News to me!

I learned some new things recently, and remembered something I’d forgotten: YouTube has keyboard shortcuts.

You can recover from a too-aggressive Google Contacts clear out. Windows Update broke Internet Explorer. Again. But you can fix that. Or you can use a decent browser.

You don’t need a mouse to navigate YouTube

I like keyboard shortcuts, and I have no idea how I managed not to know that YouTube offers several useful ones. What do you want to do? Place the mouse cursor in the video, and try these key combinations.

(Some only work when the video is paused. Others work at any time. Experiment!)

              Action                                                              Key

• Play or pause video                                         Space bar or k
  Go back 5 seconds                                          Left arrow
• Go back 10 seconds                                        J
• Go ahead 5 seconds                                       Right arrow
• Go ahead 10 seconds                                     l
• Go to a section of the video                             Numbers 1 – 9 on top row, not number pad
• (5 goes to 50%, 9 goes to 90%, etc.)
• Go to the beginning of the video                      0 or Home key
• Go to the end of the video                               End key
• Increase volume                                              Up arrow
• Decrease volume                                             Down arrow
• Mute                                                                m
• Turn captions on/off                                         c
• Go full screen                                                   f
• Quit full screen                                                 Esc

I’m sure there are more shortcuts out there. Send email to me at [email protected] and I’ll share in a future column. Thanks to faithful reader Eric for sending along the first batch.

You can easily recover your deleted Google Contacts if you are quick

Every so often I clean out my Google Contacts. Sometimes I delete a contact or a group I meant to save. Whoops!

It turns out you can go back in time and undo those changes. Better still, it’s easy.

In your browser, head over to the Google Contacts page. If you’re using the new layout:

• Click on the three horizontal lines at the top left of the window (That’s called the hamburger menu.)
• Scroll down to Undo changes and click there
• Choose your timeframe
• Click on Confirm

If you’re using the old-style contact layout:

• Click on More near the top of the window
• Click on Restore Contacts
• Choose your timeframe
• Click on Confirm

Holy smokes what a time saver.

You can hide the Search Bar in Internet Explorer for Windows 10 … again

A Windows Update on Sept.12 changed the look of Internet Explorer in Windows 10. Microsoft really, really, really wants you to have a Search bar in the upper right corner of the IE Window. 

If you hid that thing months ago, you probably don’t even remember how you did it, and now it’s back.

Banish it again:

• Open Internet Explorer
• Right-click on an empty space near the tabs
• Clear the check box next to "Show tabs on a separate row"

You’re done. At least for now.

If you’d like to try a better, faster, more secure, more flexible browser, consider Google Chrome, available here, or Mozilla Firefox, here.

Internet Explorer is terrible on modern versions of Windows, and dangerous on anything else. Read why here, or just take my word for it.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.