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Tom is a recent switcher from Windows, and he wants to know whether it is possible to control more of Safari from the keyboard in Mac OS X.
For those of you who haven’t tried this before, you can set your Mac to allow text boxes, popup menus, links, and other selectable items to be tabbed through and selected with the keyboard.
Probably the most common example of this is when you’re trying to pay for something online and have to select which state or country you live in. By default, you must use your mouse to make this selection, but with this tip, you can:
- Press Tab to cycle through the available items until you get to the popup menu.
- Press the Up and Down Arrows to choose a different item within the menu.
- Press the Spacebar to actually select the item.
It sounds like a lot, but when you’re filling out forms, it can be a real time saver.
Make the Change in System Preferences
Open System Preferences and click Keyboard and Mouse. Now click on the Keyboard Shortcuts tab. Here, you’ll see several checkboxes to pick from, and we want to check the box next to “All the Controls.”
This will cause applications to make as many functions controllable by the keyboard as possible, including the ones we’ve mentioned above. Quit System Preferences, and you should now be able to breeze through forms with your keyboard!
How’d this tip work for you? Do you have other keyboard tips for Windows switchers? Let others know in the comments.
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In Leopard (Mac OS X Version 10.5.6) the Keyboard Shortcuts tab has many checkboxes to pick from, but the ‘radio button’ next to “All controls” should be selected with a click.