Is there a way to pull down menus from the keyboard?

[Hoven]

I just bought a new eMac a few weeks ago (upgraded from my Beige PowerMac G3/OS9). I'm still getting used to OS X. My question is around the use of the keyboard. I'm a big keyboard fan... if I can keep my hands on the keyboard, I'm happy not to have to move over to the mouse. So, I'm looking for any way to enable keyboard shortcuts. In particular, I'd like to be able to pull down menus from the keyboard (because I tend to forget the keyboard shortcuts... which you can't see unless you CLICK on the menu item). It took a while to figure out that Command-BackSpace would send a selected item to the trash.
So... any help would be greatly appreciated, including a place to look up common and hidden keyboard shortcuts.

===[ Hoven ]===

 

[X-Baz]

I'm not at my Mac at the minute so I'm doing this from memory; but in System Preferences, select Full Keyboard Access (either the Keyboard pane or the Accessibility pane). There you can select your menu access keystrokes (Ctrl-F2 on mine). Then Ctrl-F2 and use the arrows to navigate the menus.

And there's a list of common keyboard shortcuts in the Aqua HI Guidelines (just search in Google). You may need registration to Apple's Developer Program, but that's free ... in fact just found it ...

http://developer.apple.com/document...ual/AquaHIGuidelines/AHIGUserInput/index.html

 

[MacManDan]

I think this is a little better link showing common (and not so common) keyboard shortcuts. At the bottom of the article there is also a fairly robust set of links to more information and keyboard shortcuts.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75459

As to your request for full menu access, the above post is a good response in that area.

 

[Gaz]

How do you guys find the full keyboard access?

Personally I find it a little weak and much prefer the way Windows handles keyboard access for menus and dialogs. I do prefer the shortcut keys on the mac though. I like being able to quickly access a single menu without having to start from one single entry point. Also it's a pain that you can't go to the bottom of the menu by pressing up when on the top item. While logically it's doesn't make as much sense..it's much more productive, well for me at least.

Maybe I should write a small app to do the menus..

 

[MacManDan]

Open the System Preferences, and find the "Keyboard" section. When you open the Keyboard Preferences, click on the "Full Keyboard Access" tab. This is assuming you have OS 10.2 (Jaguar).

Since I am a switcher also, I found the way Mac OS handles keyboard shortcuts (especially in terms of menus) to be pretty annoying, but I got used to it .. maybe they will adopt a better method soon enough

 

[irmongoose]

Or you could enable the keyboard mouse (using the number pad) and never have to touch your mouse again!



irmongoose

 

[Gaz]

Sorry I think you miss understood me

I've had no problems turning on full keyboard access..just not a fan of the implementation.

For me it's one of the few things stopping me using my mac for more development work. I need to use an environment that keeps up with me and I really don't like having to pick up the mouse unless I really really need to. I'm slowly starting to think that Apple needs to have more pro features that can be turned on by the user. I can see why the menus work as they do but it's just not the best for me right now.

Sorry it's one thing that really gets to me.

 

[Hoven]

Thanks all. I've found the keyboard control and the pages with the shortcuts. It'll take a bit to remember them all, but I will as I use them over and over.

Oh, and by the way, if I use Control+F2 and pull down the menu, (as Gaz points out) you can't scroll off the bottom to the top (or visa-versa), however you can start at the bottom by pressing the UP arrow, or start at the top of the list by pressing the DOWN arrow. Not as good as cycling all the way around, but at least you can cut your scrolling in half. Interestingly (and inconsistently) enough, though, you can scroll left and right and wrap around all the items along the menu.

Gaz, if you write a little utility to wrap around a pulled-down menu list, you've got a customer

Thanks again!