--- title: "Shortcuts That Save the Day: Boost Productivity in Web Dev and Beyond" date: 2024-12-17T05:30:00-05:00 author: Amanda Lutz canonical_url: "https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-08/episode-3/shortcuts-that-save-the-day-boost-productivity-in-web-dev-and-beyond/" section: Podcast --- <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-BEGIN\]\]>[Skip to main content](#main-content)Season 08 Episode 3 – Dec 17, 2024 42:53 [Show Notes](#show-notes) ## Shortcuts That Save the Day: Boost Productivity in Web Dev and Beyond  0:00 0:00 1.0x 0.75x1.0x1.25x1.5x2x [](//dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/website101podcast.com/uploads/mp3/Season-08/S08-E03-shortcuts.mp3) Want to save time? Learn common keyboard shortcuts for all your software. ### Show Notes - WordPress update - Keyboard shortcuts - Development shortcuts - Shortcut tools ### Show Links - [What is going on with WordPress?!](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-08/episode-2/whats-going-on-with-wordpress/) - [Judge hands WP Engine a win in legal fight with Automattic](https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/11/wp_engine_wins_injunction_against/) - [WordPress CEO Rage Quits Community Slack After Court Injunction](https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/s/UCKkRcI9Kg) - [Raycast](https://www.raycast.com/) - [Stream Deck](https://www.elgato.com/us/en/s/welcome-to-stream-deck) - [Auto Hotkey](https://www.autohotkey.com/) - [Keyboard Maestro](https://www.keyboardmaestro.com/main/) - [Whisper Flow](https://www.flowvoice.ai/download) Powered Transcript Accuracy of transcript is dependant on AI technology. **\[00:00\]** **Mike:** And we're back with the website 101 podcast. This is the podcast for people who want to learn more about building and managing websites. I'm one of your host Mike Mele with me as Amanda Lutz. Hi, Amanda. **\[00:16\]** **Amanda:** Hey, Mike. **\[00:17\]** **Mike:** How are you? I'm well. It's just you and me again. Sean's not here. But we've got some stuff to talk about. And right up front, I understand you have some news about something we discussed recently. **\[00:29\]** **Amanda:** us about that. Yes, so dear listener and also dear Mike, last podcast episode we were talking about what was up with WordPress and what's going on and the craziness of it but if you have not listened to it please go back and listen to season 8 episode 2 when we did like sort of a brief covering of all of the craziness and it continues. Again, a caveat, I haven't read all of the entire articles, but I just look at headlines really, but as of Wednesday, December the 11th, a California district court judge said that the WordPress hosting firm Automatic, and its CEO, Matthew Mullenweg, have been ordered to stop interfering with the business of Rival WP Engine. So, total handslapped, and then apparently what happened according to Reddit, and we will all share these links in the show notes. The Reddit headline is that the WordPress CEO rage quits their community Slack after the court injunction. Mullenweg himself. Mullenweg himself. So here are a couple quotes and again I don't I don't know where these quotes came from if somebody shared them from the Slack channel. It's hard to imagine wanting to continue to work on WordPress after this. I'm sick and disgusted to be legally compelled to provide free labor to an organization as parasitic and exploitive as WP engine. I hope you all get what you and WP engine wanted. Holy cow. And then you change to a slack name to gone and with the emoticon of a skull. **\[02:33\]** **Mike:** Skull emoji, wow. So it gets even more childish and... **\[02:38\]** **Amanda:** More childish, more ridiculous, a complete temper tantrum. Yeah, so automatic is going to have to remove that check box from downloading WordPress files at WordPress.org. Yeah, we talked about that, yeah. talked about that and yeah there are like just like reading over the the reddit thread is amusing it's entertaining it's again super childish so proper it is a total so proper you're absolutely right so anyway that **\[03:20\]** **Mike:** was stuff that happened in just the last couple days wow so what we got that episode out just in time because I guess we should have waited maybe had this as the news. **\[03:31\]** **Amanda:** I bet there's going to be more. This is not the end clearly. Right. That's right. Okay. **\[03:36\]** **Mike:** Well, thank you for the for that update. That's very exciting. So at the time of this recording, we're getting into the holidays. How are you doing with your Christmas shopping? Yeah, I see you get some Santa in the background. How's your Christmas shopping going? Are you ready? Are **\[03:54\]** **Amanda:** you're not ready? I had started it a fair amount ahead of time which was great because things got delivered and then Canada Post went on strike and then apparently like all of the other package delivery companies were like it's too much volume starting from this date you can't order anything or it just won't get to us. I think Amazon deliveries are still happening pretty okay but from like literally anywhere else. I think that like FedEx has just thrown in the towel. So I had a good start. My semester's over, thankfully, so I can, the markings done, the marks are in, and so I've got next week where I can go to like physical stores and finish up. But I was at a physical store recently for like