Alt+tab is very much a part of OS X (for switching between open applications.) There is also another thing called Expose that is very helpful too. As a general rule there is a key board shortcut for *everything* in OS X (as there was in OS 9 and before.) This is a big part of Mac culture and I think a reason why some people come to really love using them. Operations become really automatic if you force yourself to get away from the menus.
In safari shift-command-right arrow and shift-command-left arrow move back and forth between tabs. In firefox it's control-tab to move to the next tab and control-shift-tab to move to the previous (or, also, control-page down and control-page up do the same.) A complete list of keyboard shortcuts is here.
I see what you are saying Linda. Still, I do like tabs better, and maybe it's just a matter of what you are familiar with. Clearly you don't have to use tabs with firefox. I think the main reason I like them is because I am often on a fairly slow connection. So when I am reading a page and finding links I want to read, I command-click them to open them in new tabs - and here's the key - in the background. In other words, the new tab that has begun to load doesn't steal focus off the page I am on. So I just read down the page, command-clicking all the links I want to read, and then all those links are loading in the background while I am finishing the first page. Then I just command-w to close the top tab and I'm dropped onto the now loaded page behind it.
But okay, I guess you could do that with multiple windows too.
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In safari shift-command-right arrow and shift-command-left arrow move back and forth between tabs. In firefox it's control-tab to move to the next tab and control-shift-tab to move to the previous (or, also, control-page down and control-page up do the same.) A complete list of keyboard shortcuts is here.
I see what you are saying Linda. Still, I do like tabs better, and maybe it's just a matter of what you are familiar with. Clearly you don't have to use tabs with firefox. I think the main reason I like them is because I am often on a fairly slow connection. So when I am reading a page and finding links I want to read, I command-click them to open them in new tabs - and here's the key - in the background. In other words, the new tab that has begun to load doesn't steal focus off the page I am on. So I just read down the page, command-clicking all the links I want to read, and then all those links are loading in the background while I am finishing the first page. Then I just command-w to close the top tab and I'm dropped onto the now loaded page behind it.
But okay, I guess you could do that with multiple windows too.
- jim 5-26-2004 5:25 pm