owlgarden.net » XO-Hints

XO Key Commands

owlgarden — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 14:02:54 +0000

Here’s where the XO Key commands are gathered in one place. I pulled these from the wiki at laptop.org.
__________________________________________________
the Ctrl key has a solid diamond on it
the Alt key has an open diamond on it
the Esc key has a white × inside a black circle
the Tab key has double arrows on it
the Tilde key has a tilde on it
the Frame key has an open rectangle on it
the F1 key is the same as the Neighborhood view key
the F2 key is the same as the Group view key
the F3 key is the same as the Home view key
the F4 key is the same as the Activity view key
the Delete key is the same as Fn-Erase.
the Page Up key is the same as Fn-up-arrow
the Page Down key is the same as Fn-down-arrow
the Home key is the same as Fn-left-arrow
the End key is the same as Fn-right-arrow
__________________________________________________

Keystroke Description
Alt-Tab Ctrl-Tab Cycle forward through running activities
Shift-Alt-Tab Shift-Ctrl-Tab Cycle backward through running activities
Ctrl-Tilde (See discussion) Cycle forward through running instances of the current activity
Shift-Ctrl-Tilde Cycle backward through running instances of the current activity
Ctrl-c Copy to clipboard
Ctrl-v Paste from clipboard
Ctrl-x Cut (and copy to clipboard)
Ctrl-a Select all (current input/dialog/text box )
Ctrl-q Quit activity
Ctrl-Esc Quit activity
Alt-Enter Toggle full-screen mode
Alt-Space Toggle tray visibility (works in Browse but not in Record)
Ctrl-u View source in Browse (opens copy of source in Write)
Fn-Space View source (system wide, although not enabled in all applications yet)
Ctrl-Alt-Erase Restart Sugar
Alt-1 Screen capture saved to Journal
Ctrl-Alt-F1 Console 1
Ctrl-Alt-F2 Console 2
Ctrl-Alt-F3 X Windows
Esc-Frame-RightArrow-Fn (the four corners keys on the keyboard)
Recalibrate touchpad (AKA Four finger salute); Fn should be pressed last.
Fn-UpArrow Page Up
Fn-DownArrow Page Down
Fn-LeftArrow Home
Fn-RightArrow End
Ctrl-BrightnessDown Backlight off black & white mode
Ctrl-BrightnessUp Full brightness color mode
Ctrl-VolumeDown Mute
Ctrl-VolumeUp Full volume
__________________________________________________
Browser Stuff

If you’re using a Mighty Mouse you may want to be careful about that scroll ball- the horizontal scroll is page back/forward when used to view a page. I switched mine out for a Kensington rf Mouse with scroll wheel and it works pretty well. I actually bought it because it was orange colored.

Use the space bar to scroll a full page and the up/down keys to scroll slowly.
Backspace does NOT run back to the last page viewed, and bookmarking is scant at best (save stuff to the journal if you need to) Of course this will keep the kids out of much of the internet’s “funky” side- but I’m not sure if that is good or bad.
I think actually it would be better to have a full out version of Seamonkey (formerly the full version of Mozilla) available to users. I kow Firefox/Opera is available but
the advantage of having Web/Mail/Composer in one place might be useful.
This Browser crashes especially while trying to switch from one Richly endowed page to the next.
Forget reading mail on .Mac. Flash will load but it is oh so not pretty, and higher demanding video crashes stalls or sputters.
So keep it simple on this browser. Newpapers and Google searches and of course the OLPC wiki work fine.

New Category – XO Hints

owlgarden — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 13:16:01 +0000

Hi folks -
I added a new category dedicated to my personal journey with the One Laptop Per Child XO laptop.
My experience/advice/hints and associated tidbits of information are derived from
a background of attempting to manage *nix operating systems and applications.
(BSD Unix/Apple mainly with a smattering of Ubuntu and a kickstart from having an
opportunity to work at MIT for 10 years from 1987-1996.)
I have an G1G1 XO laptop and after spending a couple months with it, I thought I’d post some hints about using it- what i like or don’t like about it and just some general thoughts about computing in general that specifically relate to this interesting and controversial topic.
I’m not sure if I’ll just simply add stuff here or create a new section, but I suppose I can do whatever I like since I am the MASTER of MY DOMAIN.

XO UnBoxed

owlgarden — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 12:22:07 +0000

I came home today find my XO laptop at the door. If you ordered one and it’s “on its way” here’s what to expect when you
get it. I’ve been trying to register it but that hasn’t worked yet..though i did register at the wiki site.

Come see what the XO Unboxed looks like HERE

XO XO XO

owlgarden — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 12:15:48 +0000

Hugs and Kisses, Everyone!
No no no no no no…this isn’t about hugs and kisses.. although what a nice sentiment.
I’m talking about the XO laptop.

I’m waiting for this box to show up with a lovely little green laptop inside , which kind of replaces the 12″ G4 that I sold off last year, and though for my purposes- the iphone does what I needed a laptop for, i’m looking forward to a device as small and useful as the EMATE

The eMate was a Newton in “user friendly clothing”. Without an XO on hand to accurately talk about the experience, I can talk about the emate since I used one as a laptop from 1996-1999. It was quite a wonderful device. In an era of 10bt ethernet getting upgraded to 100bt- the emate had two pcmcia ports which allowed dialup and networked capabilities with a Farallon card. It also used IR (like a Newton) to print to particular IR laser printers. And the software set was awesome, a text editor, spreadsheet, calendar, addressbook and draw program. Tons of Newton Games (i liked startrek the best) and user friendlyness, Very good handwriting recognition (but it had a keyboard) and tons of battery life. It had a web browser and AppleSpeech – so it could announce
meetings! But -in retrospect- the coolest part was the development environment. I’m not a programmer but anyone who
opened up the Newton Dev kit and read through the process would get a great running start at object oriented development.
Persistent memory, Soups, and GUI all integrated to make a foundation for programming a Newton easy- and understandable from a non programmers perspective.
I know the XO will have various environments for programming. It’s not meant to be an “adult” laptop but i can see the adoption coming once these things (and especially Mesh Networking) become sociable. Social websites, like MySpace and FaceBook, LinkedIn and etc etc. could get a meaningful extension once collaboration via Mesh becomes commonplace (indeed the computer revolution is turning the corner on the MY COMPUTER generation- we’ll be using MY NETWORK instead-
the extensible computing ENVIRONMENT)
So even though the XO is primarily an education device- i think we’ll see it extend beyond that- not in commercial capacity (leave that to Intel) – but in a social capacity- a geek toy for kids- that will ultimately, not necessarily, be used
to extend the network of the world.