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Poll : What is the most useless key on the keyboard
tranglos:
I've voted Scroll Lock, because very few programs use it anymore. But it does have a useful function - when engaged, you should be able to scroll any window without moving the caret. It still works in Excel 2003, but has been mostly forgotten by programmers today. It's great when you want to scroll to see something in a document but don't want to lose your current position. It's more or less the same as scrolling with the wheel without ever clicking the document anywhere.
Other than that, I'd vote for Pause/Break, which has absolutely no purpose in a multitasking OS, but now that I'm using mouser's Find and Run Robot, the Break key is back in action.
tranglos:
But, I would have to say that the "right-click" key is the most unused key on my keyboard.
The other two that are right up there are right-ctrl and right-alt, in that order.
-kfitting (February 10, 2007, 08:51 AM)
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All this goes to show is that no keys should ever be removed, ever :)
I love the right-click key, because it gives me the context menu without using the mouse. Shift+F10 should also do that, but many programs ignore it or override with other functionality.
Right ctrl is awfully useful for clipboard and navigation actions with home/end/insert/delete keys. And without right alt you couldn't type national characters in any non-Western language. Right Alt (sometimes called AltGr, for "alternate graphic") adds all the twiggly tails and accent marks to latin characters. I couldn't type in Polish at all without right alt.
On edit: Wikipedia has a whole article on AltGr, quite informative too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altgr
cthorpe:
I voted for Caps Lock. I don't need permanent caps, and my students are always freaking out because it gets turned on and they forget about it. Many of my students still insist on using it to make capital letters rather than holding shift.
Carl
jgpaiva:
I support the "don't kill altgr" motion because i need it for {[]}@£§. I also support the "don't kill caps lock" motion, i use it while typing :)
edbro:
Notice that there's no right winkey, num-lock or scrl-lock in laptops!
(actually, there's num-lock and scrl-lock, but you can only get to those through fn-key, which renders those unnusable)
-jgpaiva (February 10, 2007, 09:46 AM)
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Hmmm, my HP laptop has a Win key.
No key is useless if you use a macro program. Personally, I use Powerpro (freeware) to assign macros, menus, functions, etc to all kinds of keys and key combinations.
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