changing certain keyboard shortcuts

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speedydave

Guest
I've had my PB for a few days now and so far LOVE everything about it. One thing that's not really a dislike, but more of a slight annoyance, is that in order to do certain things that I used to do with the push of one or two buttons on my WinXP machine, I now find myself either reaching for the wrong buttons, or finding that OSX doesn't have that function available, at least by default. A few things I would like to change are:

F5 = refresh Safari window (or any window)
Ctrl + c, v, x, z, etc = instead of the Apple/clover key + letter (I find that I keep reaching for ctrl, and it's awkward to have to use the Apple key since the spacing is a bit different)

There are also some others, like F5/F9 in Outlook sending/receiving mail. These are very minor things, but if they could be changed, that would be awesome. Is there any way that these can be changed? I know of the keyboard shortcuts editor in System Preferences, but I didn't see anything I mentioned listed, just mainly Mac specific stuff like Dashboard, Expose, and other ways to take screenshots. Thanks!
 
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From the Mac Help feature:

Setting custom keyboard shortcuts for applications

Keyboard shortcuts allow you to quickly perform tasks by pressing keys on the keyboard. You can assign your own keyboard shortcuts to perform menu commands in any Mac OS X application or in the Finder. This may be useful if, for example, one of the "global" shortcuts, which works the same in most applications, is used by one application for a different purpose. In this case, you can assign it a different key combination.


Note: You can only create keyboard shortcuts for existing menu commands. You cannot define keyboard shortcuts for general purpose tasks such as opening an application or switching between applications.

Quit the application for which you want to add or change a keyboard shortcut. The shortcut will not be added if the application is running when you create the new shortcut.
Choose Apple menu > System Preferences and click Keyboard & Mouse. Then click Keyboard Shortcuts.
Click the Add (+) button.
Choose an application from the Application pop-up menu. If you want to set the same key combination for a menu command that appears in many applications, choose All Applications. If you want to set a shortcut for the Finder, choose Finder at the top of the list. If the application you want to select does not appear in the list, choose Other and locate the application using the Open dialog. Some applications may not allow you to set keyboard shortcuts.
Type the menu command for which you want to set a keyboard shortcut in the Menu Title field.

Tip: You must type the command exactly as it appears in the application menu, including ellipses and any other punctuation. (An ellipsis is a special character that looks like three periods. To type an ellipsis, you can press Option-; or use the Character Palette. It may be difficult to tell whether the command is written in the menu with a real ellipsis or with three periods, so if one does not work, try the other.)

Click in the Keyboard Shortcut field and press the key combination that you want to assign to the menu command, and then click Add.

Tip: You cannot use each type of key (for example, a letter key) more than once in a key combination.

To remove a customized shortcut, click the Delete (-) button.
 
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I was hoping to use this to customize my Safari key shortcuts. I wanted to make tab switching be ctrl+tab like in firefox, however I could not figure out how to set control as the key for anything. Is it just not possible, or am I missing something?
 
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Littleweseth

Guest
I've got something called uControl which lets you swap the various wierd keys on a mac keyboard so that it maps (roughly) the same as a windows keyboard. Actually, i'm using a Microsoft Internet keyboard with the cloverleaf/option/fn icons written on the keys with nikko pen :D - i didn't actually bother to swap the keys around using uControl, just used it until i got used to it (i've had this mac for a couple of weeks - my windows box blew up again. sob?)

uControl : http://gnufoo.org/uControl
 

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