Keystrokes and shortcuts
Whilst I’m on the subject of keystrokes (in my head anyway), I thought I’d share a few more that I’ve found. Mac’s seem to be very keen on the backspace (Backspace) key. I was disappointed to discover my MacBook has no ‘delete’ key. Until I found a keystroke that does exactly this. I’m quite relieved.
fn + Backspace
Keystrokes are quite important to me because I don’t have a mouse. Of course I’ve got the trackpad, but when I’m poised to use the keyboard, it’s much easier to stick with the keyboard instead of moving to the pad.
On a PC I heavily rely on the Alt + Tab shortcut to switch between most recent windows. The Mac also has this features, and granted: it’s better that the PC version because I can also click on the icons. But what you cannot do is switch between windows of the same application. Not great if you’re copying content from one spreadsheet to another.
The best way of switching between windows I’ve found so far is the following:
F10 > arrow keys > Return
If anyone knows of a quick keystroke, I’ll be pleased to hear it. Too late, I’ve found it. It’s:
Command + `
I’m a happy boy!
One thing I wasn’t keen on, was the that my function keys (F1, F2 etc.) were set to control hardware, with software functions accessed via the fn modifier key. So I set mine to software mode in Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard.
The Expose - All windows features is a lot of fun (default key: F9). If you didn’t realise, you can use you arrows keys to navigate through these and hit Space or Return to select a window. I also found that once you’ve hit F9, you can then Tab through each application you have running. I haven’t found this amazingly useful so far, but it’s a great effect.
Another bunch of shortcuts I find very useful is jumping to the beginning and end of lines and files. I don’t like wasting time keying through hundreds of letters, or hitting Backspace a thousand times or using my mouse to scroll to the top of the page. On a full PC keyboard you have the Home and End keys. On a Mac it’s those diagonal arrows (North West for Home & South East for End). On the MacBook they are as follows:
Beginning of line: Command + left arrow
End of line: Command: right arrow
Beginning of file: Command + up arrow
End of file: Command + down arrow
And lets not forget a huge time saver… well all those milliseconds add up.
Jump a word: Option + right arrow or left arrow
Delete a word: Option + Backspace
Of course you can find all of these very easily with the best shortcut of all, the Spotlight search and type “shortcut”.
Spotlight: Command + Space
Select Keyboard & Mouse and Robert’s your fathers brother.
This entry was posted on Monday, July 10th, 2006 at 9:30 pm and is filed under Adventures of MatBook. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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