Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com.
On today's episode let's look at how you can use functions like page up, page down, home,
and end even if you are working on a MacBook that doesn't have these keys on the keyboard.
Now if you used an older computer or maybe you have the current Mac extended keyboard
for desktop machine there are some keys on the right, page up, page down, home, and end,
that you may use a lot.
For instance, page down will take me through the different pages one at a time of this
Pages document.
Page up likewise.
End will take me all the way to the end and home will take me all the way to the beginning.
These are very useful keys but you won't find them on the wireless keyboard and you won't
find them on any MacBook which make up the majority of Macs sold today.
So what do you do?
There is an alternative.
You can actually access the functionality of these keys even if the keys are not on
your keyboard.
So the thing to do is to look for the fn key.
This is usually on the MacBook at the lower left hand corner.
On some other keyboards and older keyboards it is sometimes near the upper right.
But it has just the letters fn on it standing for function.
You can use these to alter the arrow keys to perform these functions.
For instance if you want to do page down use fn and the down key.
Likewise fn and the up arrow key will go back up.
If you want to go home fn and the left arrow key will do it and fn and right will do end.
The same exact functionality as page up, page down, home, and end but without actually having
those keys on your keyboard.
Now if you are using Safari at the moment and you are not anywhere where entering a
space is going to do something else, for instance if I was typing in a field then a space would
give me a space character, if I had my cursor over this video space would start it.
But if I had my cursor somewhere else over some uneditable text or the background I could
use the spacebar to page down and shift spacebar to page up.
This only works if the spacebar won't do any other function when you are viewing something
in Safari.
Now usually with the home and page up, page down keys there is a forward delete key.
This deletes in the opposite direction from the regular delete key.
So I'm going to put the cursor right here and if I hit delete, of course, it deletes
back.
I can delete forward using the fn key and the delete key.
You can see it deletes the character in front.
It is the same as using the forward delete key on an extended or older keyboard.
Now Home and End, or fn left and fn right, will actually move your view but it won't
move the cursor.
So, for instance, if I were to scroll down and put my cursor here at the end of this
paragraph and then do fn left it takes me to the beginning of the document but the cursor
isn't there.
If I were to actually insert a space at this point, you can see it jumps down to where
the cursor was.
That is because it doesn't move the cursor.
But you can actually move the cursor using other keys.
You can use Command up and Command down.
Command up looks like it works just like the Home button, or fn left.
But the difference is that the cursor is now there at the beginning.
Likewise Command down will look like it works like fn right but it puts the cursor there
at the end.
Now there is something that does the opposite of this.
If I put my cursor somewhere here in the middle of the document and then say I'm scrolling
and looking at something else and I've lost my cursor and I want to know where it is a
lot of people will hit the spacebar to insert a space.
It jumps to there and then you delete the space.
But you can do that without inserting a character like that.
You can do Control, not command, but Control L and it will actually take you to where your
cursor is.
It puts the cursor actually as close as it can to the middle of the screen.