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The editor has key equivalents for all the buttons (Ctrl+B for bold, etc.). However, the most annoying thing to type is <kbd></kbd>, but there's no key equivalent for this. Can haz?

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  • But how often do you need to use it? So far, every control that is used most frequently in the editor to improve the format of the post has a shortcut. How often do we really need to use the <kbd> tags? I mean really need it. I just don't see this being accepted by the team if they think it was necessary to remove shortcuts to save (which is much more useful than <kbd> tags IMHO).
    – Jeff Mercado
    Aug 17, 2011 at 23:37
  • 1
    Are you saying <kbd> doesn't improve post quality? I was going to edit a post to add <kbd> tags to improve it, but found it annoying when I had more than one set to add. This is also especially noticeable on sites that tend to use a lot of keyboard shortcuts, such as AskDifferent. Also, what do you mean by "to remove shortcuts to save"?
    – jtbandes
    Aug 18, 2011 at 0:12
  • No, I'm saying it's not used as much as the rest of the other controls that do have shortcuts. At one point, it was possible to save drafts through a keyboard shortcut. If you look at Jeff's answer, it seems highly likely that this would be rejected for pretty much the same reason, to save on the code size.
    – Jeff Mercado
    Aug 18, 2011 at 0:17
  • @Jeff This is very different from saving drafts. All the shortcut has to do is insert the tiny text snippet.
    – user154510
    Aug 18, 2011 at 2:33
  • @Matthew: I know that, the point I was trying to make was that the shortcut was removed to reduce the size of the code for a not-so-important feature. Even small insignificant things such as this get shot down, especially if it's something that a user script can fix. I'm rather skeptical they'd add in another keyboard shortcut for a feature that isn't used on a regular basis but rather for something that would be used every day.
    – Jeff Mercado
    Aug 18, 2011 at 2:48
  • What on earth is wrong with creating an entirely fictitious kbd key using the kbd tag itself??
    – johnfowles2
    Aug 13, 2014 at 17:21

4 Answers 4

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In the new Stacks Editor, the shortcut Keyboard Ctrl-' is introduced.
Reference: https://github.com/StackExchange/Stacks-Editor/issues/51
Using the new shortcut you are able to create the Keyboard text in the editor.

Screenshot for reference:

Keyboard shortcut added - image

GIF for reference:

Keyboard shortcut added - gif

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12

There's a userscript for this. It adds a keyboard shortcut (AltK), and a kbd button like this:

kbd button appearance

Update: The script now also adds a few other useful markdown shortcuts as well. See the post about the script at Stack Apps.


Directly install it from GitHub. (Requires Tampermonkey, or Violentmonkey, or equivalent.)

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  • 1
    Nice. I have installed it. It makes life easier...
    – Himanshu
    Jan 5, 2013 at 6:44
2

If every possible feature had an associated UI button to do the same thing, then there would be a stronger and stronger precedent to always have a UI button to do every little editing task. Then it would be impossible to add a new feature without also adding a new UI button. This is a fast track to a cluttered, unusable UI.

Also, people have been successfully training their fingers to type open-close HTML tags for twenty years. Get used to it.

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  • 17
    Agreed, and I don't need a button, I'd just like a keyboard shortcut.
    – jtbandes
    Aug 18, 2011 at 4:04
-4

Adding a keyboard shortcut would probably also include making people aware of its existence? Or make people who already knew about <kbd> use it more often? Please, no, don't increase using <kbd>.

(The formatting only looks acceptable to me on the Apple site. But even there it's not really needed, I feel. On all other sites: ugly, and hence, for me, annoying. As an aside: I see abuse of irrelevant inline tags too. Like . I rarely see a true need for <kbd> or [tag].)

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7
  • I suspect that this (the possibility of increasing awareness about the <kbd> tag) is precisely the reason that we don't have an easier way to use it. Jeff disabled <kbd> completely here on Meta once, citing ridiculous overuse, and he'd probably do the same thing across the network if it became a problem. Given that I like it and wish for it to stay around, I'm not sure a shortcut is a good idea...
    – Cody Gray - on strike
    Aug 18, 2011 at 8:02
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    @Cody What would you say about that though? Getting to Windows 7 shutdown menu with the keyboard (see Jeff's edits)
    – slhck
    Aug 30, 2011 at 17:45
  • Nice find, @slhck. And, I wonder if that's about testing a keyboard shortcut; editing in HTML is not a fun task...
    – Arjan
    Aug 30, 2011 at 17:54
  • what on earth is wrong with using the kbd tag itself?? thus:- <kbd>kbd</kbd>
    – johnfowles2
    Aug 13, 2014 at 17:25
  • OK simple answer it don't work!!
    – johnfowles2
    Aug 13, 2014 at 17:26
  • yet <kbd>caps Lock</kbd> does or does it??
    – johnfowles2
    Aug 13, 2014 at 17:28
  • Umm... not only the apple site. Many software related sites, like Super User, Graphic Design and Blender to name a few, all use the kbd functionality a lot.
    – GiantCowFilms
    Jul 10, 2015 at 15:00

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