Nik's Blog

Geekery, witty insights, software (of dubious quality) and more!

Streamline Your Keyboard Shortcuts

Maybe it’s just because I have a 12” PowerBook, but I keep running out of Fkeys. And besides, it’s hard to remember that F10’s this kind of Exposé, and this Fkey is Dashboard… It’s a bother.

So, to keep my Fkeys free and keep ‘em a little more understandable, I remapped them so that one key (F11) controls Exposé, and another key (F11) handles Yahoo Widget Engine’s heads-up display as well as Dashboard.

How? Well, I just added modifier keys. So F11 shows the desktop (my most common Expose command), CMD+F11 shows all windows (my second most often used command) and CMD+OPT+F11 shows all the windows in the current application.

With Dashboard/Konspose, I did roughly the same thing: F12 for Konspose (excuse me, Yahoo Widget Heads Up Display Manager Widget or whatever the heck Yahoo wants to call it), and CMD+F12 for Dashboard.

I also trimmed down the menu commands for universal access and dictionary, because I hardly need a keyboard shortcut to invert my screen.

All of this is handled through the wonderful Keyboard & Mouse preference pane.

@inik

inik: RT @thinkprogress: .@komenforthecure head says responses to Planned Parenthood decision are "very favorable." If your response is unfavo ... >
inik: @FluidApp I'm getting errors in a Fluid app Gmail and can't use chat either. Any ideas? >
inik: finished Five Children and It by E. (Edith) Nesbit et al. and gave it 5 stars http://t.co/mspysk1B #Kindle >
inik: How to use an obscure shell command to let your AppleScripts and shell scripts output rich text. http://t.co/3Y9dAHiH >
inik: Nicholas "Nik" Friedman TeBockhorst http://t.co/I6kGmcDg >

Google+

I love Seth's quote at the top. I think that's my new motto.. ; )

Powered by Plu.sr
>
Griping about OS X Lion? Here's two nifty tools that replace a variety of poorly supported third party tools: Command-line and Automator access to video and audio conversion. Super easy to use, and very flexible and supports any format that Quicktime can encode/decode. (So Perian is a must-install if you want to handle DivX/3viX, etc.)

Yes, ffmpeg, Handbrake and...
>
Fix Google Reader's horrible new interface with this user script! Now it fits nicely on my MacBook's small screen. >
Happy 11/11/11 11:11:11! >
What makes this ad awesome is not the true-to-life irony, because the idea is hardly innovative, but rather the excellent execution. Reminds me a bit of that excellent Nutri-Grain spec commercial. Quick delivery, good actors, hit all the high notes. Love it. >