From The Complete Guide to Google Wave: How to Use Google Wave
| ← Chapter 5: Dive Deeper into Wave | Chapter 6: Master Wave's Interface | Chapter 7: Wave Gadgets → |
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Once you know how to use Wave, this chapter offers advanced techniques for navigating its interface like an expert.
If you've gotten this far, you're ready to go beyond Google Wave's default layout and its point-and-click buttons and menus. In this chapter, you'll train your fingers to use keyboard shortcuts to get the most common Wave tasks done without the inefficiencies of the mouse. You'll customize the Wave client layout to optimize it for your netbook as well as your widescreen monitor. Finally, you'll get intimate with Wave's interface, which is packed with visual cues and hooks into its different features.
Competent Wave users, it's time to graduate to a Wave black belt.
Contents |
Get to Know Wave's Keyboard Shortcuts
The fastest way to use any software is straight from the keyboard, eliminating as many time-wasting reaches for the mouse as possible. Like Gmail and Google Reader, Wave comes with a host of keyboard shortcuts for navigating and editing waves as well as controlling in-wave image slide shows.[1]
Navigation Shortcuts
Move around in a wave and scroll any panel using the following keyboard shortcuts. Mac users: substitute Cmd for the Ctrl key.
| Shortcut Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Up/Down Arrows | Moves you up and down the blips in a wave. |
| Home | Takes you to the first blip in a wave. |
| End | Takes you to the last blip in a wave. |
| Space | Takes you to the next unread blip in a wave. |
| Ctrl+Space | Marks all blips as read when focus is on the Wave panel. |
| Page Up/Page Down | Scrolls a panel up and down a page at a time. |
Wave Editing Shortcuts
Edit and reply to blips with these keyboard shortcuts. Mac users: substitute Cmd for the Ctrl key.
| Shortcut Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Enter | Replies to a blip at the same level of indentation. |
| Shift+Enter
(view mode) | Replies to a blip at the end of a wave. The new blip appears at the same indentation level, at the very end of the wave. |
| Ctrl+E | Edits a blip. |
| Shift+Enter
(edit mode) | Ends your blip editing session (same as the Done button). |
| Ctrl+Enter
(edit mode) | Reply inline where your cursor is. |
| Ctrl+Z | Undo your last edit. |
| Ctrl+Y | Redo your last edit. |
| Ctrl+B | Bolds/unbolds selected text. |
| Ctrl+I | Italicizes/unitalicizes selected text. |
| Ctrl+U | Underlines/removes underline from selected text. |
| Ctrl+K | Adds a link. |
| Ctrl+[n] | Makes the current line a heading, where [n] = 1 through 4 for different heading levels. |
| Ctrl+5 | Adds bullets. |
| Ctrl+6 | Removes formatting from text. |
| Ctrl+7 | Left-aligns text written in left-to-right languages. |
| Ctrl+8 | Right-aligns text written in right-to-left languages. Note that this is not the same as choosing the right alignment button from the wave's toolbar; it is for right-to-left languages like Hebrew or Arabic. |
Image Slide Show Navigation Shortcuts
When you're viewing a wave that contains multiple images, from the Images menu at the bottom of the wave, select View as slide show. (Sadly there's no keyboard shortcut to launch a slide show—yet.)
Once you're in the slide show, navigate the photos using these keyboard shortcuts.
| Shortcut Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Right Arrow | Moves to the next slide. |
| Left Arrow | Moves to the previous slide. |
| Home | Moves to the first slide. |
| End | Moves to the last slide. |
| Esc | Ends slide show mode and returns to the wave. |
Start Small with the Most Useful Shortcuts
A compiled list of keyboard shortcuts like the ones in the previous sections can be overwhelming to the point of confusion. As with learning keyboard shortcuts for any program, start small with the ones that perform the most common actions and are easy to remember, such as Enter to reply to a selected blip, and Shift+Enter to finish editing your current blip. Ctrl+I, Ctrl+U, and Ctrl+B (to italicize, bold, and underline text) all work the same way they do in your word processor. Ctrl+E is easy to remember because it lets you Edit a selected wave.
