TUAW Tip: Use Help to select menu items in Leopard

I wish this would let you Create a Keyboard Shortcut for the selected Menu item... =/

just because it bugs me: i think "i.e." means "for example." perhaps "that is" or just removing the "i.e." altogether would be better. i really don't mean to be a d!ck about this. sorry.

Yea, I submitted this to tuaw a while back, never got any coverage. Even on the internet I get no respect.

This is an awesome tip. I'm totally a keep-your-hands-on-the-keyboard guy, but I can never remember the ^-F2 shortcut when I want to access menu items that don't have a shortcut assigned to them.

Also, since I'm on a MBP, ^-F2 is actually "function-control-F2", and all the keys are on the left side of the keyboard. Bleah! Typing ⌘-? feels MUCH more comfortable!

The one thing that I'd add is that it's completely unnecessary to type the name of the command. After hitting ⌘-?, you can simply use the arrow keys to move to the menu item you want. Handy if you don't remember its exact name.

I would say that last case is pretty common -- not knowing which menu to go to. It annoys the crap out of me that when I want to insert a special character in Pages, I have to go to the EDIT not the Insert menu -- even though I'm not editing anything.

This is a classic example of a function that could not possibly be quicker on the keyboard than with the mouse. Using shortcut keys directly to menu items, maybe, but as Tog has pointed out, research shows even those are frequently slower than mousing. This tip, (using a keyboard shortcut, then waiting for the help menu to do it's search thing, then using the arrow key to go down, then hitting enter) has to take the cake, though. Unless you physically can't use the pointing device, or literally have no idea which menu to go to, there's no way this makes sense.

This doesn't work when using a dvorak keyboard mapping. It brings up the Help window instead. Anyone know how to fix it?

I do this kind of thing too. When I think about it I think its funny that we have these slick interfaces that we use like a commandline!

I prefer shortcuts.

Remember (if you have one of those new fangled aluminum keyboards) and you have the multimedia/dashboard functions mapped to the icons on the keys to press the Function key (Fn) to activate the ^F2 trick.