Does anyone actually use the Scroll Lock key?

[superboyac]

If you do...then you are weird.

[Gwen7]

re:scroll lock key- i use it as a soft key to toggle my kvm switch.

re:being weird - true. but not for that reason :-))

[superboyac]

re:scroll lock key- i use it as a soft key to toggle my kvm switch.

re:being weird - true. but not for that reason :-))

-Gwen7 (September 20, 2010, 09:55 AM)

Using it for an unintended purpose is not weird.  using it for its intended purpose is weird.  hench, you are not weird.

[J-Mac]

Nope, but like Gwen I am weird.   

I would like to hear of others' uses for it as a custom key in AHK or similar. 

Thanks!

Jim

[nosh]

using it for its intended purpose is weird.

And what would that be?  nvm!

Most of my AHK hotkeys are a combination of Win+ other key. Scroll lock is one of the other keys.

HddLed, an onscreen disk activity indicator, has an option to use the scroll lock LED to indicate disk activity. I tried that for a bit but stopped because something was throwing a fit, IIRC.

[Deozaan]

What does the Scroll Lock key do, anyway?

I mean besides toggle the LED on my keyboard.

[jpijper]

What does the Scroll Lock key do, anyway?

I mean besides toggle the LED on my keyboard.

-Deozaan (September 21, 2010, 02:34 AM)

Silly question! It scrolls the lock, of course

[techidave]

 

[daddydave]

In Excel, the scroll lock makes the arrow keys  scroll the spreadsheet without changing the current cell.

EDITED: No I guess it really is arrow keys only

[KynloStephen66515]

Up until now, I had only ever clicked the scroll lock key by accident, and never really knew what it did...but i just found this...gotta love the power of google lol.

Scroll lock is a key (often with an associated status light) on most modern computer keyboards. The key is not frequently used and therefore some keyboards lack Scroll Lock altogether;[1] Apple Keyboards do not have a Scroll Lock key at all (except for some obsolete ADB keyboards).

The Scroll Lock key was meant to lock all scrolling techniques, and is a remnant from the original IBM PC keyboard, though it is not used by most modern-day software. In the original design, Scroll Lock was intended to modify the behavior of the arrow keys. When the Scroll Lock mode was on, the arrow keys would scroll the contents of a text window instead of moving the cursor. In this usage, Scroll Lock is a toggling lock key like Num Lock or Caps Lock, which have a state that persists after the key is released.

Today, this particular use of Scroll Lock is rare. Only a few modern programs still honor this behavior, such as Lotus Notes, Forté Agent, and FL Studio. In modern GUI environments, scrolling is usually accomplished using means such as scrollbars or scroll wheels. Therefore, Scroll Lock can be regarded as a defunct feature in almost all modern programs and operating systems.

God bless wikipedia:

Wiki Link

[Deozaan]

And all these years I thought its purpose was to prevent the screen/window/application from scrolling.

[superboyac]

I love this discussion.

[daddydave]

And all these years I thought its purpose was to prevent the screen/window/application from scrolling.

-Deozaan (September 21, 2010, 12:59 PM)

No that's the Pause key. Go to a cmd window and type dir %tmp% and try it. Ctrl-S does the same thing. Leveraging my DOS 2 skills is the reason I will never be a Mac user. Usually I say that seriously, in this case, not so much because I don't actually use that anymore. I just do something like

dir %tmp%>deletme.txt
deleteme.txt

and it pops up in Notepad. Redirection of course is also a leveraged DOS 2 skill. (yeah I know they stole it from CP/M and Unix)