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You are here: MacNN Forums > Software - Troubleshooting and Discussion > macOS > Making the switch: Interface change support group

Making the switch: Interface change support group
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Yakov
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Oct 19, 2004, 12:39 AM
 
I'm planning to switch to Mac after spending my whole young life in the throes of Microsoft operating systems. There're bound to be a few hitches...

(Remember folks: Just because it's in Windows and not Mac doesn't mean it's not a good idea!)

1. MAC USERS NEVER MAKE MISTAKES?
Is there a hack/utility that adds UNDO capability to the standard typing control? This has been implemented in Windows since 95... i.e. if you delete a large block of text by accident (i.e. by using the wrong keystroke to do a "cut" operation, or if you cut something and then accidently clear the clipboard before pasting) you can press CTRL-Z or right-click for UNDO. In Windows, this works everywhere, not just word processors. A good thing! Avoids unwelcome loss of data, which makes me sad . Is there a way to get a mac to do this?

2. SIMILARLY
Is there a way to make HOME and END work the way I'm used to using them? (Moving to the start and end of a line, not the start and end of a web page while I'm typing in a text box)

3. ALT-TAB / APPLE-TILDE HANDLING
Has anyone hacked the apple-tilde shortcut to function more like Windows's Alt-Tab? Awesome things about Alt-Tab:
- The box that pops up with all the open programs.
- The list is ordered by window-most-recently-used, so if you have twelve windows open and are only working with three of them, switching between them is a breeze.

Apple-Tilde just isn't cutting it for me...

Any suggestions? Utilities?
I'd love to hear about other "native" solutions that I don't know about yet... It's great finding all the wonderful things about Macs that I would never think to ask about... like the awesome uninstallation thing! But some things, especially involving keyboard use, make me very uncomfortable on Macintoshes...

Thanks for the help folks!

-Yakov Chodosh.
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LukeGX
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Oct 19, 2004, 01:49 AM
 
1. MAC USERS NEVER MAKE MISTAKES?
The shortcut is "cmd z" it does the same as the windows "ctrl z"

2. SIMILARLY
In text documents home and end take me to the start and end of the line. When im typing in a text box home and end dont take me to the start and end of the page. What browser are you using? (please don't say internet explorer).

3. ALT-TAB / APPLE-TILDE HANDLING
If you want to see some native solutions for this try using expose.
It is configurable in system preferences but by default you can:

Press f9 to show all open windows
Press f10 to show all application windows
Press f11 to show the desktop

you can switch between windows, applications and the desktop and you can also drag and drop files, images etc between the windows. It may seem a little complicated at first but it is very helpful once you get the hang of it.

I have a five button mouse with button 4 mapped to f9 and button 5 mapped to f11. Very handy
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Catfish_Man
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Oct 19, 2004, 01:51 AM
 
Originally posted by Yakov:
I'm planning to switch to Mac after spending my whole young life in the throes of Microsoft operating systems. There're bound to be a few hitches...

(Remember folks: Just because it's in Windows and not Mac doesn't mean it's not a good idea!)

1. MAC USERS NEVER MAKE MISTAKES?
Is there a hack/utility that adds UNDO capability to the standard typing control? This has been implemented in Windows since 95... i.e. if you delete a large block of text by accident (i.e. by using the wrong keystroke to do a "cut" operation, or if you cut something and then accidently clear the clipboard before pasting) you can press CTRL-Z or right-click for UNDO. In Windows, this works everywhere, not just word processors. A good thing! Avoids unwelcome loss of data, which makes me sad . Is there a way to get a mac to do this?

2. SIMILARLY
Is there a way to make HOME and END work the way I'm used to using them? (Moving to the start and end of a line, not the start and end of a web page while I'm typing in a text box)

3. ALT-TAB / APPLE-TILDE HANDLING
Has anyone hacked the apple-tilde shortcut to function more like Windows's Alt-Tab? Awesome things about Alt-Tab:
- The box that pops up with all the open programs.
- The list is ordered by window-most-recently-used, so if you have twelve windows open and are only working with three of them, switching between them is a breeze.

Apple-Tilde just isn't cutting it for me...

