Betalogue

In Word 2004, Microsoft has introduced a change in the behaviour for the cmd-Left and cmd-Right keyboard shortcuts, which brings the software in line with other Mac OS X software.

In other Mac OS X applications, such as Mail or Bare Bones Software’s BBEdit, cmd-Left makes the cursor jump to the beginning of the current line, and cmd-Right makes it jump to the end of the current line. In order to jump to the previous word or the next word, you use the Option key, i.e. opt-Left and opt-Right.

The opt-Left and opt-Right shortcuts already worked as expected in Word X (i.e. jumped from word to word). But the cmd-Left and cmd-Right shortcuts didn’t. Instead of jumping to the beginning or the end of the line, they would do the same as the opt-Left and opt-Right shortcuts, i.e. jump from word to word.

In Word 2004, cmd-Left now jumps to the beginning of the current line, and cmd-Right to the end. Finally :).

Unfortunately, Microsoft didn’t bring the same consistency to the cmd-Up and cmd-Down shortcuts. In BBEdit and Mail, cmd-Up jumps to the beginning of the document, and cmd-Down jumps to the end. In Word 2004 — as in Word X — cmd-Up jumps to the previous paragraph, and cmd-Down to the next paragraph.

To Microsoft’s defence, things are not as clearly established for the Up and Down arrow keys as they are for the Left and Right keys. In Mail, for example, opt-Up jumps to the previous paragraph and opt-Down to the next. In BBEdit, however, opt-Up jumps to the first line in the visible part of the document (i.e. the first line in the window or “screen”) and opt-Down to the last line.

I am not sure why BBEdit does this. I find it rather annoying, as I often want to use the Up and Down arrow keys in combination with the Command and Shift modifier to select a paragraph. As far as I can tell, there is no way to select a paragraph using the keyboard in BBEdit.

One day, maybe, we will finally have consistency across all Mac OS X applications… Until then, at least Word 2004’s improvements are a step in the right direction.

I cannot help but note, however, than, unfortunately, the Word 2004 improvements do next extend to the macro editor window, where option-Left and option-Right don’t work at all and you are obliged to use cmd-Left and cmd-Right instead (which work the way that they used to do in Word X, as described above).

One step at a time, I guess. :-/

This entry was posted by Pierre Igot on Thursday, June 3rd, 2004 at 4:37 am and is filed under Macintosh. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.