Cycle through options in dialog box

How do you cycle through options in a dialog box, for example when you close and program and it prompts you with a dialog giving three options: don't save, cancel or save. I have tried using the left and right cursor keys (this is how it works in windows) as well as different combinations of shift/command/alt/ctrl and the cursor keys, I've also tried tab (and shift-tab). Still no luck neye:

I'm using a 12" pb and on 10.4.4.

Thanks.

You need to enable full keyboard access:
Go to the keyboard & Mouse system preference, and select 'keyboard shortcuts'.
At the bottom there's a button called 'All controls'. Select it and you now should be able to use tap to cycle between options.

Enter/return will select the blue option and spacebar will select the option highlighted with a blue outline.

Command (Apple) + "." will select the Cancel button.
This has been available for many years.

thanks for the replies, i have enabled the option now!

This feature is both a blessing and a curse. It allows you to tab through dialogue boxes, but it also forces you to tab through all the buttons on all of your applications.

If you used to use tab in iTunes to go from the search to the playlists to the song field, for example, it now tabs through a lot of new fields you don’t want.

I hope apple will separate this feature into two options. Seems like its everything or nothing right now.

It seems that with the following keyboard shortcuts, you may be able to get by without the "All controls" option:

ESC - selects CANCEL
cmd+"." - selects CANCEL
cmd+"d" - selects DON'T SAVE
cmd+"r" - selects REPLACE
ENTER - selects the blue highlighted box

"s" - selects SLEEP in the shutdown dialogue
cmd+alt+eject - makes the compute sleep (this is a global shortcut, try it!)


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"r" - selects RESTART in the shutdown dialogue