interface basics

[Mikuro]

You should be able to configure a lot of keyboard control options by going to System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts. If you're using an older OS (10.2 or earlier, I think), you won't have these features, though.

[amstar]

Mikuro,

Thanks for the response. I am using 10.4.9. the ^F2 box is selected in the keyboard shortcuts but when I push ^F2, I get the same response as for F2 alone which is to brighten the screen. ^F1 dims the screen, ^F3 mutes the speakers. Oddly enough, ^F8 does do what it is supposed to do, move me to the focus to the status menus.

Any idea what is going on?

[amstar]

I just figured out that I can get it to work by going to System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard, and checking the box next to "use F1-F12 keys to control software features"

This makes ^F2 navigate me to the menu bar but now I need to use the function key to control the screen and speaker volume. Is this the way it should be?

[Mikuro]

Ah. I don't have a lot of experience with laptop keyboards, but I think that's normal. Apple's desktop keyboard have dedicated volume and brightness control keys, but since the laptop keyboards are so much smaller, they added the Fn key and made a lot of the keys perform double duty.

If you reverse it to the way it was to begin with, I think Fn-Control-F2 would activate the menu bar. So it depends on which task you think deserves easier access.

[amstar]

I do understand the need for keys to do double duty on the smaller notebook keyboards

Originally Posted by Mikuro

If you reverse it to the way it was to begin with, I think Fn-Control-F2 would activate the menu bar.

This would make sense to me but unfortunatly it is not how it works. If I reverse it there is no shortcut to the menu bar. I am not sure why it has to be that way but I use the menu shortcut a lot so I will live with Fn-F# for hardware control

[Mikuro]

My mistake. Another option would be to change the shortcuts to use other keys. In System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts, double-clicking on any shortcut in the list will allow you to change it to just about anything you want.