light bulbs. And it was a hassle to find the right section. It was impossible to find anyone to ask for help. And when I finally found the right section, there were like two options. So as much as I want to support like real actual physical stores, every time I go in one, it's like, this is this is why I don't like it. This is why nobody likes it. **\[05:11\]** **Mike:** But yeah, I had this similar experience, I had to buy, I'll get to the technical stuff in a second here, but just to finish this story, I had to buy a floor vent cover. And it had to be a certain fit. I went to Home Depot, bought this thing for 22 bucks, came home, it doesn't work. Now I got to find time to go back in and return the thing. So that's, I'll get the money back, but that's an hour and a half total out of my life that I've spent going there and then going back. And it's just like, it's easier when it's Amazon, but I don't like the idea that I'm buying from Amazon so much. **\[05:50\]** **Amanda:** I agree with everything you're saying. **\[05:54\]** **Mike:** All right, well, wouldn't it be nice, Amanda? Yeah. If you could type a keystroke on your keyboard and all of a sudden all of your Christmas shopping was done like a shortcut almost to get everything ready for Christmas. Would that be awesome? **\[06:10\]** **Amanda:** Dude, that is the jankiest segue I have ever heard. **\[06:17\]** **Mike:** Let me just finish it at least. So far, I'm not, I don't have that solution unfortunately for anybody, for you or listeners. But today, and this is where the segue comes in, we are talking about shortcuts of all types. So it's very broad, it'll be, Some of it will be about shortcuts in software, shortcuts in website content management systems, things like that. And hopefully there's enough stuff here that we'll mention that could apply to both web developers and people who work with web developers, so whether you own the website or work on websites. Maybe we can help you out and save you some time in your life because I love shortcuts. Yes. How about you? **\[07:01\]** **Amanda:** about you? Yeah, use them constantly all the time. I do have to say first, hey listener, sitting at home, it might be kind of hard to hear about typing on a podcast, but we're going to do our best to mention a few of them that are the most important. I think that the keyboard shortcuts are so helpful, they're so handy, and especially more so when I was teaching the first semester class, I was shocked at how many students just didn't know basic keyboard shortcuts. Control A to select all. Control C to copy. Control V to paste. Control S to save. And of course, those are all on the Windows machine, and if you're on a Mac, they're all the same, but it's just instead of the control key, it's **\[07:56\]** **Mike:** command. Yes, anytime we say anything today, if she says control, I say command, it's the same thing. I use a Mac, she used Windows. Yeah, we're not going to go back and forth **\[08:07\]** **Amanda:** in that stuff. Yeah, but it's it was like it was always very surprising. Like I honestly thought that what would they be now? Gen Z, I guess is that who is that who is in college right now? I would have thought that people of Gen Z who just have been online and on computers and using technology for literally their entire lives, that they would maybe be better. A lot of them are good at typing, but they just don't know these like really basic keyboard shortcuts, and it was surprising. **\[08:45\]** **Mike:** Yeah. And you know something that just quickly, that makes me hyper aware of what you just said. There is a idiom or something like an expression that people have started to use that I've noticed **\[08:59\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** a lot lately from other people. **\[09:02\]** **Mike:** I actually don't like it at all, it bothers me. What they say is, when they're trying to say, let's focus on this thing. Like if you're having a conversation and they want to drill down into something, a lot of people now say, let's double click on that. **\[09:16\]** **Amanda:** Oh God. **\[09:17\]** **Mike:** Have you ever heard that? No. Oh, I've heard it multiple times from different people. The reason I'm bringing up now is because it's a mouse use thing and a lot of these shortcuts are keyboard things. You type on your keyboard. I think the fact that sayings like that are becoming popular shows how often people use their mouse and not their keyboard. I guess. I'm a huge keyboard guy, love just doing everything on the keyboard. **\[09:44\]** **Amanda:** I think that you and Sean also both probably use your keyboard even more than I do because you both will have talked about using the keyboard to like, what is your Google search keyboard shortcut? Yeah, tab, enter, enter, to get to the first result **\[10:05\]** **Mike:** in the search result. **\[10:06\]** **Amanda:** To get to the first result, and then follow that link. But it's like, I don't even do that, so. **\[10:13\]** **Mike:** Yeah. All right, well, let's get into this and see and talk about some of the things that we do use. Things we do in the shortcut realm. Do you want to start with, you alluded to this a little bit earlier, just general keyboard shortcuts that are available in website content management systems or what have you. So what are some of those? **\[10:36\]** **Amanda:** Well, it's even just software. Pretty much just all