursor down to the extreme lower right corner.

Rene

  #3  
Old July 1st 18, 09:37 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
VanguardLH[_2_]
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Nil wrote:

Is there any key combination that does NOT involve the Windows Key
that will minimize all windows and reveal the desktop? Win+D would be
the best solution of course, unless like me your keyboard does not have
a Win key.


If you use an Aero theme, there should be a "handle" at the right end of
the Windows taskbar that you can either hover over to momentarily see
the desktop (unless you disabled Aero Peek) or click on to toggle
between the desktop and app windows.

Alternatively, right-click on an unused spot on the Windows taskbar and
select "Show the desktop". To toggle back, right-click again on the
Windows taskbar and select "Show open windows".
  #4  
Old July 1st 18, 10:31 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Nil[_5_]
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On 01 Jul 2018, VanguardLH wrote in
alt.windows7.general:

If you use an Aero theme, there should be a "handle" at the right
end of the Windows taskbar that you can either hover over to
momentarily see the desktop (unless you disabled Aero Peek) or
click on to toggle between the desktop and app windows.

Alternatively, right-click on an unused spot on the Windows
taskbar and select "Show the desktop". To toggle back,
right-click again on the Windows taskbar and select "Show open
windows".


Yeah, I know about the little button, but I want to do it without
moving from keyboard to mouse. Also, the button is inconveniently
small. I didn't know about the right-click taskbar thing, though. It's
not what I'm looking for, but it's maybe better than the button.
Thanks.
  #5  
Old July 1st 18, 10:37 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Nil[_5_]
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On 01 Jul 2018, Rene Lamontagne wrote in
alt.windows7.general:

not keyboard, but there is a taskbar setting to do this by
dragging the mouse cursor down to the extreme lower right corner.


I knew about the little button, but you made me realize I was wasting
effort trying to carefully aim at it before clicking. Now I see I can
just cram the cursor into the corner and click. I don't have to be
precise about it. Thanks!

I still want to do it with they keyboard, though, as I could with
Win+D.
  #6  
Old July 2nd 18, 03:27 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
JJ[_11_]
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On Sun, 01 Jul 2018 17:37:00 -0400, Nil wrote:

I still want to do it with they keyboard, though, as I could with
Win+D.


You could use a keyboard mapper software to map e.g. RightCtrl or RightAlt
to a Win key.
  #7  
Old July 2nd 18, 03:45 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
Paul[_32_]
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JJ wrote:
On Sun, 01 Jul 2018 17:37:00 -0400, Nil wrote:
I still want to do it with they keyboard, though, as I could with
Win+D.


You could use a keyboard mapper software to map e.g. RightCtrl or RightAlt
to a Win key.


There's a few more suggestions here.

https://superuser.com/questions/3334...n-old-keyboard

Using something like osk.exe (On Screen Keyboard) isn't
really a pleasant answer. And re-mapping has the problem
of preventing something else from using the function later.
Although I don't remember Scroll Lock doing anything useful,
there might be situations where the LED is lit, you want to
turn it off, and because you remapped Scroll Lock, now
you cannot use it. A piece of tape over the LED will
take care of that :-)

If you were an "electronics hobbyist", you'd make
a keyboard PCB with a regular keyboard controller,
but only the Win key hooked up :-) Most of the
chip wouldn't need to be hooked up (the 7+17
scan wires, you'd only need two of those).

Paul
  #8  
Old July 2nd 18, 04:28 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
Paul[_32_]
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Paul wrote:


If you were an "electronics hobbyist", you'd make
a keyboard PCB with a regular keyboard controller,
but only the Win key hooked up :-) Most of the
chip wouldn't need to be hooked up (the 7+17
scan wires, you'd only need two of those).

Paul


https://techkeys.us/products/onekeyboard

https://techkeys.us/collections/keys

I can't find the cable it doesn't include
on their web page for purchase. The little
accessories add up.

