The Shell is Back!

As of Windows XP, the shell is back. Microsoft now distributes PowerShell (PoSH). It has lots of nice features. See the Microsoft website where you can download it for free. You can find other PoSH links at Wikipedia.

Notice how command-line interfaces (CLI's) are making a huge comeback? After years of mousing, people have finally come to the (correct) realization that mousing sucks. So now we have things like QuickSilver, Spotlight (and Vista's equivalent), SlickRun, and others [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. Mozilla Quick Searches and Google Desktop are just as much examples of this. The real hacker moves around with hot keys, macros, and short commands. Dare I say it is hip and trendy to stay close to the keyboard and use the mouse as little as possible?

I'm not saying the mouse has no place. Certainly, there are lots of applications where that interface is needed. However, the operating system is not one of those places. We need multiple interfaces, and the mouse probably belongs best to graphics applications that call for tugging and shifting things around in continuous ways. For the rest of the computer, just give me the keyboard.

Hot Key References

NOTE: The two updates below may serve as good LaTeX examples featuring the use of multicol.

UPDATE 2: I have used the Thunderbird list to make a Thunderbird quick reference PDF (LaTeX source available).

UPDATE 1: I have used the Camino list to make a Camino quick reference PDF (LaTeX source available).

I have been posting about quick references a lot lately [e.g., 1, 2]. I found another good quick reference site, allhotkeys.com. It has lots of software hotkey quick references. For example,

• Mozilla Firefox hotkeys
• Mozilla Firefox extensions hotkeys
• Mozilla Thunderbird hotkeys
• Camino hotkeys
• Safari hotkeys
• Microsoft Word hotkeys
• Microsoft Excel hotkeys
• Microsoft PowerPoint hotkeys
• Remote Desktop hotkeys
• Mac OS X Keyboard shortcuts
• iTunes hotkeys
• GMail hotkeys
• UNIX and Linux hotkeys
• Command line keyboard shortcuts
• ...and lots more...

So that's potentially helpful. But right now the pages are really slow to come up, so I have no idea what they look like. Nor do I know if I can easily get them onto a landscape sheet of paper that I can tape to the wall somewhere...