Any suggestions? Utilities?
I'd love to hear about other "native" solutions that I don't know about yet... It's great finding all the wonderful things about Macs that I would never think to ask about... like the awesome uninstallation thing! But some things, especially involving keyboard use, make me very uncomfortable on Macintoshes...

Thanks for the help folks!

-Yakov Chodosh.
Bach Stradivarius Trombone (mid-bore, F-trigger)
Aluminum alloy crutches / tinosynovitus of the flexor loosus longus
Jansport backpack with the logo pulled off
Duplex on Wightman St., Pittsburgh, PA
Dell Dimension, 9gig hard drive, Windows 98, SE(?)
Well, for 1), I'm not sure what's up with your machine... Undo support is usually quite excellent on OSX, and implemented in almost everything (I was rather disappointed to find out that colloquy didn't support it, but that's a rare exception ime). Not sure about 2). For 3) it lists it in most recently used app order, and I find command tilde/command shift tilde to be much moreuseful because I don't have to worry about switching through like 15 windows to get to the one other window of program x I have open. Expos� also helps, although I don't use it much.

In general, if you're a keyboard fan, get quicksilver or launchbar.
     
LukeGX
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Oct 19, 2004, 01:51 AM
 
By the way the "cmd" key is the one next to the space bar with the apple on it.
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midwinter
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Oct 19, 2004, 02:17 AM
 
Originally posted by Yakov:
Apple-Tilde just isn't cutting it for me...
That's because Apple+tilde switches between open windows in a single application. Hit the pretzel key and tab to switch through apps just like alt+tab in windows.
     
himself
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Oct 19, 2004, 03:18 AM
 
Originally posted by midwinter:
That's because Apple+tilde switches between open windows in a single application. Hit the pretzel key and tab to switch through apps just like alt+tab in windows.
Also, after hitting Apple+tab and bringing up the app switcher, you can press apple+shift+tab or apple+tilde to go backwards through the app list.
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wataru
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Oct 19, 2004, 05:16 AM
 
Are these questions for real?

1. Cmd+z works exactly the same way as ctl+z on Windows.
2. End and Home work exactly the way you describe it when you use it in the same context as you describe it. Of course the behavior is going to be different between viewing a web page and editing text.
3. You're looking for an alt+tab equivalent, but you didn't try cmd+tab? Are you serious?
     
guenter
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Oct 19, 2004, 06:16 AM
 
2) seems that all of you are working with msword!

most mac programs (TextEdit, Apple Works, BBEdit,...) work as Yakov says. what he is looking for is cmd left curser or cmd right curser which jumps to the beginning or end of the line (in msword to the beginning of the previous or next word)
     
Yakov  (op)
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Oct 19, 2004, 12:40 PM
 
I. Yes, Wataru, these questions are for real. I don't know your background but perhaps if you had to use Windows you would be asking similar questions -- assuming you're not already familiar with Windows, in case you should be able to sympathize with those who have problems with these kinds of issues.

(I just deleted a block of text by mistake... it seems to be gone forever.)

Before going further I should say I'm trying all this stuff from a (G4? lamp stand) iMac running 10.2. (in the on-campus computer labs.)

II. Cmd-Z does not seem to work as you say. I tried it in TextEdit and Word, where it works fine since it's built into those programs. But in Safari or MSIE, it does nothing.

III. Home and End definitely don't manipulate the input cursor in Safari and MSIE. In MSIE, if you're typing a Yahoo email or forum post, pressing home moves the main scroll bar to the top -- which is really annoying because then you need to use the mouse to get back to where you were typing. In Safari, while a text box is active, Home & End simply do nothing (an improvement but not quite what I'm looking for).

In Textedit, Home and End do nothing (that I've found), but you can use ctrl-left and ctrl-right to get to the start or end of the line. In Word, they work "properly" as I want.

Everyone seems to like option-left and right for whole word movement.