Once you've got the basic, easy-to-remember shortcuts down, move onto a few more and repeat.
Wave Interface Conventions
Not only is Wave audacious in its attempt to reinvent email, it also takes some bold bets with new interface controls and visual cues that are unconventional and therefore unintuitive to new users. In this section, you'll learn how to recognize the ways Wave denotes things such as blip states, wave status, tags, and folders. Then, you'll notice the Wave buttons and menus that are tucked away in less-than-obvious places. Here are a few visual cues and interface conventions worth pointing out as you get more comfortable in Wave.
The Non-Standard Wave Scrollbar
You might find that the scrollbar in Google Wave behaves a little differently from scrollbars in other Google products. To use it, you can drag the bar or you can use the arrows on either end of it—clicking the arrows without moving your mouse allows you to very quickly scroll up and down the page.Even at this early stage, at least one developer has created a Google Chrome extension that reverts Wave's custom scrollbars to Chrome's native scrollbars.[4]
Green Bars, Outlines, and Dots
Green is a very important color in Wave—it indicates activity, online status, unread, and selected blips. The green dot on a contact icon means that person is online. When you select a blip, it gets a dark green border around it (and you can perform actions on it with keyboard shortcuts). A lighter green vertical line in a blip's left margin means it's unread. (Press the spacebar or click to select the next unread blip in a wave, and watch its green vertical line fade.) A flashing green bar at the top of your Wave client alerts you to an incoming ping, or a change to a minimized wave. The number of unread blips in a wave are highlighted in green when that wave is listed in the Search panel.
The Wave Timestamp Drop-down Menu
The disabled Hide all replies item suggests that toggling every inline blip to expanded and collapsed view in one shot will be available at some point. Right now you can click the +/- (plus/minus) speech bubble at the top of any inline blip to hide or show it.
The ... (Ellipses) Toolbar Button
Wave's toolbars are packed with buttons that take up some width, and with three panels across, smaller screens and narrow windows can cut buttons off. That's when Wave collapses the displaced buttons into a drop-down menu you can access from the ... (ellipses) button, on the far right of the toolbar, as shown in Figure 6-2.
Similarly, Wave collapses a long list of wave participants into an expandable + (plus) button with a label that reads something like "1 more," as shown in Figure 6-2. To see the full list of participants on the wave, click the small + (plus) sign to expand it.
Panel Manipulation Buttons and the "Window Shade" Pulldown
Wave provides panel manipulation buttons in the upper right corner of an open wave's blue top bar, as shown in Figure 6-2. From left to right: the Minimize button shrinks a wave and docks it at the top of your Wave client, next to the Google Wave logo. The Maximize button minimizes all the panels except the open wave, filling the entire screen with it. The Close button (which looks like an X) closes the wave.
The Navigation, Contacts, and Search panels have only the Minimize button available—not Maximize or Close. When you minimize one of those panels, they dock at the top of your Wave client, in the space next to the Google Wave logo.
When a minimized panel or wave is docked at the top of the screen, a small down arrow gives you a "window shade" pull-down view that slides down over whatever appears in the main area of the screen. Click it to access what's in that list without rearranging your current workspace. In Figure 6-3, the Search panel is minimized to give the open wave more room for viewing and editing. But when you click the down arrow on the docked Search panel, it pulls down over the wave's contents.
You can also expand and contract the width of any Wave panel. Hover your cursor along the edge of any panel, and your pointer changes to indicate that you can click and pull that panel wider or narrower. This same technique works between stacked panels, like Navigation and Contacts: you can make Contacts taller while making Navigation shorter, by clicking and dragging the Contacts panel's top edge.
Customize the Wave Interface
Now that you know how to minimize Wave panels, if you prefer a certain Wave layout, you can bookmark a Wave URL that restores that layout automatically when you visit Wave. You can also customize the order, size, and layout of the Wave client's links and panels. Finally, you can open multiple waves at once to multi-task on a big screen.
