Several keyboard related shortcuts are now possible in Panther. It has always (well since 10.2, at least) been possible to target the menu by enabling "Full Keyboard Access" (in the Keyboard/Mouse preferences panel) and typing Control-M for the Menu or Control-D for the Dock.
Well it is now, finally, also possible to activate an item from any menu by typing the first letter(s) of the item's name while you have the menu activated. For exmaple, in Safari: Hit Control-M (my favorite) to activate the menubar, and then (still no way to target a specific menu) hit the right arrow twice to get to the File menu. Once File is highlighted, hit "S" to get to the Save as..., or "P" to get to the Page Setup menu item, etc.
[robg adds: On my machine, menu activation is done via Control-F2. If they can add top-level keyboard navigation to the menus, I would really love and utilize this feature a lot!]
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20031024155204216