Posted on Monday, April 28th, 2014 by Will Hagle
ShortcutFoo makes it easy to learn shortcuts used in various applications and editors.
Many professional applications have a long list of commands that can be carried out by clicking around the toolbar with your computer’s mouse or, more simply, by pressing a few buttons. It can often be a long and arduous, trial-and-error process to learn these shortcut commands. 
ShortcutFoo offers a solution, training users of popular applications on the best shortcuts to use. The site offers shortcut training for a ton of applications, including Vim, Sublime, Emacs, TextMate, Visual Studio, Excel, Command Line, Photoshop, Git, Eclipse, ReSharper, IntelliJ IDEA, RubyMine, AppCode, PyCharm, WebStorm/PhpStorm and Gmail. If you want to learn Excel shortcuts, for instance, ShortcutFoo tells you a certain command — such as “Insert current date: Control + ;” — and has you type it in. As you learn the shortcuts, the site keeps challenging you to make sure you’re remembering what key combinations lead to what results for your specific application.
There are several different methods of learning on ShortcutFoo, including Intervals (which uses spaced repetition training to help maximize memory of the shortcuts), Drills (which require you to complete a certain amount of shortcuts within an allotted time period), and Practice (which is more open-ended). 
The site also offers a comprehensive list of all the shortcuts you’ve learned if you need to reference it. The site is free to use with limited features, but if you really want to master a specific app, you’ll have to pay. The Basic package is a one time payment of $4.99, and features several levels of training, while the Unlimited package costs $14.99. There’s also a middle tier, the Pro Package, which costs $9.99. Whether you choose to pay for ShortcutFoo or not, the site does offer great instruction for the incredibly useful — but not often taught — skill of knowing how to use shortcuts.