IV. Thank you for the Command-Tab advice, it works exactly as I needed.

V. I'm pretty sure that F9-F12 stuff wasn't incorportated into 10.2... it certainly has no function on this machine.

So, assuming it's not just a 10.2 / 10.3 issue:
I'm still looking for a way to
1) "Undo" in a standard text control
2) Home and End a la Windows

And to this I add:
3) Use the keyboard in a standard dialog box [i.e. in Windows we tab around, use the arrow keys and space bar on radio buttons / check boxes, alt-down to mess with pulldown selectors, etc. ...]
4) Pull down the menus using the keyboard [again, this is very easy in Windows, just push alt+the underlined letter of the menu name, alt-F pulls down the File menu] which, if it doesn't have OS support, seems to be a simple task for a utility / Applescript hack. A util that would just pull down even just the main program menu (the first one after the apple menu -- what's it called?) would be wonderful.

* * *

These are all issues that have a huge effect on how comfortable I feel with Macs. As such, they are very important to me who's a Windows old-timer completely new to Macs.

Much respect to the community here in general for such a wonderful resource. I've read and taken notes on many threads, (including the byzantine laptop bags thread) and learned quite a bit.

Please respond! Thank you.

-yakov
     
JKT
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Oct 19, 2004, 01:42 PM
 
Originally posted by Yakov:
Before going further I should say I'm trying all this stuff from a (G4? lamp stand) iMac running 10.2. (in the on-campus computer labs.)

II. Cmd-Z does not seem to work as you say. I tried it in TextEdit and Word, where it works fine since it's built into those programs. But in Safari or MSIE, it does nothing.

III. Home and End definitely don't manipulate the input cursor in Safari and MSIE. In MSIE, if you're typing a Yahoo email or forum post, pressing home moves the main scroll bar to the top -- which is really annoying because then you need to use the mouse to get back to where you were typing. In Safari, while a text box is active, Home & End simply do nothing (an improvement but not quite what I'm looking for).

In Textedit, Home and End do nothing (that I've found), but you can use ctrl-left and ctrl-right to get to the start or end of the line. In Word, they work "properly" as I want.

Everyone seems to like option-left and right for whole word movement.
I assume you would be getting a new Mac if you got one - in which case it will ship with MacOSX 10.3.x and not 10.2 so a lot of the things you are asking for will work as people have described. Wrt Safari and MSIE with undo there are a couple of things to realise. The first is that MSIE has been dropped by Microsoft - they are no longer developing it for the Mac ( (it has always been one of the worst browsers on MacOS X, so this is no great shame... and given the glacial pace of change on the PC side, it often feels that way there too ), so don't expect it to do a lot of what you would like. Safari is actually relatively new to the game on the Mac and it still has some rough edges - I don't use it myself but I just tested the latest version and it also doesn't support undo in text input boxes (I'm pretty surprised by this myself... that's really bad!). I expect it is one of those things that will be corrected at some point. Having said that, there is a whole plethora of browsers on offer for the Mac which don't suffer this limitation and are actually considerably better than Safari. In other words, Safari and MSIE are an exception to the rule rather than typical of it...
Originally posted by Yakov:
IV. Thank you for the Command-Tab advice, it works exactly as I needed.

V. I'm pretty sure that F9-F12 stuff wasn't incorportated into 10.2... it certainly has no function on this machine.
It isn't - it was a new feature added in 10.3. Incidentally the command-tab feature is also hugely improved in MacOS 10.3 - you get visual feedback in the form of a bar showing you your open apps through which you can scroll via command/command-shift-tab. You can also hide or close the apps as you scroll through them.
Originally posted by Yakov:
So, assuming it's not just a 10.2 / 10.3 issue:
I'm still looking for a way to
1) "Undo" in a standard text control
2) Home and End a la Windows

And to this I add:
3) Use the keyboard in a standard dialog box [i.e. in Windows we tab around, use the arrow keys and space bar on radio buttons / check boxes, alt-down to mess with pulldown selectors, etc. ...]
4) Pull down the menus using the keyboard [again, this is very easy in Windows, just push alt+the underlined letter of the menu name, alt-F pulls down the File menu] which, if it doesn't have OS support, seems to be a simple task for a utility / Applescript hack. A util that would just pull down even just the main program menu (the first one after the apple menu -- what's it called?) would be wonderful.
In 10.3, you can activate something known as Full Keyboard Access which allows you to use the keyboard to navigate menus, radio-buttons etc. It isn't what you are used to in windows (with good reason as I shall explain in a moment) but it does work. E.g. control-F2 will activate the menubar and you can then use the arrow keys to flick between the different menus and enter will select the highlighted menu option. FWIW, wrt to dialogue boxes or sheets, you can actually use the keyboard in the absence of an activated FKA - e.g. Escape will always cancel any dialogue, command-D will press the Don't Save button in Save dialogues, etc.

