Action and navigation all from the keyboard

Thursday, 31 January 2013

This week’s Web and Chrome update is for lovers of keyboard shortcuts everywhere.

We wanted to offer shortcuts for all the different actions you can do on a Tweet — but to do that we first needed to provide a method of selecting the Tweet in question. And we wanted more: to provide a way to navigate across and up and down your columns using only the keyboard.

Now you can do both simply by using the arrow keys. Left and right arrow keys navigate across your columns (and you can still use 1-9 to jump to a specific column); up and down arrow keys move up and down the column currently selected. The selected Tweet is highlighted with a different background colour as illustrated below:

Since you’re now able to select an individual Tweet (by highlighting it using the arrow keys) we have a new set of shortcuts which enable you to perform Tweet-specific actions such as replying, retweeting, favoriting, DMing, as well as giving you a detail view and even a quick view of the Tweet owner’s profile.

The full list of keyboards shortcuts is available by pressing the “?” key.

The combination of these shortcuts makes TweetDeck usage even more efficient. For example, to quickly reply to a Tweet, use the arrow keys to navigate to it and then press “R”, type your response and hit Cmd+Return (Mac) or Ctrl+Enter (PC) to send — all without taking your fingers off the keyboard.

Also, as you’re navigating around, press “A” to jump straight into the Add Column menu or “S” for the search box; start typing to enter a search term. Finally, if you want to close a pop-up window, just press the Escape key and you’re back to your TweetDeck columns.

Simply refresh the Web app (web.tweetdeck.com) to get this latest update or restart your browser if you’re using the TweetDeck Chrome app.