Many gamers have also found it useful since it is an unused key that they can utilize during gameplay.
#What is scroll lock used for code#
Why? When that screen appears the contents of the machine’s code is placed into a log file that is created and they want to see that code. Uber computer nerds have been able to utilize the scroll lock to trigger the Blue Screen of Death to appear by tweaking the registry. For many laptop users with poorly functioning touchpads the scroll lock can be quite handy for them when the cursor goes haywire. Later the scroll wheel was introduced on the mouse making scrolling through a document even easier.įor the most part the scroll lock is obsolete but there are still programs that incorporate it into them, most famously Microsoft Excel. Users could now click the scroll bars along the side of the window to scroll up or down the page. When a graphical interface was introduced along with a new device called a mouse the scroll lock became obsolete. By toggling the scroll lock it allowed for the reader to leave the cursor where it was and to move to another part of the document thereby saving their spot. Back in the good ol’ days of computers, before graphical interfaces (GUI) were introduced if you wanted to move your cursor on the screen to say read a document you had to use the arrow keys.
On old Windows PCs it was designed to allow someone to use the arrow keys to scroll through text. The scroll lock is a relic of days gone by. It lights up when you press it so it does something but what does the scroll lock key do? You know what the caps lock does, what the num lock does, page up and page down but there is one key that no one is really sure what it does. You probably know what the keys on your keyboard do since you use them almost every day.