Date: 4/18/24 10:03 am From: Gary Bletsch via Tweeters <tweeters...> Subject: [Tweeters] quasi-off-topic question re AviSys shortcut keys (long)
Dear Tweeters,
This is a somewhat recondite question for anyone in the Tweeterverse who is still using AviSys bird listing software.
Once again, an HP laptop of mine has begun to fail after a relatively short time, so I've bought a new laptop, a Lenovo Yoga 7. I'm not too impressed with their online support, which seems to consist mainly of links to YouTube videos.
I have AviSys up and running just fine on the new machine, but I've realized that the laptop does not have the same keyboard as my previous ones. The new keyboard appears to have the same quantity of keys, but the function keys in the top row have different labels. The four keys in the top-right corner have different functions from the functions of those keys on my last two HP laptops. The new functions are all geared toward either gaming or media.
There are just three functions that I am missing when using AviSys, and would like to get them going.
1. The handiest of these was CTRL + f11. This is a shortcut that lets the AviSys user get an instant list of all of his sightings of one species. For example, right now, on my old HP laptop--on which everything works except for Internet access--I have the Chestnut-backed Chickadee highlighted. Simply by pressing CTRL + f11, AviSys gives me all 2506 of my lifetime sightings of this species. Without this shortcut, I have to go to List Records, Species, put CBCH in there, then click D for date, L for list, and then hit Enter, just to get a chronological list of those 2506 sightings. That is way too much work, compared to CTRL + f11.
2 and 3. The other two functions involve moving through lists of data, or List Records in AviSys parlance. For example, when I bring up a list all of those 2506 records of CBCH, I often want to go to the last record. On every previous laptop I've owned, all I had to do was press CTRL + end, and I go right to the last record in the set. If I want to go back up to the very first record again, I would press CTRL + home, and I am taken right back to that first Chestnut-backed Chickadee that I saw in 1978. So easy!
There are two other functions that work similarly, CTRL + pg up, and CTRL + pg dn, but those are two that I rarely used, since they are not much different in efficiency than just pressing the up or down arrow, in order to move to the top or bottom of one page, which contains just 10 of those 2506 records.
Well, I did a little reading online about this sort of thing. One website suggests that one use a program called Auto Hotkey. However, another website stated that Auto Hotkey leaves a computer more vulnerable to hacking.
Several other websites recommended Microsoft Power Toys. That is a free product of Microsoft itself, so I'd feel safer using that. It is a program for "Power Users," a level of expertise that I don't claim even to approach.
I have now installed Microsoft Power Toys, but I can't really understand the complicated instructions. I have tried to follow them, but the results have been zero.
If anyone has any tips on making this work, I'd love to hear them.
Yours truly,
Gary Bletsch
PS obligatory bird sighting for this e-mail is a flock of six Chipping Sparrows at my feeder just now!
