Keyboards, Buttons, and the Mac

If you come from a Windows world, then you've almost definitely seen a window or a menu with standard gray buttons and a single highlighted button. And you probably know that hitting the Enter key is a convenient alternative to positioning and clicking the mouse on that highlighted button.

The same behavior exists on a Mac as well, but with a slight twist:

Notice in the image above how both buttons are highlighted - one in complete blue and the other in a blue halo. The completely blue button responds to the Enter key as Windows users would expect. What's more interesting, though, is that the haloed button responds to the Spacebar.

The two types of button highlights may not be something you notice; I went months without even realizing the haloed form existed. But now that I now what it's for, I love it (I really dig keyboard shortcuts...what can I say?). Both forms don't always show up in every dialog box, but when they do, they can save you some typing. The best is when you can avoid the dreaded Shift+Tab hand contortion for cycling the button focus to the previous UI element.

This may seem a bit trivial, but in the fight against RSI, every little bit counts.