[Ghoser777]

Okay, here's what I'm thinking. You know how in windows you can just hit the control key and then you can navigate the menus with the arrow keys and select menuItems with the return key? Well, I think MacOSX needs that too. I don't necessarially think it should be on the base builds of OSX (I've seen plenty of windows novi get confused when they accidentally hit the control key and they are magically whisked away to selected menuItems), but I think some power users would appreciate it.

The problem is, I have no idea how to implement it. I can sort of do the pseudo code hand waving, but I'm not good at event handling. I'd be writing the program in Java.

1. User hits control key, he program interprets the event "control" without any other keys as an indication to select the first menu to the right of the apple

2. While the menu/menuItems are slected, arrow keys will be interpreted to mean select one menuItem up, down, or one menu to the left, right.

3. Return activates the selected menu item

4. The mouse is deactivated from having any effect on the menus except when clicked. Then the menus are deselected.

5. Pressing any key-combination besides a return or arrow key results in the menu to be deselected.

Whew. Now if only I could figure out how to do all this.

Thanks in advance,
F-bacher

[00101001]

i suggest that you move this topic to the OSX-Developers forum

[Scott_H]

Good idea.

I'm going to move this over to OS X Developer. Please click through and find the topic.

[Mooseyard]

If you want menus in your own program to work this way, it might be do-able, although it would be quite tricky and the implementation would be completely different depending on whether you wanted to use Cocoa or Carbon.

If you want to create some kind of system extension that will give this ability to all apps, there isn't really any sactioned way to do this on OS X. An OS 9 extension that did this would have to invoke all kinds of trap patches to override system behaviors, and that isn't possible in OS X.

If you're just getting into programming you should set your sights on something more straightforward...