Use F1-F12 Keys Option Inverted

[Dyaus]

Hey all. This is my first post and my first apple. A nice new shiny 15" PB . So far i'm really enjoying it. There is just this one thing that has me confused. When i'm the settings for "Keyboard and Mouse," the option "Use the F1-F12 keys for custom actions" is checked, but the keyboard operates backwards from what you'd expect. For example, with the option checked i have to hold the Fn key to perform the custom actions? What's up with this? Thanks.

 

[mkrishnan]

Hey all. This is my first post and my first apple. A nice new shiny 15" PB . So far i'm really enjoying it. There is just this one thing that has me confused. When i'm the settings for "Keyboard and Mouse," the option "Use the F1-F12 keys for custom actions" is checked, but the keyboard operates backwards from what you'd expect. For example, with the option checked i have to hold the Fn key to perform the custom actions? What's up with this? Thanks.

I think what it means is... (poorly worded)

- if you want to press the function keys to do the things printed on them (lower/raise brightness, audio level, expose) without pressing fn, you don't click the box, and you use the *custom* features (meaning if a program specifies them to do something else) by pressing fn.

- if you click the box, then you press fn with the key to do the things like raise/lower volume, but if you press the key by itself, you get the program-specific function.

Is that how yours works, or is it the opposite of what I just wrote? I think it's just poor choices of wording....

 

[Dyaus]

Yup. It acts exactly as you describe. I guess it's just poor wording on their part or poor interpretation on my part (maybe both). Thanks for your quick reply.

 

[mkrishnan]

Any time.

I think you'll find that, for whatever reason, apps in general on MacOS do not use the function keys for shortcuts. I use shortcuts heavily on both Windows and Mac, and I can't think of a single time when I've ever used an app-specific keyboard shortcut on MacOS that involved the function keys. It is a little annoying, cuz when I first got my Mac, I kept hitting alt-f4 and ctrl-f4, and now I keep hitting ctrl-w and ctrl-q on my work PC, but yeah... it'll end up being a non-issue after a while, unless you go and define macros on those keys yourself.

 

[tobio]

on the 12" powerbook (non backlit keyboard) the F8-F10 keys are "ordinary" keys, therefore you can do exposé easily without changing any settings. When I got my 15" powerbook, by default i had to hold down fn to do the F9 and F10 keys, F11 is fine.

I experimented with different settings for a while, like moving the F9 and F11 keys over to F11 and F12, but i could not get comfortable with using exposé that way, so i ended up doing that "inverted function" thing that you mentioned. Now when I want to turn up/down the brightness and volume I hold fn but that's not so bad. It also means that when you do have to hit F<something> in a new application I don't end up hitting the key a few times and wondering why it doesn't do what I expect until I remember to hold down the fn key and try again.