You were typing while I was thinking, I just saw your post

There must be some way to do it with the keyboard, surely? I mean seriously, it's the law!

*Googles, despite the fact he should be working on a project with a deadline of last week*

Yes, using escape or the space bar.

Well that didn't take long. It's an option which is disabled in default, WTF?!?!

http://www.davidalison.com/2009/04/two- ... rough.html




You still need to select the button to use the spacebar, unless there's only a choice of default and cancel.

Interesting, I have different control panels for Keyboard and Mouse. What version of OS X are you using JJW?

What gives?

When I press Tab the thin blue line moves between the elements on a dialogue box. I then can press space to select it. Does this not work for anyone else?

Not for me, but then I don't have all the assistive technologies turned on. I don't need them and they'd get in my way.

Yes but that's not what people are used to.

It makes much more sense to me that you can use the arrow keys to move the solid blue selector and then hit return to action.

Escape as a shortcut for cancel is great, and space bar as a shortcut for the secondary action is great, but I still think it would be better if you could move the solid selection. It would help switchers.

Or, maybe Microsoft could enable space bar and tab, to help switchers.

I agree having the arrows able to do things would be nice, but as for the solid sector moving this does not seem to offer any real advantage. For most occasions all it does is add an extra key press. i.e. Tab + Return instead of Space.

No it wouldn't. Well, it would to begin with, as they become accustomed to "another way", but if you've switched you shouldn't expect it to be the same as what you're leaving behind.

Here's a not entirely unrelated example: in my trade, the DTP application we all used was QuarkXPress. Power users knew keyboard shortcuts to perform a myriad of different actions. It made you fast and productive. Along came Adobe with InDesign, and some of us switched sides. To help us along, Adobe thoughtfully provided a set of QuarkXPress keyboard shortcuts to help us feel right at home. Lovely.

The problem was it meant I would never harness the full power of InDesign, and it hampered me when trying to use the Adobe standard shortcuts in their other applications. In the end, I forced myself to use the Adobe shortcuts in InDesign, and I'm much better for it.

Back on topic, if Apple have added these dialog and navigation features, that's great. If it helps disabled people, that's great. But I'm happy not having OS X behave like Windows by default, thanks. I mean, will Apple map the Command key to Control to make Windows users feel at home? How many old Mac users know you can work menus with arrow keys? I use it once or twice, then forget it because it's not the way I work, but the feature doesn't get in my way after that.

*sigh* - they are enabled by default.

On Windows, the space bar presses the currently highlighted button (thin blue line if that's your theme). Escape is always Cancel, and Enter is the default button (usually "OK"). Tab moves forwards through the tab stops (that's why we call them tab stops) and shift-tab moves backwards.

However, we can also use the arrows to move between stops in the same frame, and any other shortcuts that may be indicated by an underlined character.


I'm using Windows. That was a screen shot from the site I linked to. If I used OS X I wouldn't have asked the question

Did I detect a sigh there? I did not know that you had all of those little shortcuts. Nice.





There are so many hidden features in Windows that make it far more flexible than a Mac. Though I was surprised to find this one.

I've always considered them "standard". They've been used on CPM and Unix before DOS, Windows, Linux or Mac OS were invented.

As for shortcuts, I prefer these:



I bet you don't get those on iCanwrite or whatever it's called so there

Actually, some of those tools are not as useful as you'd hope.

I just clicked "Extend Deadline" and received the message: "Error. Deadline exceeds employment period."

The computer then generated a massive DUMP file and shut down