But at least someone made a one-key keyboard.

Paul
  #9  
Old July 2nd 18, 07:01 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
VanguardLH[_2_]
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Nil wrote:

VanguardLH wrote:

If you use an Aero theme, there should be a "handle" at the right
end of the Windows taskbar that you can either hover over to
momentarily see the desktop (unless you disabled Aero Peek) or
click on to toggle between the desktop and app windows.

Alternatively, right-click on an unused spot on the Windows
taskbar and select "Show the desktop". To toggle back,
right-click again on the Windows taskbar and select "Show open
windows".


Yeah, I know about the little button, but I want to do it without
moving from keyboard to mouse. Also, the button is inconveniently
small. I didn't know about the right-click taskbar thing, though. It's
not what I'm looking for, but it's maybe better than the button.
Thanks.


There used to be a QuickLaunch shortcut (back when there was a Windows
taskbar toolbar called Quicklaunch although you can create one by that
or any other name) called Show Desktop. To have it again, load Notepad
and enter the following in it:

[Shell]
Command=2
IconFile=explorer.exe,3
[taskbar]
Command=toggleDesktop

Save the file as "Show Desktop.scf" or by any filename you want but be
sure the extension is scf. Move that shortcut wherever you want, like
into a Windows taskbar toolbar. Alas, all it does is the same as
hitting Winkey+M, and that is to minimize all windows. Clicking it
again does not restore all previously open windows.

New keyboards are cheap, like a couple dollars. Maybe it's time to get
a keyboard with the Windows key (aka Winkey). It's similar to Mac users
that just must have the Cmd key on their keyboards.

How often do you use the CapsLock key? Probably very rarely. Anyone
typing in all caps is considered yelling hence rude. You could remap
the CapsLock key to effect the Winkey+D action of toggling windows.

Maybe this remapper from Microsoft would work:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/down....aspx?id=22339

There are lots of keyboard remap tools. I found one article that has
you do the registry hack to remap the CapsLock key to act like the
Winkey, so you would use CapsLock+D to toggle the windows.

https://superuser.com/questions/3334...n-old-keyboard

You're probably safer using a remapper tool to define the keyboard
layout in the registry. There is the KeyTweak tool. It's dated and I
couldn't find its author had adedicated site and only found it at
download sites, like:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/...KeyTweak.shtml
http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/keytweak.html

I've heard of but never used the SharpKeys remapper tool.
https://github.com/randyrants/sharpkeys
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sharpkeys
https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/wind...dows-xp-vista/

That last article shows how to remap a key using SharpKeys. Alas, in
their tutorial on how to add a remap, I did not see Winkey listed in the
visible part of the "Map this key (From key)" list. The pic only showed
some of the keys that could be remapped.

Key Mapper is similar in function (remap keys) but is more graphical in
that you drag the keys around to remap them. You drag a key off them
off the window and by dragging the key you want atop the key you want to
remap. That one groups keys by category. My guess is the Winkey is
under the Modifier Keys group but you'd have to search around to see if
it lets you drag the Winkey in its display atop the CapsLock key or
whatever you want to become the new WinKey.

Hunting around for a key[board] remap[per] should let you find something
you like. If none let you remap the Winkey to another key, you'll need
something more robust, like AutoHotkey, but that means the software has
to always be running to intercept the keyboard's scan codes.

There are keyboard macro tools, like AutoIt and AutoHotkey, but they are
overkill when all you want is to change the keyboard layout defined in
the registry to make your keyboard look like the keys are different than
what is normally associated with their scan code (each press of a key
sends a scan code as well as each release of a key sends a different
scan code from the hardware to the OS). Of course, with a keyboard
macro tool, you can define any key combo to perform any action, so you
could have some hotkey that does Ctrl+D (as long as the keyboard macro
tool has the window toggle function to assign to a key combo).
  #10  
Old July 2nd 18, 08:10 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
Nil[_5_]
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On 02 Jul 2018, VanguardLH wrote in
alt.windows7.general:

New keyboards are cheap, like a couple dollars. Maybe it's time
to get a keyboard with the Windows key (aka Winkey). It's similar
to Mac users that just must have the Cmd key on their keyboards.