Bookmark Your Preferred Wave Layout
Netbook owners or those who keep Wave open in a small window appreciate the ability to minimize unneeded Wave panels and maximize the reading or writing area on the wave they're currently working on. To load Wave with certain modules minimized by default, you can use a Wave URL that contains the #minimized parameter. For example,
https://wave.google.com/wave/#minimized:nav,minimized:contact
launches Wave with the Navigation and Contacts panels minimized. The
https://wave.google.com/wave/#minimized:nav,minimized:contact,minimized:search
URL minimizes the Navigation, Contacts, and Search panels, as shown in Figure 6-5.
While you're looking at Wave URLs, the observant will notice that every individual wave has an ID that appears in your browser's address bar when you click the wave. This means you can bookmark or IM a link to a wave to anyone who can see it. (That is, you can share a link to a public wave to anyone with a Wave account; but sending a wave's link to someone not participating in it generates a message saying they don't have access to it.)
Reorder and Color Navigation Panel Links
From the Inbox down to the Trash, every link in Wave's Navigation panel is configurable. You can assign it a custom color or move it up or down the list. The default links are Inbox, All, By Me, Requests, Spam, Settings, and Trash. Each is a system-generated link to a specific search, for example, Inbox runs an in:inbox search, By Me runs a by:me search, and so on. (Only the All link doesn't display search results for waves: it shows you every wave you have access to, unfiltered.)
To rearrange the links, or to assign an individual link a custom color, click the link to select it (it turns green), then click the down arrow that appears on the right. A drop-down menu appears that lets you move the link up or down the list, or set a color, as shown in Figure 6-4.
Open Multiple Waves
To open multiple waves, Ctrl+Click the waves you want in the Search panel. Mac users, use Cmd+Click for the same effect. If the Search and/or Navigation and Contacts panels are open, Wave stacks the clicked waves on top of one another in the right column.
However, if the other panels are minimized as shown in Figure 6-5, Wave maximizes the first wave you open across both columns. Then, when you Ctrl+Click or Cmd+Click to open more waves, Wave pushes the first wave you opened into the right column, and stacks the rest on the left as shown.
What Does THAT Do?
The preview release of Wave is still in an unfinished state, so a few items in its interface act as placeholders for functionality that's either on its way or not needed yet.
Navigation Panel: Requests
The Requests link on the Navigation Panel will list "Waves from users not in your contact list." Right now, waves from everyone appear in your Inbox. But once Requests is working, presumably waves from people you haven't whitelisted by putting them in your Contacts won't go in your Inbox, they'll go in Requests. Perhaps this is one way that Wave will head off potential problems with Wave spam.
Navigation Panel: Settings
The Settings link on the Navigation panel lists system settings waves. Right now one of those waves is "Under Construction," but another is available and working. As discussed in the next chapter, the Extension Settings wave under Settings is where you can view and uninstall Wave gadgets.
Navigation Panel: Spam
One of the big problems with email that Wave wants to solve—or avoid as much as possible—is spam. Still, Wave includes a Spam! button on the Search panel and wave toolbar that lets you mark waves as spam. When you do, that wave moves from your Inbox to the in:spam search results listing that you can see when you click the Spam link in the Navigation panel.
Now that you're a verifiable Wave expert, see how Wave extensions in the form of gadgets and bots let you do more in Wave.
References
- ↑ Google Wave Help: What are the keyboard shortcuts?, Google.com
- ↑ Yaili's Flickr Photostream: Google Wave scrollbar, Flickr.com
- ↑ Google Wave Help: What's the deal with the scrollbar?, Google.com
- ↑ Google Wave Native Scrollbars Extension, UniformedOpinion.com
| ← Chapter 5: Dive Deeper into Wave | Chapter 6: Master Wave's Interface | Chapter 7: Wave Gadgets → |
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