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Keyboard shortcuts for any web page

Vimium gives you a way to navigate a web page without using the mouse.

I now use this browser extension all the time, in fact I feel lost when using someone else’s computer and have to resort to reaching for the mouse.

It simply gives each hyper link a unique character code e.g. ‘gw’ which you type to select the link. To trigger the codes simply press ‘f’ on a web page.

Vimium is free and open source, and supports Chrome and Firefox.

https://vimium.github.io/

 

Do you have any keyboard shortcut productivity tricks? Let me know.

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Text to UML

The problem with using drawing tools to produce your UML diagrams is that it makes it hard for someone else to maintain. How many times have you come across a document/wiki you need to update and just have a .PNG file for the sequence diagram, to make changes you now have to redraw the diagram from scratch! Rats!

Text to UML solves this problem by giving you the source code for a diagram. Now all you have to do is edit the source code and re-render and voila, your existing sequence diagram is up to date, lovely.

Other advantages are:

  • It’s much quicker to make changes
  • You don’t have to worry about consistent layout
  • Diagrams can be generated

The best tool I’ve found so far is PlantUml it supports most UML diagram types. PlantUml is open source available on SourceForge

Martin Fowler also seems to prefer a text to UML approach