computers, software as well. So for the keyboard shortcuts, one One of the things that I do a lot is zooming in and out, you know, making things bigger, making them smaller. And you can do that by doing control and the plus sign to zoom in, and then control and the minus sign to make it smaller. **\[11:04\]** **Mike:** Of course, if there's it, go ahead, sorry, you can also do that with the keyboard and with **\[11:10\]** **Amanda:** the mouse. If your mouse has a scroller on it, I hold the control and scroll up to make it bigger and scroll down to make it smaller. And then to get back to the default, you just do control zero on the number keypad, not the numbers across the top, but the number keypad. Control zero will take you back to the default. **\[11:31\]** **Mike:** So on my computer, the numbers across the top, it also works for that zero. It's not just the number pad yet. **\[11:36\]** **Amanda:** Well here, let me try it right now. **\[11:37\]** **Mike:** But yeah, so yeah, go for it. So we're talking about accessibility stuff generally. And the number of times, it doesn't work for you. **\[11:46\]** **Amanda:** No, but it might have gone like just way too big. **\[11:51\]** **Mike:** All right, well, while you fix that, yeah, I have a lot of website clients who want to allow people to make the text bigger. And they always ask for, can you have one of those little buttons with the three A's? And you click them in. And I'm always telling them, maybe we should just teach people how to do this on their computer and it will work on every single website they ever visit in the rest of their life and it's Control Plus, Control Minus. And when you watch them learn that, and you see their eyes let up. Oh, I know how that works. And this works everywhere. Yeah, you don't need these little buttons everywhere that do it for that particular website, you know? Yeah. So, yeah, that's a great one. Yeah. Make the text bigger and smaller. Control Plus, Control Minus, it's that simple. **\[12:40\]** **Amanda:** Another one that I've learned lately is on a Windows machine, at least I don't know what it would be on a Mac machine, if you hold the Windows button, if you have a Windows button on your keyboard, and then hit Period, or as some people call it full stop, because that's how I read it, Windows key plus full stop, and I was like, what is the full stop? But yeah, so the Windows key and the Period, and on your monitor it'll pop up a little modal window that shows all of the emoticons, all of the emojis, and so then that's a very easy way that you can just drop one into any text field anywhere. It works with Visual Studio Code, it works with notepad, it works with fields on web pages. **\[13:27\]** **Mike:** Interesting. I did not know that. I don't think there's any similar thing on a Mac, maybe there is, but we obviously don't have a Windows key, so I'm not sure what that would be, but that's **\[13:38\]** **Amanda:** interesting yeah that's a good tip yeah because I often forget on the rare **\[13:43\]** **Mike:** occasions when I do use emojis I often forget what the name of it is like rolling eyes face or whatever it is you know so that's that's useful to be able to scroll **\[13:54\]** **Amanda:** through them yeah and and and it shows you like your most recent ones at the top **\[13:58\]** **Mike:** very much like a cellphone right cool okay regarding the plus plus and minus text size one, there's another one that I really like. I remember teaching this to a colleague of ours of just a couple of years ago. He was, he's a very, very advanced web developer. And he didn't know that this existed and it blew his mind. If, so when you're on a website and you scroll, scroll vertically with your mouse wheel, right? If you encounter a, like a little, whatever area of the page where there's a horizontal scroll bar on the bottom, and you have to scroll left to right. You can still do that with your mouse wheel by holding down the shift key and still scrolling. It will scroll left to right all of a sudden instead of up and down, and it's a useful skill to have. Yeah. **\[14:50\]** **Amanda:** I love that one. So that reminds me of a scrolling shortcut that I found recently, and maybe you know about this using a web browser, I use Chrome, but I think it would probably work with all of the web browsers. When you have the browser dev tools open, and listener, if you are a developer, whenever you're doing any development, you should always have the browser dev tools open, you know how you can modify the CSS in that elements panel. If the value is a number, instead of like manually typing in, the next number that you want to test to see how it looks on the web page you can scroll up and down to increment that number or decrement that number by one. Nice. And then if you do shift it increments it by 10 and if you do control it does by 100. Oh cool. Or maybe control is 10 and shift is 100 it's like one or the other but it's like that way it's like it's a very easy way to like just sort of estimate. Oh like I want it to suddenly get a lot bigger, and then you can start fiddling with individual numbers if you want. **\[16:04\]** **Mike:** That's great. That's a good tip. That reminded me of something just now, but now I've lost it, so maybe it'll come back to me. I'll just move on. So come back. Yeah. This is something that really helps me in web development with the CMS that we use often, which is craft, but