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Thursday, January 27, 2005
I Miss My Windows Accelerator Keys
Much has transpired since my last post. I am sitting on a plane tapping out this blog entry on a PowerBook G4. I’ve only had it since last Friday and this is my first trip on the road with it. It feels a little risky since I left my Toshiba M205 at home. Hopefully, I have everything I need. We’ll see.
For the last five days, I’ve been working on both machines. At work, I tend to revert to the familiar PC platform. At home, I use the Mac, because I have more time to experiment and less pressure to be productive. So far, I’m really enjoying the experience. Getting the Mac setup has been easier than I anticipated.
For starters, I love the look and feel of the PowerBook. It has a great keyboard and an elegant design. In fact, the “wow” factor has kept me from taking it to meetings. I think it would simply be too distracting. (That’s kind of a back-handed compliment to the Apple design team.) However, I do have one complaint: I miss my Windows keyboard accelerator keys.
I hate using the mouse, and especially a touchpad, so this is a major annoyance. There doesn’t appear to be any simple way to pull down the File menu without using a mouse. Instead, I have to take my hands off the keyboard, mouse up to the menu bar, and then click on the File menu.
That doesn’t sound like such a big deal until you compare it to the Windows keyboard equivalent: Alt-F. Thats it. Essentially, a single keystroke. Over, the course of a day, I do this dozens of times, so there is some loss of productivity. Perhaps it is offset by other Mac interface improvements; I don’t know. But for now, it’s still annoying.
Of course, I can buy QuicKeys 3.0 for the Mac. I’m using a trial version now. This is basically a macro editor and processor for the Mac environment. (In fact, there’s even a Windows version.) However, the price is steep—$99.95. And while I have created some pretty cool shortcuts, I have yet to find a way to simply pull down a menu and leave it on the screen while I manually make my menu selection. If anyone knows how to program this in QuicKeys—or any other program—please me know.
On the positive side, Mac OS X, and most of the applications I’m running, make liberal use of shortcut keys. And, using QuicKeys, I can create shortcuts for those that don’t have them assigned. So you could argue that I can by-pass the menus most of the time any way, so the accelerator keys issue is moot. We’ll see. First, I have to get more familiar with the interface. I feel like I’m learning to type all over again.
January 27, 2005 at 11:56 AM in Mac | Permalink
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Comments
Are you also having troubles with the one vs. two button mouse? In the brief time I used a Mac, that aspect bothered me the most, losing the right click capability. Apple has probably come up with ways around it, but that's what would present a challenge to me if I ever went over to the "other" (not going to say dark) side.
Posted by: MarcV | Jan 27, 2005 7:04:00 AM
Have you looked at the options in the Keyboard & Mouse Preference Pane (Apple menu > System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse)? Click on the Keyboard Shortcuts tab to assign/modify shortcuts for application as well as system functions. If you turn on Full Keyboard Access, you can access GUI elements (buttons, menus, etc.) from the keyboard.
Posted by: lhoong | Jan 27, 2005 8:16:30 AM
What size screen did you get? Do you find yourself trying to flip the screen around to write on it, like your M200?
Posted by: Rob Bushway | Jan 27, 2005 9:06:16 AM
Hiya - on my Mac, I have full keyboard access turned on (as described above). Control - F2 allows me to "focus on menu" which is enigmatically what you're looking for I think. It pulls down the Apple menu and then you can use the arrow keys to select any menu option. Just make sure "focus on menu" is selected in your Keyboard Shortcuts tab and you remember whatever key combination you set it to. :)
Posted by: Mark J. Harris | Jan 27, 2005 11:45:00 AM
Oh! I don't remember whether the PowerBooks have separate function keys - you might have to press Function-Control-F2, which sounds like a pain. I think you can change what you set it to, though!
Mark
Posted by: Mark J. Harris | Jan 27, 2005 11:46:47 AM
Have you taken a look at Quicksilver? (http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/)
Posted by: Bronwyn | Jan 27, 2005 12:49:12 PM
MarcV, let me encourage you to find a friend with an Apple who will let you spend a little time with it. Plug in any old two-button USB wheel mouse and you'll be off and running. The whole one-button thing is kind of silly, since "contextual menus" have been available for years on the Mac. I don't know anyone who uses a Mac who doesn't use a two or three-button mouse.
Michael, Bronwyn's recommendation is definitely something to spend some time on--Quicksilver is an extraordinary little piece of programming that will change your life--but it won't solve your menu woes. Mark suggests a good option, but I think most power-users of the Mac will tell you that they simply use the straight keyboard shortcuts in every application they use. Also, you can reverse the "hold down fn and then hit F2" functionality so that you hold down fn to change volume or brightness, to mute the sound, or to eject a CD, and the standard functionality of the function keys doesn't require any extra keyboard antics. I made this change because I use Flash a lot, and the function keys play an important role in optimized SWF development. It's in:
System Preferences ->
Keyboard & Mouse ->
"Keyboard" tab ->
"Use the F1-F12 keys for custom actions"
I'm glad that you're playing with the machine. It's something new, I recognize, but I'm so glad I've got a Mac in my life. Right now I'm writing this on my Dell at work, and I miss the fact that every piece of text I write on a Mac is spell-checked. I was an English Lit major in college, and I think I've got a pretty good handle on the language, but spelling errors still rear their ugly head.
