Google Wave is one of those applications that really benefits from the use of keyboard shortcuts. You can navigate and use everything with the mouse, but the keyboard makes things far more simple and intuitive, once you get used to them.
So, without further ado, here is a list of Google Wave Shortcuts. Most of them are listed on the Official Help site, but I have tried to include some of the lesser know ones, and advice on how to use them.
Navigation
- Up/Down Arrows - Used to navigate from blip to blip
- Left/Right - Used to navigate between panels, normally between the search and wave panels
- Home/End - Used to go to the first/last blip in a wave
- Space - This takes you to the next unread blip (either a new blip, or one that has changed since you last read it). Something that a lot of people struggle to get used to is the fact that pressing space takes them to an unread blip, even if it is in another wave. After the initial adjustment period, I find this way of doing things much more convenient.
- Ctrl – Space - Marks all the blips in the current wave as read.
- Ctrl – Click (or Cmd-Click on OS X) - Opens a wave link in a new panel.
Ways to Edit
- Enter - Reply to the current blip, the reply will appear below the current blip. If there is text selected, than the reply appears as a blip directly below that text, within the current blip.
- Shift – Enter - Reply at the end of the current thread
- Ctrl – E - Edit the current message
Editing a Blip
- Ctrl – B - Bold
- Ctrl – I - Italic
- Ctrl – U - Underline
- Ctrl – L - Create a link from highlighted text (apparently the wave team is planning to change this one soon)
- Ctrl – C - Copy highlighted text
- Ctrl – X - Cut the highlighted text
- Ctrl – V - Paste
- Ctrl – 1 – Make the current line a Heading 1 (similar to <h1> html Tag
- Ctrl – 2 – Make the current line a Heading 2 (similar to <h2> html Tag
- Ctrl – 3 – Make the current line a Heading 3 (similar to <h3> html Tag
- Ctrl – 4 – Make the current line a Heading 4 (similar to <h4> html Tag
- Ctrl – 5 – Start a bulleted list
- Ctrl – 6 – Remove any heading or list formating from the current line
- Shift + Enter - Finish Editing
I hope that you find those shortcuts useful. Give them a try at least, they will make your time in Google Wave a lot smoother and more productive.
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[...] The first thing you should do when you get your google wave invite and login is to look around, and get familiar with the interface. Read the welcome waves that google provides, and just generally see what is going on. You might want to also look at the available keyboard shortcuts. [...]