The reason why the "alt" key (aka option) can't be used for similar actions on the Mac is because it is used to input special characters into text. E.g. alt-m will input the character mu (�), alt-p inputs pi (?), alt-e will apply the acute accent to appropriate letters such as �... all letters and numbers on the keyboard are assigned to a special character which alt/alt-shift is used to activate. However, you will find that the majority of the commonly used functions in an app will typically be assigned a keyboard shortcut such as command-S for save, command-shift-S to Save As..., command-T to show the Fonts, command-P to print, etc. It would only be for those esoteric, application specific functions that the developer hasn't managed to find an appropriate shortcut for, that you would ever need full keyboard access.

Wrt to the home/end a la Windows, you will find that there are many ways to skin a cat on the Mac - as an example in most text apps you can use the e-macs keyboard shortcuts to achieve what you desire. E.g. Control-a/e will jump to the start or end of a paragraph, control-right/left to the start/end of a line, control-d/h will delete backwards/forwards, etc. FWIW, these shortcuts do work in Safari.
( Last edited by JKT; Oct 19, 2004 at 01:47 PM. )
     
monkeybrain
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Oct 19, 2004, 01:48 PM
 
Edit: Looks like JKT just beat me to it, and much more eloquently.

Much keyboard control is possible, turn it on in Universal Access of System Prefs I believe in 10.2.

The function keys won't do anything in 10.2, you need 10.3 for Expose. And I would highly recommend getting 10.3 as it is a major improvement over 10.2. (ah, just read it's on campus, well encourage them to switch to 10.3, they'll have less problems.)

Undo doesn't work in Safari, it's a known issue. It does work in Camino and also Omniweb, not sure about Firefox. Dump Internet Explorer, it's rubbish.

Of course, you'll have to adjust to the Mac way of doing things, if every process was the same as windows it would be lots of advantage to switchers but the switch would have no benefit. You've got to 'unlearn' nasty window's habits.

Looking at the Help Centre under the Finder's Help menu may reveal more to you.
     
Yakov  (op)
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Oct 19, 2004, 02:40 PM
 
JKT, you are the man [or woman]
Thanks a ton. First thing I do when I get the thing home is probably going to be hunting down and learning that FKA option.

That particular use of the alt/command key is certainly interesting, although not too useful to me... but thanks for the lowdown.

M.B., yes, I understand and am very excited to learn new, better ways of doing things. But the best way I can think of to find those things is to say what I'm MISSING and would like to do, and then look for suggestions of what I can do instead.

Anyway, it seems that most of my keyboard issues are solved for now, I guess the issues with 10.2, Safari, and IE misled me somewhat.

I'm off to the Mac store! (For my first time)

-Yakov.
     
smeger
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Oct 19, 2004, 03:01 PM
 
Originally posted by Yakov:
That particular use of the alt/command key is certainly interesting, although not too useful to me... but thanks for the lowdown.
There's actually quite a bit of cool stuff that you can quickly do using the alt/option key, besides just typing accented characters. Some quick examples are: trademark symbol, copyright symbol, curly quotes, not-equal sign, plus-or-minus symbol, bullet, degree symbol, ellipse, common ligatures, etc etc.

For example, I very regularly use option-8 to get a bullet symbol.
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TETENAL
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Oct 19, 2004, 03:03 PM
 
Originally posted by Yakov:
I'm still looking for a way to
1) "Undo" in a standard text control
Mac applications usually support Undo, but browsers don't. This is something that sucks on Mac.
2) Home and End a la Windows
⌘← and ⌘→ position the cursor at the start respectively end of the line. The home and end key scroll the document to the top or bottom of the document.
3) Use the keyboard in a standard dialog box
4) Pull down the menus using the keyboard
You need to turn on full keyboard access for this. I'm not sure if 10.2 had full keyboard access already. If so, it was probably limited compared to Panther. This is new to Mac so not all applications support this well.
( Last edited by TETENAL; Oct 19, 2004 at 03:25 PM. )
     
lookmark
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Oct 19, 2004, 05:32 PM
 