it's in a bunch of different CMSs, but it's not in all of them. And that is controller command S to save the entry you're working on. I do that just like instinctually now, where I'm working on some entry, I want to save it. I had command S. And when I'm in a CMS that doesn't have that feature, it drives me bonkers. Because when you do that, and it's not programmed into the CMS to save the entry, it will open up a modal window that will ask you to save that entire page as an HTML file on your computer. And that's not what I want. Anyway. No, I know. **\[17:03\]** **Amanda:** Yeah. That is helpful. I also like, so yeah, with craft, control S will, control S will save it and then go back to the listing, but like control shift S will like save and continue. **\[17:21\]** **Mike:** Right. **\[17:22\]** **Amanda:** So that you can save and continue editing on the current page that you're on right now, which I also like. **\[17:27\]** **Mike:** And then there's another one that will save and then create a new entry, right? What was that? Do you remember that one? It's like, maybe command, shift, ask, or I don't know, some combination where it will save the one you're working on, close it, and then start a new entry, which is great if you're like entering a whole bunch of news articles or something like that. You want to do it one after another. You don't have to go over **\[17:48\]** **Amanda:** So it occurs to me that it's kind of funny that we're talking about how great all of these keyboard shortcuts are. And we don't necessarily remember what they are off the top of our heads. But the thing is you find a shortcut that exists and you keep using it in that one instance. And then it does become kind of muscle memory. So you don't, it's hard to talk about things that you just intuitively know about. **\[18:14\]** **Mike:** So that's a good way. Yes. So that's right. Yeah. And I will, on that note, I'll add that in a lot of cases, when you're using an app that has a lot of shortcuts built into it, you can often hit shift question mark. And that will open a modal window with a whole list of all their shortcuts. For example, if you use Gmail, the web interface of Gmail for your emails client, If you had shift question mark, it'll open this big thing and I'll tell you all the shortcuts that are in there. There's a bunch of software packages that have that, this little menu to get to the shortcuts. So that's a great way to sort of refresh your memory when you forget them. **\[18:59\]** **Amanda:** So I think that those are just like generic keyboard shortcuts that probably work in like the majority of all of the software, I think. **\[19:07\]** **Mike:** Yeah. **\[19:08\]** **Amanda:** What I wanted to do next was get into any specifics, like what are some of your, specifically, your operating system, or specifically visual studio code, or specifically something else? Right. **\[19:23\]** **Mike:** What are some other shortcuts that you like? Yeah, let's see. I know that I, so I've mentioned before on the show, I use a to-do list sort of manager called GQs, and it works with Google's ecosystem, like Google Calendar and all that stuff. The guy who made it is a big keyboard guy, which I am as well, and so every single thing in it you can do with the keyboard. Now I'm not going to go through all the different shortcuts that are available, obviously there's too many, but the picture to-do list where you can scroll through the to-do list items, you can choose one, you can add a new one, you could make one nested under another. All of that is possible with the keyboard only. And you'd be surprised how quickly you can start operating one of these tools. If you don't have to constantly go from your mouse to your keyboard, drag in the mouse pointer around, clicking this, clicking that. Anyway, it's great. So that's a great example that I have. And that also has one of those menus with the question mark key to pull up all their shortcuts, which I really like. So that's one of my favorites. **\[20:33\]** **Amanda:** How about you? I have, in my laziness, I have suddenly fallen in love with aliases. OK. So on my Windows machine, I have installed it's called WSL, which is like the Windows subsystem for Linux or something like that. And so it basically opens a window, but it's a unix operating system. It's like Linux that's happening right there and you've got like, it's a whole different directory structure and that's where I do all of my local development. So in there, of course, you can type all of these like, this is where you do all of like the command prompt typing, any of the command line instructions and some of them get big and some of them get long and some of them get complicated And who's got time to remember everything that you want to type out in full? So what I've learned is that there is a profile, a personal file that's part of the WSL or part of Linux or whatever that you can go in and you can type new shortcuts. And you can just create whatever you want. And so it's literally called alias. if anybody out there is interested in Googling on how to do this yourself. And so the command that you save in this file is alias space, the shortcut that you only wanna type, space, the big, long, crazy thing that you could not be bothered to type all the time. And now instead of having to remember how to find and delete and search for and do whatever, I just type a very like a short one word command