Chromebook For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Chapter 4

Getting Your Hands on the Keyboard and Touchpad

IN THIS CHAPTER

Taking a tour of the keyboard and touchpad

Discovering shortcut keys

Changing your keyboard and touchpad settings

Using an external keyboard and mouse

It’s hard telling whether Christopher Latham Sholes thought that his design and letter layout of the QWERTY keyboard would still be in use well into the 21st century. Regardless of his original intent, his legacy is alive and well today. When Sholes devised the layout and functionality of the keyboard that we use today, he intended to reduce typewriter jams and thereby speed up the typist. (“Glass half empty” people argue that the arrangement of letters really slowed down the typist and thus also reduced typewriter jams.)

Over the last 140 years, keyboard arrangement has changed very little. The basic layout of letters and numbers is the same; the only significant additions have been multipurpose keys like the ?/ key or the :; key. With the advent of word processors and computers, keys like Alt, Caps Lock, Num Lock, and Esc appeared, as well as function keys ...