Women in Technology

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Article:		20 Cool Tiger Features You Might Not Have Heard About
Subject:		Tab through dialog box buttons
Date:		2005-05-18 08:28:24
From:		riderd

One feature I just found (running 10.4.1) that I really appreciate is the ability to tab through your choices in a dialog (like Windoze), never having to use your mouse. When presented with several choices in a dialog box, you can hit the RETURN key (as before Tiger) to choose the default button that is pulsing. But in addition, there is a light blue outline around the second button choice which you can select with the SPACE bar. Hit TAB and it will take you to the next button choice. As far as I'm concerned, anything that keeps my hands on the keyboard is welcome. I believe this works across Mac OS X Tiger dialogs. I've seen it in Mail, TextEdit and when I select Restart on the Apple Menu. I just tried it in Microsoft Word and although there was no blue outline around the second choice, when I hit TAB a couple times, the blue outline started hopping around and selecting the SPACE bar worked. You can still TAB around (as before Tiger) to other dialog elements but now the buttons are included standardly, I believe.