that I made up. That's pretty nice. **\[22:24\]** **Mike:** Nice. That's a good one. I just remembered the thing I was going to talk about earlier that you reminded me of and I forgot. So I'm going to bring that up right now. Do share. Yeah. So this is just for anyone who uses the web at all. This is going to be helpful for anyone if you don't know this. When you're feeling out of form and you get a drop-down box where you can select, let's say, country and there's a list of hundreds of countries or whatever and province or state or whatever. You don't have to scroll through and find yours. You can type the first letter of your country and in the case of Canada, I think the first one you're going to hit is Cameroon or something. But if you hit it again, the same like the letter C, it will select the next one and then one more we'll get to Canada. So I've gotten in the habit of CCC and enter and that's going to pick Canada. But the point is just type the letter when you're in a select box there, like a drop-down box and it'll skip down to that one. You don't have to scroll through and spend all this time looking. So that's what I was **\[23:31\]** **Amanda:** going to bring. Yeah. I like it. I like it when websites don't just use regular select fields. There's a couple third-party JavaScript libraries that do really cool things with select fields and so I like the idea of being able to type and have it filter down all the results. It could be in the middle or the beginning or in the end but you know it filters it down a lot. Yeah those are helpful. What **\[23:55\]** **Mike:** yeah I'm talking the one I'm referring to obviously is the basic HTML field that you get with browsers. Now in our notes here you have a note that says exclamation point then tab in VSE starts with HTML template. Can you explain what that is, I'm not even sure I know that shortcut. What is that? **\[24:15\]** **Amanda:** So in Visual Studio Code, when you just create a completely blank HTML file, so just index.html, and it's empty, and there's nothing in it at all. And instead of trying to remember, was it an exclamation point, doc type? Right. And then the HTML tag, and then the head tag, and then that like, really weird meta tag, for the viewport to make it like a responsive website. Instead of remembering all of that, you literally on your keyboard just have to type exclamation point **\[24:51\]** **Mike:** and then hit the tab key and that will fill in. **\[24:54\]** **Amanda:** It fills in probably about eight or a dozen lines. It's got like I said, exclamation point, doc type, HTML, head, a couple meta tags, a title tag, closing head tag, opening body tag, a closing body tag, a closing HTML tag, but then also the cursor is sitting right there and that empty line in the body. And it's like, so you're just ready to go. There are also a lot of other visual studio code shortcuts that I have not looked into or gotten to, but there are things like, there's a shortcut for, like if you wanted to make eight list items, there's some shortcut that will kind of loop through this format that you made and make eight unit items that look like that. **\[25:47\]** **Mike:** Yeah, so I use, I think I still have this running, there was like a plugin called Emmett for Visual Studio Code, yeah. And that has a lot of those where you can type, you know, I don't know, P followed by an an asterisk followed by a number and it'll give you four paragraphs or whatever it is. Yeah. So yeah, I think I still have that running I've had it for years and it's yeah, that's a good tool for those shortcuts and I actually think I have a command that does that HTML sort of boilerplate copy that you talked about. But I didn't know that VSC had their own set. Of course they do. Of course there are tons of VSC shortcuts, so that's a good call. **\[26:31\]** **Amanda:** Well yeah, and I mean with Visual Studio Code, there are so many extensions that will give you so many other shortcuts, a prettier to make the indentation look better. There's other shortcuts, no, other extensions that, if you, is it part of just Visual Studio Code, where you start, you type the open tag and it will automatically type the closing tag and the bigger cursor in the middle so that you can start doing that. So, and I mean, like, sometimes it's helpful and sometimes it's a pain because I like typing the closing tag because it's like this, I'm anal retentive about it, it's like I opened it, I wanna make sure it's closed where and how I want it to be. **\[27:20\]** **Mike:** Yeah, for the longest time, I was really picky about having, I still am, I guess, when I type a tag that doesn't have a closing tag, like an image tag. I would have space slash at the end where you don't need that. And a lot of people are like, why are you doing that? And I just, I'm old school and I do that because that's what you used to do that. **\[27:42\]** **Amanda:** A self-closing tag, it looks better. **\[27:46\]** **Mike:** It does look better, looks way better. **\[27:48\]** **Amanda:** And so Visual Studio Code does a lot of stuff, but all text editors, I used to work with a text editor called notepad++. and they have this really cool macro function in that you could start a macro recording and then you would do something on the screen. Typically, I found it was easiest to do it with keyboard stuff. For example, go down to the next line and hit the end button, the end key on your keyboard, and