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I'm looking at various laptops for one to program on while traveling and I found this one: the Asus Flip Chromebook:

Asus Flip Chromebook

It's already hard to find sub-15" laptops with a Del/PgUp/PgDn/End row which I use religiously while coding but most laptops have at least an "Fn" key to acquire most of this functionality from the arrow keys. But this laptop doesn't even have that.

I understand that this laptop is a Chromebook and isn't targeted at programmers but if someone wanted to use a laptop like this for programming, how can an environment and IDE be setup to account for these missing keys?

For example, to to select the current line I type Shift+Home if I'm at the end, Home+Shift+End if I'm below, etc.

What solutions and different workflows are available for this kind of keyboard?

Zhro
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2 Answers2

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Official Chromebook Shortcuts

It looks like Google may have you covered here, with their list of Chromebook-specific keyboard shortcuts. They do include shortcuts that work as Home, End, Page Up, Down, Delete.

Editor-specific shortcuts

If you're finding these shortcuts aren't working for your purposes, you can also check to see if the specific cloud IDE has keyboard shortcuts available, such as these for Repl.it. You might want to search up to see if there are keyboard shortcuts available for your preferred editor.

Personal Recommendations if the above options don't help

Some combinations I've noticed work:

  • Alt+left arrow to replace Home
  • Alt+right arrow to replace End

You can also add in the shift key here to highlight to the beginning and the end of the line respectively.

Page Up and Down are tricky but if you're using them to go to the top of the doc, you can make use of Ctrl+A which highlights everything. Then you can use the arrow keys to go to the left or right of the total selection:

  • Ctrl+A then left arrow to go to the top
  • Ctrl+A then right arrow to go to the bottom

If you're wanting to highlight a selection from the current cursor position to the top or bottom, you could try just holding shift and an up or down arrow key.

Note: With any navigation shortcuts you find, you can try to throw in shift when pressing them to also highlight at the same time, though, there will likely be some trial and error.

baelx
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To use the Home, Page up, Page down, and End functions hold down the Fn key and press the corresponding arrow key.

Combination Function Fn key with Left arrow Home Fn key with Up arrow Page up Fn key with Down arrow Page down Fn key with Right arrow End

Bader Ali
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