I have been asked about the mysterious Scroll Lock key. Despite the popular belief it is not entirely useless. It’s functionality however depends on platform, and software you are running. Here are some of the more useful features of Scroll Lock:
- In Microsoft Office you can use it to make your arrow keys to pan the visible window area instead of moving the cursor
- In most Linux/Unix terminals it will prevent the text from scrolling off the screen. It will essentially pause the output of messages to the terminal until it is pressed again.
- When you use an external keyboard with Dell laptops it takes over the functionality Fn that is used in key combos to access vendor specific functionality such as switching between LCD and external monitor modes, disabling/enabling wifi, ejecting the CD and etc..
- If you use the Synergy to share mouse and keyboard between several computers it will lock you into the current screen so hitting screen edges will no longer move the pointer to another display.
So there you have it. It is not entirely useless, but you can definitely survive without it.
[tags]scroll lock, keyboard, keys, microsoft office, synergy, linux, dell, fn key, function key[/tags]