then go back five spaces and type something. And then you would stop the recording, and then you would just say run macro, and it would run the exact commands that you just did. Go down a line, go to the end, go back five spaces, type the exact same thing. And then you could also have it, so that would run to the end of file. So if you've got a really long data file that you need to go in and delete every third line, find all of this attribute and change the value to that. Whatever it is, it would be really cool to just go through and do all of this for you, instead of manually having to find the next one, make the change, find the next one, make the change. It makes me a little bit sad that Visual Studio Code doesn't have Mac. **\[29:04\]** **Mike:** Yeah, I was gonna say, that sounds like a very useful. Photoshop had something like that, actually, where you could make a, it was called a droplet or something, where I assume it's still, I haven't used Photoshop in a long time, but I assume the new one has that too, where you can record, say, opening an image file, resizing it, or cropping it or whatever, and then saving it to a certain directory. And then you'd save that whole set of actions as an icon that sits on your desktop. And you could drag a folder of images into the icon, and it would just repeat that task for each image, so that it's a good way to process images really fast, right, out of your camera. **\[29:47\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, still charged the client for your full time. But yeah, you just saved yourself a couple of hours. **\[29:54\]** **Mike:** I had to take the time to learn that there was such a shortcut. And yeah, always that. **\[30:01\]** **Amanda:** Well, that's a big joke in development, right? It would take me 20 minutes to do this thing, but instead I'm going to take an hour to learn how to automate it. **\[30:12\]** **Mike:** Right, yes. **\[30:13\]** **Amanda:** But then I'll never have to spend those 20 minutes on it ever again. **\[30:16\]** **Mike:** Yeah, that is an important thing to keep in mind that if at any time you are automating things, make sure that you're not spending more time, yeah, exactly, right? There's an app that I use on the Mac called Raycast that I just started using in the past few months. It's really cool. And it's basically this sort of, there's like a repository of all these commands that people publish. And it just basically lets you do a bunch of stuff on your computer. I have one that I ran right before this that will kill all my notifications during this podcast. So like, don't send me any email stuff or Slack messages or whatever, and I just type a keystroke and it instantly mutes all my apps kind of thing, and it has a whole bunch of different features like that, resizing images or scaling things. It's great. And I've started to use that a lot. Mac only, unfortunately, but I'm sure there's something similar for Windows for anyone who's interested in that. **\[31:19\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, it doesn't Sean have a thing. It's like a physical almost like a keyboard. What was that? **\[31:27\]** **Mike:** I'm, so the notifications that I am getting are coming in on my phone, not on my computer. **\[31:32\]** **Amanda:** That's where it's not muted. Yeah, I didn't wear it stupid. Anyway, no, but it doesn't Sean have like an actual physical Yes. Board. There's got big buttons on it, so you just hit one of the buttons, and it- Yeah. I think it's called a- **\[31:46\]** **Mike:** You can program it to do things. Right. It's a physical thing. I think it's called a stream deck, if I recall correctly. That sounds familiar. A lot of podcast streamer influencer types have that where they can program in, dim the lights if you have smart lights and stuff, and open up this app and start recording or whatever. Yeah. That's right. He has one of those, and I think he likes it a lot. Cool. So, you want to talk a little bit more about tools that are specifically for, you know, making shortcuts. You kind of alluded to one earlier with your, which one was it? I guess it was a WSL thing where you can complete your own shortcuts yet. If someone were to ask me what my favorite app is, this is probably what it is. It's called Keyboard Mistro. I think I brought this up on the show before too. It's a Mac only thing, but I think there's a Windows version called Auto Hot Key because I used to use that when I was a Windows person. So Keyboard Mistro is this app that lets you, with a really useful interface, a very simple interface, it lets you create a series of commands on your computer and then run them with a keyboard shortcut. And it's really useful because I do it for, let's say, every time I start up a new, start **\[33:04\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** a project that I'm working on like a website for a client. I type one keystroke and it will **\[33:11\]** **Mike:** open my editors, which for me is cursor. It docks it to the left of my screen. Starts up the project that I'm talking about. Opens a Chrome browser, logs into the control panel of Kraft or whatever, opens another window with the front end open and uses my one passwords to log into all this stuff starts my work timer and then a voice comes on and says ready to work on and then the name of my project. So computer actually says that to me. At the end, it's so cool because when you start DDEV, which