Keyboard Shortcuts
August 19th, 2008
If you've recently switched from Windows to Mac, you might have noticed that switching applications with cmd+tab doesn't behave like in Windows.
Windows displays all open windows in the taskbar so you could browse through them with hitting alt+tab or clicking the desired taskbar button. Unlike in Windows, Mac swaps applications - not actual windows. If you have for example Mail and few emails opened in separate windows you have to first open up the mail application and then click on the email windows or access them from Window menu. You can also press cmd+shift+´ which is possibly the weirdest key combination ever.
Fantasktik [via Macworld] tries to "correct" this behaviour with bringing a new window menu below the top menu and bringing OS X's application switching closer to Windows's way of handling it. They actually made the same thumbnail preview that is in Vista. As much as I would like to switch easily between windows, I wouldn't use Fantasktik to take up valuable screen space, I would try to learn the keyboard shortcuts even how difficult it is.
The reason I'm writing about this is that cmd+shift+´ doesn't work in all applications. For example in Terminal you can change terminal window only by cmd + terminal number. The second reason is that the key combination could be a lot easier by default.
Another annoyance is that you can't browse through dialog buttons with hitting tab unless you enable it from System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts by setting the "Full keyboard control" to "All controls" - and even if you do that, it doesn't work in all applications.
You always could use your mouse and you probably have used to this by now but when doing highly repetative tasks even underlined letters in dialog buttons (displaying shortcuts) would be a blessing.
Or is this utter bull's crappings? Do you think the Mac OS X style is better and faster than in Windows? Or do you think that there could be room for improvements? Let me know, thanks!