How to type foreign accents (tildes) and special characters without a numeric keypad

Attempting to type foreign accents or tildes is not easy when we are using a laptop that doesn't have a numeric keypad. With a numeric keypad we would just hold down the Alt key and type a number to input special characters. For instance, in order to input the "é" character we would hold down Alt and at the same time we would type 130. But without a numeric keypad we are forced to use the Character Map that comes installed with our operating system, which for most people would be too complicated and time consuming.

We also have the option to use the OpenOffice extension: "Compose Special Characters". OpenOffice.org is the equivalent of Microsoft Office, but with the difference that it costs nothing, because it's an open source project. The first time you use the Compose Special Characters extension you'll have to spend a few extra minutes because you need to create a shortcut for every special character you may want to have available for future use. This is well worth the time, because once you have the shortcuts stored it will be very easy to type accented characters.

What I usually do, whenever I'm working on my laptop and need to type articles in my native language (Spanish), is first use OpenOffice to create my document, then I copy the text from there and paste it into my browser or wherever I need it.

To allow you to take advantage of this wonderful free software, I'll show the steps to create a shortcut for a sample accented character. We’ll start this tutorial with the letter "ñ". Once you learn the technique, you can apply it to any character you desire.

If you don't have OpenOffice installed on your computer, you need to download it from: http://download.openoffice.org/ and install it.
Download the free extension Compose Special Characters from http://www.productivityapps.com/csc.html
Start OpenOffice by clicking on the shortcut on your desktop:

OpenOffice.org Desktop Shortcut