is our local development environment with a database and all that stuff, it can take a minute or a minute and a half, a couple seconds, all those. Well, I think the mutagen thing, you know, that thing that it does sometimes where It has to like archive all your images or something. I don't know what it's doing, but sometimes it takes a long time. So this whole process might take, I don't know, a minute and a half or two minutes to start up. So I've started like, I can fire that up and I could go get a coffee or I can meditate for a few minutes, take some deep breaths. **\[34:23\]** **Amanda:** And it's great. I look. I haven't. I wanted to look into that a little bit more. I'll look to see if there's a Windows equivalent you suggested. it might be auto hotkey, I think that sounds cool. Can you specify the voice that talks to you at the end? **\[34:38\]** **Mike:** You can, but it's within a menu of voices. It's not like you can get Samuel L. Jackson to say something or whatever, which would be pretty cool. **\[34:47\]** **Amanda:** But are there some pretty good voices? **\[34:50\]** **Mike:** No, not really. I do wish the voices were better. There's basically one cool voice of this typical woman like almost like a Siri voice. but then every other voice is like really old school low-fi like Stephen Hawking almost kind of voice. Like really low quality. Okay. **\[35:09\]** **Amanda:** So. You know what voice I think should be on absolutely everything is how from 2000 on the space Odyssey. Yeah, how it's like that everywhere. **\[35:18\]** **Mike:** I do mess around with those voices with chat GBT. They now have a bunch of different voices you can choose from. Oh, do they? Scarlett Johansson's is no longer one of them but they do have some cool ones on there. So, with accents and stuff, there's like a British guy and stuff. **\[35:34\]** **Amanda:** Oh, cool. **\[35:35\]** **Mike:** Yeah, pretty nice. **\[35:36\]** **Amanda:** I did not know that. I might have to. I bet that's the, and that's the problem, though, you save all of this time with all these really productive shortcuts. And then you go waste all of this time playing with TGPT in different places. **\[35:49\]** **Mike:** That's right, that's true. Speaking of AI, we should mention that that's of course another way you can achieve shortcuts all over the place, especially with the code editor we were talking about earlier, where you can type a certain thing and it will add the closing tag or whatever. Very often now, if you're using AI and cursor or in VSE, it tries to predict what you're going to write now. So if you type an opening tag, it will automatically add the closing tag. And if you just hit tab to accept the suggestion or whatever, it works. That's built in with AI, that stuff. **\[36:29\]** **Amanda:** It is, yeah, but that's super jumped up a lot when I first started using the GitHub Co-Pilot. I was teaching a class from home, so like online, and I was supposed to be writing some JavaScript, but because it's students, and I'm trying to teach them, I like to go through one line at a time. And with the first demo, and I started typing, and then GitHub Co-Pilot was just like, blah, blah, is this what you meant to do? And it was like, well, yes, in the long run, but I'm trying to teach here. Kind of teach. **\[37:00\]** **Mike:** Yeah. Yeah, it's funny. Some of that stuff is kind of creepy how it knows. Like if you copy something in one template and go in another template, you know, oh, you want to paste it over here, right? Like, you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty loud. It's getting pretty good. I just wanted to say I have started using this other thing out. So I was saying, I don't like the mouse and I use the keyboard more. Well, I've leveled up again. and I'm trying to use my voice more because I've started using his tool called Whisper Flow. So on a Mac, when you hit the function key, hold it down or hit it twice or something like that, it starts listening on your microphone and you can talk to your, you can say something on your computer and when you release it, it will paste that text into whatever field your cursor was in, something like that. So it just lets you dictate, do you text? do you write code that way? No, so Whisper Flow is an enhanced version of that with AI and stuff. But no, I don't. Obviously, I'm not going to sit there and go open bracket section flows, bracket class equals, like that would be stupid, but funny. But it is useful for, we'll say typing emails, for example, if you're responding, or even texts. It's really great when you're messaging and Slack or if you're responding to someone, just hit that and say the word, like they're standing in front of you, say the sentence. And for me, it's much faster than me trying to type it and then correct stuff and all that stuff. So I'm testing that out now. And it's not for everybody, I guess, but I'm a big fan, so far. **\[38:37\]** **Amanda:** We have a smart house. So we've got the light switches and we've got the plugs and we've got Google devices tidying. But we've also have Alexa devices. And so we've got like a bunch of routine set up and we can turn lights on and off and send notifications throughout the announcements, throughout the house and timing. And we've got like, I think we've got like a couple just spare smart plugs. So we've got now one for the Christmas lights and we've got one for the fireplace