monline

I've always been a keyboard-maniac and wanted to control as much of the OS and programs without leaving the keyboard as possible. In Mac OS X I've found that this is not possible in a number of situation. However you can change this (at least partly) in "System Preferences" / "Keyboard & Mouse" / "Keyboard Shortcuts" and select in "Full keyboard access" the "All controls" option.

Another story is with Mozilla Thunderbird. If you start a new composition and press Cmd+W to close the window, you're presented with a "Save message" confirmation dialog with three options: "Don't Save", "Cancel" and "Save". The last option is selected by default. If you press here Tab to switch between the available options, it seems nothing happens. But it does! By pressing Tab a very pale, light blue shadow appears around the next button and repeatedly pressing Tab you can move this "shadow" between the buttons. However the "Save" button remains selected (which means it's fully blue and not just a blue shadow)! If you move this blue shadow to another button, then pressing Enter still triggers the "Save" action, but pressing Space triggers the button that has the blue shadow at the moment. I'm not sure about the purpose of this ... why couldn't the programmers of Thunderbird just let the focus shift at Tab presses? This bright blue shadow or something is quite difficult to notice ... at least I didn't notice it in until the end of my first week of Mac OS X usage.