If you are a MacBook user you'd find this trick pretty handy. We have to use IDEs like Eclipse and Netbeans every day for our large scale java development in office. For those who are familiar with these IDEs, there are a lot of shortcut keys involved if you want to work fast and a lot of these shortcut keys comprises of function keys. Function keys are by default mapped to different Macbook related functions like brightness up/up, volume up/down which is pretty handy for general usage.
Unfortunately, if you want to behave them as normal function keys, you have to press the fn while pressing the function keys. This is pretty cumbersome for day to day use on the other hand (Imagine then Eclipse shortcut for running last launched which normally involves Shift + Command + F11, now in this case you'd need to use Shift + Command + Fn + F11)
You can switch the default behavior by going to keyboard preference, then checking on "Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys". But again, now to change the volume, you'd have to keep Fn button pressed while pressing F11/F12 (in MacBook Pro). This is agian cumbersome.
Woundn't it be better if there was a nifty trick to switch between these two modes quickly. Like when you are busy in office working in your IDE you'd want to behave the function keys as normal but when you are wathcing movies or browsing, you'd want the default mac os behavior? And with a flip of a switch you could do that easily.
For this trick we are going to use KeyRemap4MacBook utility. Downlaod it from http://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook/. It's a free utility, so don't worry. Now go to keyboard preferences and make sure "Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys" is checked. We'd need this for our trick to work.
Now go to KeyRemap4MacBook prefernces, and go to 'Pass Through Mode' option. Then check on 'Change Fn+Escape to toggle "Pass Through Mode"'.
Now go to "Change F1..F19 Key" and check the "Macbook Pro: Keyboard Preferences Configured to Standard Function Keys" (I'm a macbook pro user, so this option is for me, if you own a Macbook Air, check the other options).
All set up. Now your macbook function keys behave in the default behavior of brightness up/down, volume up/down mode. So when you fire up your IDE, just press Fn+Escape and you'd go into function key mode, just use your shotcuts as you like, when you want to switch back, just press Fn+Escape again.
KeyRemap4MacBook is an awesome tool. It's really really powerful and comes with a lot more cool tricks, like emacs mode. I'd come up with some more explanations later. This awesome tool is free to use. Do donate to the developer, I think he really did a great job.
