I am sure everyone has discovered the marvels of Exposé. Certainly most people know that you can change the shortcuts for the different "modes" of Exposé in the Dashboard & Exposé preferences panel. However, using this panel, they can only be changed to other function keys. This might be good for us lefties, who might find it easier to hit the upper left of the keyboard than the right, but still not too much easier or quicker than Ctrl-Tab or grabbing the mouse.
I just found out that if you look at the Keyboard Shortcuts tab of the Keyboard & Mouse preferences panel, there is also a section for changing the shortcuts for 'Dock, Exposé, and Dashboad.' What is really useful is that you can change the activation keys for Exposé to any key combination that you want using this section. I myself have changed them to Shift-Command-H, Shift-Command-J, and Shift-Command-K. Old habits from the days of vi (which still is the best editor, by the way), and now I can move from one window to another without moving my hands off of the home row. Note that you can also move between windows using the tab key or the cursor keys. Pressing Return makes the window active, and pressing Escape or the same key combination brings you back to the current active window.
I think I must save at least a half hour each day with this tip, especially when I am doing web page design -- Exposé gives me a quick miniature view of the page instantaneously -- just a quick save, Shift-Command-J, I see the changes, and back to coding. Before it was save, change app, find window, go back to other app, find document I was editing, activate window.
This feature makes Exposé actually worth using -- no more reaching up there to the function keys (which are difficult to locate if you are a touch typist, and too small to use on a Powerbook). Use this tip with the various keyboard shortcuts in this preference pane, and you can almost use your Mac without a mouse (because real programmers don't use mice).
[robg adds: Yes, this is a simple tip, but it's quite odd that one section of the system allows you to set whichever keys you wish while the other is restricted to the function keys ... so I felt it was worth sharing. Just be careful if you're assigning standard keys that you don't step on a given application's shortcut for something, or you may not get the results you expect when that application is active.]
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20050715093754337