Mac 101: Tweaking your keyboard shortcuts

More Mac 101, TUAW tips for the new Mac user and for us forgetful veterans. I often hear a complaint from switchers and newcomers: "Why do I have to use the mouse for everything?" Of course, we all know that there are scores of keyboard commands waiting to be used, but some particularly helpful ones are less than obvious.

Check out the Keyboard Shortcuts pane of the Keyboard & Mouse system preference panel. There you'll find my new best friends, "Move focus to the Dock" and "Move focus to the active or next window." With the first shortcut (control-F3 by default; note that on a laptop keyboard, you need to add the Fn key as well, lest you inadvertently mute your sound) you pop up your Dock, and you can select an application with the left and right arrow keys. Hold down the option key and you can relocate the selected app to another Dock slot. It's not a direct substitute for Command-Tab application switching, but it's still helpful.

The second option works like a supercharged version of the Command-` window rotation shortcut, cycling through all your open windows in all applications -- similar to the difference between the F9 and F10 Expose options. This is a great timesaver when you've got two or three apps open and you need to swap between them rapidly.

Have fun exploring the rest of the Keyboard Shortcuts pane!

[via Theocacao]
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