Reason #39,922 OS X is Great

03 Mar 2009

OS X is great. It might be easy to use but that’s not why I love it. I love the POWER. A small example of this power is the rich keyboard shortcuts it provides. You have the standards: Command+Tab for application switching, Command+S for Save, Command+P for Print, Command+W for closing a window, Command+Q for quitting an application. The list goes on with Command+~ for switching windows within an application and Command+Shift+] or Command+Shift+[ for switching through tabs within a window.

Apple publishes standard keyboard shortcuts and application developers are supposed to adhere to them. Sometimes developers fail to include these keyboard shortcuts in their applications or choose their own non-standard variations. While I suppose there may be good reasons for straying from the path it is too bad for users who don’t want to learn a new set of commands. Lucky for us we are using OS X and can override their non-standard shortcuts with our own using keyboard preferences pane.

Add keyboard shortcuts for apps that don't include them

Now I can switch tabs in Textmate with the same keys I use in Terminal, Safari, and Firefox.