Unwanted keyboard shortcuts

On Jul 9, 2009, at 4:54 AM, Chris Devers wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 6:03 PM, <tidbitsdmeyers.net> wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, 8 Jul 2009 02:50:08 -0700, "merry" <sol.mlistliandel.com>
>> said:
>>
>>> text selection lowercase. However, I have found that every time I
>>> press
>>> F4 I get Dashboard opening!
>>
>> That's unusual. The default Dashboard shortcut is F12.
>
> Not anymore it isn't.
>
> The original keybindings for Dashboard, Expose, etc were F9-F12, but
> at some point -- I think it was around when the Core 2 Duo laptops
> came out, and the aluminum iMac -- the keyboard layout got redesigned,
> and the keycap itself has a dashboard icon on the F4 key.
>
> Bafflingly -- and I'm only just noticing this for the first time now,
> and cannot explain it -- the "Expose & Spaces" panel of System
> Preferences still says the original keymappings for Expose & Dashboard
> (F9-F12), but at least on my 2 week old MacBook Pro, the actual keys
> that trigger these functions are F3 (Expose, "all windows") & F4
> (Dashboard). So the behavior I'm getting is what you'd expect if you
> just look at the keyboard, but it directly contradicts what you'd
> expect if you look up the keystrokes in System Preferences.

If you connect an older keyboard to your laptop, those F9-F12 keys
will behave exactly as "Expose & Spaces" say. Furthermore under
"Keyboard & Mouse," if you check "Use all F1, F2, etc. keys and
standard function keys," a new keyboard will also behave as "Expose &
Spaces" say. On a new Apple keyboard, those with icons for Expose and
Dashboard, those keys are "special feature" keys by default and only
act as function keys if that "Keyboard & Mouse" option is checked or
if the Fn key is held down.

On 9-Jul-2009, at 02:54, Chris Devers wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 6:03 PM, <tidbitsdmeyers.net> wrote:
>> That's unusual. The default Dashboard shortcut is F12.
>
> Not anymore it isn't.

Yes, the Dashboard default is still F12

> Bafflingly -- and I'm only just noticing this for the first time now,
> and cannot explain it -- the "Expose & Spaces" panel of System
> Preferences still says the original keymappings for Expose & Dashboard
> (F9-F12), but at least on my 2 week old MacBook Pro, the actual keys
> that trigger these functions are F3 (Expose, "all windows") & F4
> (Dashboard). So the behavior I'm getting is what you'd expect if you
> just look at the keyboard, but it directly contradicts what you'd
> expect if you look up the keystrokes in System Preferences.

On a recent laptop when you press the dashboard key (in the F4
position) you are NOT sending a F4 keystroke unless you change the
keyboard preference to "Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function
keys" instead of the default. If you don't change the default, then
pressing Fn+Dashboard gives you an F4 keystroke. So, you can hit the
dashboard key or Fn-VolumeUp and both will activate Dashboard.
Conversely, if you DO enable Fkeys, pressing F12 will give you
Dashboard; and so will pressing Fn+F4.

Think of it as if the preference was "Use all number keys as symbols".
Pressing 'command-)' would not execute a 'command-0', but pressing
Shift-Command-( would. The Fn key is like a shift key that only
applies to the top-row keys between escape and eject.

BTW, I use Dashboard on occasions. First, I use a lyrics widget
(Harmonic, mostly) to add lyrics to iTunes songs, and sometimes I pull
it out of Dashboard and put it on the desktop. I also have 6 world
clocks for various cities, so a quick f12 f12 is enough to give me
UTC, London, Tokyo, Bangkok, Mexico City, or local time as well as
local weather. I also use the translation widget about once a week,
and I have a WoWhead widget that I use frequently while playing WoW to
easily look up quest and item info. I also have a widget that shows
the temps of the Hard Drive bays (currently 32 and 38C) and a couple
other informational widgets.

I am often working on a different 'space' from my browser, so things
like Forecast Fox are not that useful. I use a 9 space array (Finder
+Misc, Browsers, Email, IRC/IM/Chat, Terminal, WoW+Skype, iTunes/
GarageBand, iPhoto, and Editors (BBEdit mostly) and torrents). So
right now I am in Space 3. This email is on my right monitor, the
mailboxes are on the left monitor along with the Activity window. I
will often be working on 3-4 emails at once, and referring to past
emails, so this setup works quite well.

The thing I like about dashboard is that once it has been launched the
first time, bringing it up is practically instantaneous, and much
faster even than using LaunchBar to do a google search, and it's no
slower than switching to a different space..

On Jul 9, 2009, at 4:54 AM, Dan Frakes wrote:

> On 7/8/2009 3:03 PM, "tidbitsdmeyers.net" wrote:
>>> text selection lowercase. However, I have found that every time I
>>> press
>>> F4 I get Dashboard opening!
>>
>> That's unusual. The default Dashboard shortcut is F12. (Which, in
>> my
>> opinion, should be disabled - both the shortcut and Dashboard).
>
> The default is F4 for recent laptops and Mac keyboards, which
> actually have
> a Dashboard icon on the F4 key.

Apparently Apple changed their standard setup a year or two ago.

Of course, I'm using hardware that's all older than that, so no
Dashboard
icon on F4.

Interesting. But then, the first thing I do when I create an account
for myself on a Mac is disable the Dashboard, so I'd probably not
really notice this. Come to think of it, it's been a couple of years
since I had to do that, too.

(I've never found anything useful that it can do that can't be done
more easily or efficiently another way, and it's a terrible resource
hog.)

--d

At 2:50 AM -0700 7/8/2009, merry wrote:
>On my older G4 which I still use a lot, and have just upgraded to
>Leopard, I set F4 several years ago as a shortcut in InDesign to
>make the text selection lowercase. However, I have found that every
>time I press F4 I get Dashboard opening!

Does Spark work with Leopard? It will let you do all sorts of key
bindings... and its free.

<http://www.shadowlab.org/Software/spark.php>

- Dan.