Tab Selection Frustration

[ChaosCon]

Up until about two years ago I almost exclusively worked on windows machines. Now that I've switched (and I absolutely ADORE os x ) I find myself longing for the tab navigation in popup dialogues that I became so accustomed to in Windows (for example, when I press the power button to shut down my computer, the menu pops up with Restart, Sleep, Cancel, and Shutdown, but I can't use the keyboard to select any other choice but the 'default'. I must physically click on whichever option I want) This also happens in drop down menus on the internet - I can't tab to the drop down menu and use the arrow keys to select an item, the mouse must instead be used. Is there any clever trick out there to enable this tab selection behavior?

Thanks!
~Con

 

[Tallest Skil]

System Preferences, Keyboard & Mouse, Keyboard Shortcuts, change the bubble at the bottom to All Controls.

I personally hate it, because that is NOT how OS X is to be used, but whatever.

 

[ChaosCon]

Aha! Thank you! I knew it was somewhere - just couldn't find it I'm curious as to why you say that isn't how os x is to be used though. Seems to me that it has a keyboard shortcut for everything else, and that NOT having it here makes you grab for the oh so slow mouse. Meh - to each his own I suppose ^_^

Anyway, thanks again!

 

[Ed91]

Aha! Thank you! I knew it was somewhere - just couldn't find it I'm curious as to why you say that isn't how os x is to be used though. Seems to me that it has a keyboard shortcut for everything else, and that NOT having it here makes you grab for the oh so slow mouse. Meh - to each his own I suppose ^_^

Anyway, thanks again!

I hate doing things that way, because too many unnessicary items are brought into focus when tabbing through text boxes on webpages - e.g. any tabs, 'close tab' buttons.

Though slightly more complex, (on my setup), the solution is to : fn ^ F7 then hit the spacebar. The fn is just because that's what I need to access F buttons on me MBP, though; I prefer direct access to my volume / brightness controls.

That probably didn't help you, but I thought I'd let you know anyway.