9.15. Keyboard & Mouse This panel lets you do some frivolous fine-tuning of your mouse, keyboard, and (for laptops) trackpad. It also unlocks Mac OS X's strange and remarkable Full Keyboard Access feature, which lets you control your Mac's menus , windows , dialog boxes, buttons , the Dock, and the toolbarall from the keyboard. Here's a tour of the Keyboard & Mouse panel's various tabs. 9.15.1. Keyboard Tab The changes you make are teeny tiny, but can have a cumulatively big impact on your daily typing routine. -
Key Repeat Rate, Delay Until Repeat . You're probably too young to remember the antique once known as the typewriter . On some electric versions of this machine, you could hold down the letter X key to type a series of XXXXXXXsideal for crossing something out in a contract, for example. On the Mac, every key behaves this way. Hold down any key long enough, and it starts spitting out repetitions, making it easy to type, for example, "No WAAAAAAAY!" or "You go, girrrrrrrrrl!" These two sliders govern this behavior. On the right: a slider that determines how long you must hold down the key before it starts repeating (to prevent triggering repetitions accidentally , in other words). On the left: a slider that governs how fast each key spits out letters once the spitting has begun. -
Use the F1F12 keys to control software features . On Mac laptops, many of the F-keys on the top row perform laptop- related functions. For example, the F1 andF2 keys adjust the screen brightness, F3, F4, and F5 control the speaker volume, and so on. So what if you want to use those keys for other functions? For example, the F1 key is the Help key in many programs. In those situations, you're supposed to add the Fn key in the lower-right corner of your keyboard. On a desktop Mac, F1 opens Help; on a laptop, Fn-F1 does the job. If you find yourself using the software features (like Help) more often than the hardware features (like brightness), you can reverse this logic. Turning on "Use the F1F12 keys to control software features" (an option that appears only on laptops) lets the F-keys be F-keys, so they behave exactly as they do on a desktop Mac. Now F1 by itself opens Helpbut now you need to add the Fn key for the hardware functions like brightness and volume. -
Illuminate keyboard in low light conditions . This setting appears only if your Mac's keyboard does, in fact, light up when you're working in the darka showy feature of, for instance, some 15- and all 17-inch PowerBook models. You can specify that you want the internal lighting to shut off after a period of activity (to save power when you've wandered away, for example), or you can turn the lighting off altogether. -
Modifier Keys . This button lets you turn off, or remap, the functions of the Option, Caps Lock, Control, and  keys. It's not only for Unix programmers whose pinkies can't adjsut to the Mac's modifier-key layout, but also for anyone who keeps hitting Caps Lock by accident during everyday typing. 9.15.2. Mouse Tab It may surprise you that the cursor on the screen doesn't move five inches when you move the mouse five inches on the desk. Instead, the cursor moves farther when you move the mouse faster. How much farther depends on how you set the first slider here. The Fast setting is nice if you have an enormous monitor, since you don't need an equally large mouse pad to get from one corner to another. The Slow setting, on the other hand, forces you to pick up and put down the mouse frequently as you scoot across the screen. It offers very little acceleration, but it can be great for highly detailed work like pixel-by-pixel editing in Photoshop. The Double-Click Speed setting specifies how much time you have to complete a double-click. If you click too slowlybeyond the time you've allotted yourself with this sliderthe Mac "hears" two single clicks instead. 9.15.3. Trackpad Tab This panel shows up only if you have a laptop. At the top, you find duplicates of the same Tracking Speed and Double-Click Speed sliders described abovebut these let you establish independent tracking and clicking speeds for the trackpad . 9.15.3.1. Trackpad gestures Under normal circumstances, you touch your laptop's trackpad exclusively to move the cursor. For clicking and dragging, you're supposed to use the clicking button beneath the trackpad. Many people find, however, that it's more direct to tap and drag directly on the trackpad, using the same finger that's been moving the cursor. That's the purpose of these checkboxes: -
Clicking . When this box is turned on, you can tap the trackpad surface to register a mouse click at the location of the cursor. Double-tap to double-click. -
Dragging . This option lets you move icons, highlight text, or pull down menusin other words, to drag, not just clickusing the trackpad. Start by tapping twice on the trackpad, then immediately after the second tap, begin dragging your finger. (If you don't start moving promptly, the laptop assumes that you were double-clicking.) You can stroke the trackpad repeatedly to continue your movement, as long as your finger never leaves the trackpad surface for more than about one second. When you "let go," the drag is considered complete. -
Drag Lock . If you worry that you're going to "drop" what you're dragging if you stop moving your finger, turn on this option instead. Once again, begin your drag by double-clicking, then move your finger immediately after the second click. When this option is on, however, you can take your sweet time in continuing the movement. In between strokes of the trackpad, you can take your finger off the laptop for as long as you like. You can take a phone call, a shower, or a vacation; the Mac still thinks that you're in the middle of a drag. Only when you tap again does the laptop consider the drag a done deal. -
Use two fingers to scroll . Starting on the mid-2005 PowerBook models, the trackpad harbors a little secret: you can scroll any window that has scroll bars by moving two adjoining fingers on the trackpad (vertically or horizontally, depending on the settings you make here). 9.15.3.2. Trackpad options -
Ignore accidental trackpad input . This option addresses a chronic syndrome of laptop owners who turn on the Clicking option. When you type along and a finger accidentally brushes the trackpad, it sends the insertion point onto a different line of text. Before you even notice, you've typed over, or typed into, some random part of your document. This ingenious option locks out the click-and-drag trackpad functions when you're actually typing on the keyboardan elegantly simple solution. -
Ignore trackpad when mouse is present . Here's another ingenious advance in laptop technology. When you hook up a mouse, trackball , or tablet to your laptop, the trackpad is deactivated. If you're using a mouse, then you probably won't want to use the trackpadand by turning on this checkbox, you're no longer susceptible to accidentally brushing it. 9.15.4. Bluetooth Tab People have named their Macs for years (Voyager, Li'l Abner, PowerThang G5). Now they can name their keyboards and miceand, indeed, mustthanks to Apple's 2003 introduction of its cordless Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Here's where you type in their names (so that your Mac knows which wireless keyboard and mouse it's "listening" to in a room full of them) and monitor their battery levels. 9.15.5. Keyboard Shortcuts Mac OS X 10.4 comes loaded with keyboard shortcuts for common tasks and now you can reassign them to shortcuts you prefer. For a full discussion of the options on this pane, see Section 5.6.6. |
