I'm a heavy user of shortcuts - keyboard shortcuts, trackpad gestures etc… especially in web browsing. My left hand is always placed on the keyboard with my thumb on the command button and the rest of the fingers ready to hit things like the W or T button, or number buttons:
Command + W - Close tab
Command + T - Open new tab
Command + 1-9 - Show the 1st, 2nd etc tab in the window. Command 9 opens the shows the last tab in the window
If i open more than 1 window command + ` will change the window i'm viewing, but these days i mostly stick to opening just one window and using different tabs instead. Mostly… say if i'm doing proper school work i'll open a new window to do all that in, whereas the other window will have like pages open to live journal and mouse hunt etc.
There is however, a shortcut that i don't quite like in firefox… that's command + Q to quit. Problem? I hardly ever want to quit firefox - if i do i'll use the mouse instead anyway, and it'll only because the app is hanging. However, the Q is right beside the W button, and sometimes after i just put my hand back on the keyboard, i end up jamming the wrong button and accidentally QUITTING firefox instead of just closing the tab. BRAVO. Now i'll have to wait eons for firefox to close and reopen, and than i'll have to pray that the tabs DO get restored. Previously i tried looking for add ons to change the keyboard shortcuts, but there weren't any. Got bored and looked again today… TADA! There's an add on that lets you re-assign new keyboard shortcuts for the existing features. Check out Customizable Shortcuts here. The great thing is that it works with the latest version of firefox (at least i believe mine is the latest version, since i always update whenever they ask me to…). Now I'm assigned quit to Command + Escape, something that i'll hardly press. Problem solved!
Another thing that i'm been gripping about is the lack of a touch pad gesture to call up the dashboard in the system prefs. There's the pinching thing with 4 fingers for lauchpad, there's one for mission control… etc… but no dashboard! I've put a bunch of useful widgets in the dashboard, like a screen capture widget, a scientific calculator, and the most important widget - one that monitors the cpu, memory, disk etc status… i keep checking that to see my ram usage… and i'll try and close off some unused programs as i always find myself running out of ram. I don't know why, but my 4 GB of ram is always used up to the brim… typically about 0.7-8 gb will go to wired (whatever that means…), 2gb of it will be active, and the remaining 1gb will be inactive. I keep wondering if its cos Lion is having problems freeing up the inactive ram… and hell why do i use up 2 gb of active ram each time? hmm… maybe i do overwork my comp too much? 3 browsers, word, iTunes, adium, twitter etc… but really are those that bad? humph!
So anyway… i found this great app a while back (actually, a long while back, i found it the same day i got teleport, that's last year lol…) but i finally decided to tinker with the settings today. Better Touch Tool is a freeware (donations welcome though) is a awesome app that lets you insert custom gestures for the magic mouse, trackpad, or just a regular mouse. Loads of gesture available for the trackpad - from single finger, 2 fingers… all the way to using your whole hand??? lol… not tried it though. You can make the gestures global, or only for particular applications… cool eh? Highly recommend you to try it out!
ok that's all for now… i shall update with news abt school work soon...
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