Tab to focus on button selection. How ?

I can't believe that in the over two years I've had my MacBook Pro's, I've never asked this question. Figured I'd put it here since it could potentially help a novice switcher, though I'm guessing that I'm just a doofis and most other people would figure this out on their own.

Ok so here it goes: Ya know how when a message box pops up with a prompt to either click on "ok" or "cancel" or some other option ? In Windows, you can just hit tab + an arrow key in order to choose between ok or cancel and then hit Enter to finalize your selection. But I can't figure out how this works in OS X ?

I've already enabled the keyboard shortcuts in system preferences as such:

Full keyboard Access: In windows and dialogs, press Tab to move keyboard focus between:

Click to expand...

And I have it set for "All Controls" This does not however, do anything other than LIGHTLY highlight the alternate button (it's never a full dark highlight) and if I do choose to hit Enter on the lightly highlighted selection, it doesn't select that choice anyway.

So what am I doing wrong here ?

Doug

I think you need to hit space to select/activate the highlighted item - not enter/return.

Oh boy. If it is that easy and I didn't even bother trying that, I'm going to kick myself in the face ! Now I just need to test it out.

Doug

YOU'RE RIGHT ! ARGGGH! Is this documented somewhere though? What I wish though is that you could use the arrow keys to make the selection instead of tab, because it seems a bit "off" that way. So yeah, you tab to the selection and hit the space bar. But what gets me is that the highlight is still only a semi highlight. Guess it's all in the patents, eh ? After two years... sheesh!

Thanks !

Doug

I have been a Software Application Engineer for the last 10 years - selling very specialized EDA software. There is an old AE saying - "Everybody knows that"

I've found UI design is only obvious once you've dealt with it long enough.

I've also found that it is probably in the documentation somewhere but you'll hardly ever find it that way.