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.

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Written on May 8, 2006