mantle lights. And we've got like a weatherproof one for outside for the outside lights. And so it's nice to just be like, you know, Alexa, to all a good night, and just all of the Christmas lights turn off. **\[39:23\]** **Mike:** Oh my, wow, that's cool. **\[39:25\]** **Amanda:** It's pretty good. **\[39:26\]** **Mike:** Yeah, we have a, we're, I like the Google mini, we have a mini, and it's like, you can... **\[39:33\]** **Amanda:** I've got one upstairs, yeah, up here. **\[39:35\]** **Mike:** Get it to play Spotify stuff or whatever. It's fun. **\[39:40\]** **Amanda:** I've also got my pixel watch set up, so it's all using, is it Google's Gemini. they're all starting to interact with each other as well. And I just saw an email. Apparently the pixel watch will now work with the, whatever Google's doorbell is, I think it's right. **\[39:58\]** **Mike:** I just bought one of those. Nest. Is it nest? **\[40:01\]** **Amanda:** Nest. That's right. The nest doorbell. Apparently, I could interact through my watch when this one comes to the door. But we've got a different doorbell, so. **\[40:11\]** **Mike:** You can't see someone on your watch, though. You don't see the doorbell screen. Like the camera. **\[40:20\]** **Amanda:** The marketing email that I received, saying, hey, go out and buy a nest doorbell, showed on the pixel face, the video, of what was happening outside. Yeah. Wow, excuse me. That is the ultimate life shortcut. Yes. I'm just gonna sit here and look at my, I don't even have to pick up my phone anymore. I just have to move my arm to see who's at the front door. **\[40:48\]** **Mike:** You don't have to go to the door to tell them to go away. You can just tell them to go away on your own. **\[40:52\]** **Amanda:** That's right. Right. **\[40:54\]** **Mike:** That is correct. Yeah, I'm a big fan of that stuff too. That's good. **\[40:57\]** **Amanda:** Okay. All right. Anything else? No. I don't think we need to talk about any more short cuts. But yes, in that we've just barely hit the tip of the iceberg. I would love to hear from any listener what short cut they like to use. if they have tried and true shortcuts in a single piece of software or if they have like a shortcut tool. Like what Mike was talking about. I like learning about them and seeing what's available and what's out there. And so yeah, you can always send us a message at website 101podcast.com slash contact. **\[41:33\]** **Mike:** Yeah, or hit us up on a social network that you might or might not find us on. Just look for the podcast title and you'll see us comments on YouTube. We are still doing lunch bites on YouTube, which is our sort of live show. The first and third Wednesday of every month at 11.30 a.m. Eastern time. We talk about random stuff for half hour. So join us there too. Yeah. And let us know all your shortcuts. That would be great. Okay. Well, this is fun. Thanks Amanda. What is it? Thank you like. And thanks, Lister. Bye! **\[42:13\]** **Amanda:** The Website 101 podcast is hosted by me, Amanda Loots. **\[42:17\]** **Mike:** You can also find me online at AmandaLoots.com. And by me, Mike Mella, find me online at BeLikeWater.ca or on socials at Mike Mella. **\[42:27\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** I'm Sean Smith, your co-host. You can find me online at my website, www.caffincreation.ca and link down at caffincreations. Close Transcript Have a question for Sean, Mike, and Amanda? [Send us an email](/contact). [![Listen on Google Play Music](/assets/images/google_podcasts_badge@2x.png)](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWJzaXRlMTAxcG9kY2FzdC5jb20vZmVlZC5yc3M%3D)[![itunes badge](/assets/images/itunes-badge.png)](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/website-101-podcast/id1449510012)[![itunes badge](/assets/images/spotify-logo.png)](https://open.spotify.com/show/3rmSM1R9t6q1U8DmYWJRSO?si=NrYPMgDaRV6Dd56PjEaPow)### Season 08 - 1 [ Keeping up with Tech Trends](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-08/episode-1/keeping-up-with-tech-trends/) - 2 [ What's going on with WordPress?!](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-08/episode-2/whats-going-on-with-wordpress/) - 3 [ Shortcuts That Save the Day: Boost Productivity in Web Dev and Beyond](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-08/episode-3/shortcuts-that-save-the-day-boost-productivity-in-web-dev-and-beyond/) - 4 [ Stand Out on Social Media with Jessica Perreault](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-08/episode-4/social-media-with-jessica-perreault-2/) - 5 [ Code of Ethics: Navigating Moral Dilemmas in Web Development](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-08/episode-5/code-of-ethics-navigating-moral-dilemmas-in-web-development/) - 6 [ Season 8 Wrap](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-08/episode-6/season-eight-wrap/) ### All Seasons - [Season 01](https://website101podcast.com/season/01/) - [Season 02](https://website101podcast.com/season/02/) - [Season 03](https://website101podcast.com/season/03/) - [Season 04](https://website101podcast.com/season/04/) - [Season 05](https://website101podcast.com/season/05/) - [Season 06](https://website101podcast.com/season/06/) - [Season 07](https://website101podcast.com/season/07/) - [Season 08](https://website101podcast.com/season/08/) - [Season 09](https://website101podcast.com/season/09/) <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-END\]\]>