Originally posted by TETENAL:
Mac applications usually support Undo, but browsers don't. This is something that sucks on Mac.
⌘← and ⌘→ position the cursor at the start respectively end of the line. The home and end key scroll the document to the top or bottom of the document.You need to turn on full keyboard access for this. I'm not sure if 10.2 had full keyboard access already. If so, it was probably limited compared to Panther. This is new to Mac so not all applications support this well.
OmniWeb, OTOH, has a zoom-out web form editor with full undo that's very nice.

re: FKA - You can turn on an option to use the keyboard to access menus in OS X -- Full Keyboard Access -- but this particular function is still clunky, even in 10.3 (Panther), and rather inferior to Windows.

However, Panther does allow you to create your own keyboard commands for any menu item that doesn't already have one; this is quite useful and works very well. Both FKA and Keyboard Commands are in the Keyboard + Mouse panel in System Preferences -- check it out.
     
JKT
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Oct 20, 2004, 05:58 AM
 
Originally posted by Yakov:
JKT, you are the man [or woman]
Thanks a ton. First thing I do when I get the thing home is probably going to be hunting down and learning that FKA option.
Not that it matters a bit, but I am a man...

FWIW, the Mac has a Help application which will tell you quite a lot of the things you will want to know. It has a section dedicated to people coming from Windows to the Mac for the first time which will give you pointers on how e.g. the command key on the Mac mostly does what the control key does on the PC, etc. You will also find all the Full Keyboard Access info in their. You can access application specific help from the Help menu in each application (assuming they have the documentation written - some shareware/freeware apps sometimes don't) and you can access general Mac help from the Finder Help menu - you can find the Windows Switchers info in the "New to MacOS X" section.

Btw, OmniWeb supports undo everywhere, not just in the zoomed text editor. Is it the only browser that does? Edit: Just tested Camino and it does too... so what about Firefox and Mozilla? I assume it is only Safari (and IE) that are broken wrt this?
     
JKT
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Oct 20, 2004, 06:04 AM
 
Originally posted by lookmark:
re: FKA - You can turn on an option to use the keyboard to access menus in OS X -- Full Keyboard Access -- but this particular function is still clunky, even in 10.3 (Panther), and rather inferior to Windows.
I'm not going to disagree that FKA is somewhat clunky, but it does have one advantage over Windows (AFAIK, I've never really used the equivalent in Windows so perhaps I am lacking the knowledge to make this comment)... you don't have to remember any keyboard shortcuts other than those necessary for FKA. E.g. control-F2 and arrow key selection is all you need to remember to select ANY menu item in ANY application. It is a lot slower than knowing the shortcut by heart, but it is easier to use when you don't know that shortcut.

Edit - my OmniWeb comment in the last post was also meant as a response for this post... just put it in the wrong reply!
     
lookmark
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Oct 20, 2004, 11:54 AM
 
Originally posted by JKT:
I'm not going to disagree that FKA is somewhat clunky, but it does have one advantage over Windows (AFAIK, I've never really used the equivalent in Windows so perhaps I am lacking the knowledge to make this comment)... you don't have to remember any keyboard shortcuts other than those necessary for FKA. E.g. control-F2 and arrow key selection is all you need to remember to select ANY menu item in ANY application. It is a lot slower than knowing the shortcut by heart, but it is easier to use when you don't know that shortcut.
Hmm, I hear ya, but I think you're making lemonade out of lemons here. Windows is just better wrt FKA, hands down. Apple's method -- hitting an odd key command and slowly arrowing around menus -- just doesn't cut it when the Windows way, geeky and unattractive as it *looks*, is *so* much faster. Panther improved things by allowing you to hit the letter (or first few letters) of of a menu item to jump to it, which I had hoped would improve things, but unfortunately it doesn't work for the menu bar itself, just menus. Bzzzzt.

FWIW, I much prefer to keyboard shortcuts to FKA (as I find there's really just a handful of commands for each application that I use *so* often to require them). But I've done some research + testing, as I've been curious what switchers sometimes complain about when pining for this from Windows. They're correct; Apple still hasn't quite gotten it right.
     
   
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