Adding and using keyboard shortcuts in the Print dialog box

Jul 24, '09 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: Tripp

Generally I have found that added keyboard shortcuts for the drop-down menu in the Print dialog (such as in this hint) only work only for the items above the dividing line. As Apple notes, "you can create keyboard shortcuts only for existing menu commands." And all the commands below the dividing line are transient menu items, as they are there only because they are in the PDF Services folder, in the Library folder of the user or the system. If you take them out of there, they will disappear from the Print dialog drop-down. Hence it seems that they are not considered available for keyboard access by the system.

Except there is one way that I have just now discovered to get this to work.

You can use the Tab key to cycle through to the drop-down menu. Now you can use the down arrow to open the menu. At this point, you can use your shortcuts for items below the line. Two things to note when using this method are that the drop-down will not be highlighted as are the other items in the Dialog. However, you can see the highlight move to all the items before and after the drop-down, so you can tell by default when it is selected (four tabs works for me). Also, the shortcuts will not work only by selecting the drop-down, you need to use the down arrow first.

I have, in fact, cobbled together an Automator workflow to automatically download a batch of open tabs or windows using these ideas in an AppleScript along with Automator. Works great -- I did a year's worth of online articles from the fifties in under eight minutes.

[robg adds: Your experience will probably vary by application. In Firefox, for instance, the PDF button (and the others at the bottom of the dialog) aren't included in the Tab cycle, so you can't select it via the keyboard. If you have the expanded print dialog in a given app, it will take more than four tab presses to reach the PDF button.]

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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090720125449220