Accents in Windows 8 on a Mac

Having been used to the Compose Key in Linux, I was trying to find out a way to type Portuguese (accented) characters in Windows 8 installed on a Macbook Pro. After reading up about the Dead key and use of AltGr key, I started experimenting with different key combinations.

My keyboard layout was set to US (English). While playing around with different keys, I just found out that you could use the left "control" key in almost the same way as you would use the "Compose Key" on Linux. For example,
 <Ctrl>` a 

gives you,
  à 

While using the control key, do mind the fact that in many instances, "CTRL"+<some aplhabet> are bound to some default actions, like <CTRL>+o opens a new file, etc.

Well, that seems to work well only in the address bar of Chrome. So, next I figured that you can actually use others keys as well instead of just the <Ctrl> key if you change your keyboard layout to US-International Keyboard layout.

<Alt> + ' a = á
<Alt> + ' e = é
<Alt> + ' i = í
<Alt> + ' o = ó
<Alt> + ' u = ú
<Alt> + ` a = à
<Alt> + ` e = è
<Alt> + ` i = ì
<Alt> + ` o = ò
<Alt> + ` u = ù
<Alt> + ' c = ç
<Alt> + ~ a = ã
<Alt> + ~ n = ñ
<Alt> + ~ o = õ
<Alt> + " a = ä
<Alt> + " e = ë
<Alt> + " i = ï
<Alt> + " o = ö
<Alt> + " u = ü

And so on..

You can find list of more characters that can be composed using this method here:
http://www.brazil-help.com/accent.htm