Posted by: jeremy | Jan 27, 2005 2:30:50 PM
Oh, one more thing. If you do use Mark's recommendation, once you've selected your menu with the arrow keys, you can use the keyboard to select the option inside the menu that you want. Just type the first letter of the menu. Again, I'd still recommend just getting comfortable with the standard shortcuts. (There really *are* a lot of them!)
Posted by: jeremy | Jan 27, 2005 2:37:05 PM
Mary Graham told me about your transition from PC to Mac and told me to read your Blog. I thought I'd be the last person to switch to Mac because I was raised on Windows. Since I made the switch I have replaced all my company computers and haven't looked back. We are a video production company and have no time to deal with crashes and viruses. Our work is too important to trust with a "COW." I have had absolutely no problems and couldn't be happier. Don't let the IT guys get you down. I have found a replacement program for everything I ever had on a PC and then some. My Powerbook even pauses i-Tunes, reads my caller ID, and displays the caller's picture when my cell phone rings. Those Windows programers need to get off the ski slopes and listen to what the consumers want... Stability, security, ease of use, and most important... Reliability!
---Dave Koss
Partner - Mediasplash.net
Posted by: Dave Koss | Jan 28, 2005 4:04:28 PM
Check out this utility: http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/
I've fallen in love with LaunchBar. It won't solve the problem you are specifically describing, but gives you a lot of the advantages of ActiveWords on the Mac. I am addicted to it and wish I had it on the PC.
Posted by: Chris Kunicki | Feb 2, 2005 1:10:59 AM
Though this is a tiny trick for "Right-Clicking" on a Mac I didn't see it posted above. Numerous Mac applications have a ctrl-click option (hold down the ctrl key and click) that generates a menu of hidden commands. This is essentially the same as right-clicking in Windows though requires slightly more effort.
Posted by: Omar Wasow | Feb 9, 2005 1:25:12 PM
I second the guy that recommended quicksilver. it may be the neatest productivity application ever.
Posted by: Gary Furash | Feb 10, 2005 1:41:47 PM
I third (or is it fourth, now?) the Quicksilver recommendation. Seriously - it is worth spending a few hours playing with and learning Quicksilver. Launchbar (also mentioned above) is a similar program and also quite well done.
Posted by: Jay | Feb 18, 2005 11:24:51 PM
An inexpensive alternative to QuickKeys is iKey from scriptsoftware (now around $30). I've found that iKey makes it easy to navigate menus using the keyboard, and also allows you to add custom menus (in the menu bar or as pop ups) and custom palettes. It has a pretty easy interface for developing these shortcuts as well.
Posted by: Christopher B | Feb 25, 2005 10:51:09 PM
If you haven't used the MenuMaster haxie from Unsanity (www.unsanity.com), you're missing out. It lets you reassign shortcuts from within any program by selecting the menu item and hitting the shortcut key.
Posted by: Ben Jackson | Feb 28, 2005 10:58:10 AM
Congrats on making The Switch!
Don't worry...you'll get over the distraction factor right quick.
p.s. All the makings of a great Mac evangelist are there. With a little practice, I think you'll do great. :)
Posted by: nydia | Mar 3, 2005 11:35:01 PM
I Miss My Windows Accelerator Keys
Posted by: irfan | Mar 16, 2005 12:26:55 PM
Here's a QuicKeys shortcut using AppleScript to do what you wanted to do (pop up a list of shortcuts you've created to choose from). Just create a new Script type shortcut, put the text from below in it, scope it to All Applications and give it an easy hot key like F5 or something...
tell application "System Events"
set frontApp to displayed name of first process whose frontmost is true
end tell
tell application "QuicKeys"
set currentScopeHeader to "•• " & frontApp & " ••"
set currentScope to shortcuts in scope frontApp
set allApplicationsHeader to "•• All Applications ••"
set allApplications to shortcuts in scope ""
if currentScope is {} then
set scopeList to {allApplicationsHeader} & allApplications
else
set scopeList to {currentScopeHeader} & currentScope & return & allApplicationsHeader & allApplications
end if
end tell
tell application frontApp
choose from list scopeList with prompt "Select Shortcut:" OK button name "Play" without empty selection allowed and multiple selections allowed
end tell
tell application "QuicKeys"
if result is not equal to false then
set playThis to result as string
play shortcut named playThis
end if
end tell
Posted by: Alan Eshelman | May 13, 2005 2:51:00 PM
Sorry about that nasty looking text in the last post, please delete that if you wish, here is a link with better formatting of the code:
http://www.startly.com/junk/scriptedmenu.html
Posted by: Alan Eshelman | May 13, 2005 2:54:19 PM
Slight addition to the control-F2 hint:
If you hit control-F2 and then the first letter of the target menu, the focus will jump to that menu.
Say you're in Safari and want to access the Bookmarks menu. Quickly hit control-F2, then hit B. Then use your down arrow to drop the menu and you can proceed by hitting the first letter of any particular menu item you're looking for.
If there is more than one menu with the same first letter, just keep typing. I have a Macintosh folder and a Magazines folder. To select the latter I would just type "Mag".
Posted by: jkaye | May 25, 2005 5:31:21 PM