I've gone through two fairly expensive modern tactile keyboards with
Win keys in recent times. Both failed within a couple of years, the
last one just a few days ago. I "temporarily" went back to my good ol'
IBM Model M. I have 4 of these that I retrieved from the dumpster when
my company threw them all out in the late '90s. Typing on it is a
pleasure, like going home to mom's comfort cooking. Plus, it's
unkillable. It does everything I want... except the functionality of
Win+D. So, no, I'm not in the market for a cheap keyboard, Windows key
or no.

I'll check in to the remappers, thanks.
  #11  
Old July 2nd 18, 08:35 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
Nil[_5_]
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On 01 Jul 2018, Paul wrote in
alt.windows7.general:

There's a few more suggestions here.

https://superuser.com/questions/3334...-windows-key-o
n-an-old-keyboard


The question asked there is exactly my question, too. I'm about to try
one suggestion from there, remapping the Caps Lock key to Left Windows.
There is a small utility to help do this, rather than editing the
Registry directly. I rarely if ever use Caps Lock, so this might be
acceptable.

I was really hoping to find a built-in 2- or even 3-key combo, but I
guess it doesn't exist in Windows.
  #12  
Old July 2nd 18, 11:41 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
mechanic
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Posts: 1,064
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On Sun, 01 Jul 2018 17:37:00 -0400, Nil wrote:

On 01 Jul 2018, Rene Lamontagne wrote in
alt.windows7.general:

not keyboard, but there is a taskbar setting to do this by
dragging the mouse cursor down to the extreme lower right
corner.


I knew about the little button, but you made me realize I was
wasting effort trying to carefully aim at it before clicking. Now
I see I can just cram the cursor into the corner and click. I
don't have to be precise about it. Thanks!

I still want to do it with they keyboard, though, as I could with
Win+D.


Interesting tip - thanks!
  #13  
Old July 2nd 18, 12:17 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
mechanic
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Posts: 1,064
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On Mon, 02 Jul 2018 03:10:20 -0400, Nil wrote:

I'll check in to the remappers, thanks.


KeyTweak seems to do the job even on Win10 although written for
earlier systems.
  #14  
Old July 2nd 18, 02:55 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Zo[_2_]
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Posts: 173
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Nil explained :
Is there any key combination that does NOT involve the Windows Key
that will minimize all windows and reveal the desktop? Win+D would be
the best solution of course, unless like me your keyboard does not have
a Win key.


Maybe this one will help?

WinHotKey

Use this simple, yet powerful application to assign a custom
combination of keys for a large variety of tasks in order to eliminate
repetition from your work

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/...inHotKey.shtml

--
Zo

"Ladies, leave your clothes here and spend the afternoon having a good
time." -- A sign in a laundry in Rome.
  #15  
Old July 2nd 18, 03:44 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Mark Lloyd[_2_]
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Posts: 1,756
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On 07/01/2018 09:45 PM, Paul wrote:

[snip]

Using something like osk.exe (On Screen Keyboard) isn't
really a pleasant answer. And re-mapping has the problem
of preventing something else from using the function later.
Although I don't remember Scroll Lock doing anything useful,
there might be situations where the LED is lit, you want to
turn it off, and because you remapped Scroll Lock, now
you cannot use it. A piece of tape over the LED will
take care of that :-)


I have a couple of KVM switches and both can be controlled by the keyboard.

ScrollLock - ScrollLock - #

where # is 1 or 2 to select the device.

Also, I once had a DOS screen buffer program that used Scroll Lock to
access the buffer.

[snip]

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company." [Mark Twain]
 




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