Amusingly, it’s Windows that’s broken in that respect. Pretty much every OS *but* Windows has always used “Home” to take you to the top of a document or screen (where appropriate), and “End” to take you to the, well, END or bottom of a document or screen.
As someone who started off using then-old UNIX terminals in grade school and had used everything else from a Commodore PET to a NeXT Cube, I find Windows’ use of Home and End to be extremely frustrating when navigating through a long document. Where’s the command to go to the top of a document from deep within it? Alt-Some-Weird-Not-Memorable-Code-Other-Than-Just-Pressing-The -Home-Button?
That said, if you’re on a single-line entry field on a Mac (in anything other than FireFox or other program that doesn’t use the built in input handlers), such as a web browser’s address entry field, you can press the up arrow to go to the start of the line, or the down arrow to go to the end of the line. Simple. Wish Windows had it.
I go to the beginning or end of a sentence much more often then to the beginning or end of the document, so for me, Window's setup is more logical.
Forgot to mention - Windows/Microsoft isn’t even consistent in how the home and end keys work:
Windows Explorer Shortcuts:
END (Display the bottom of the active window)
HOME (Display the top of the active window)
Word Shortcuts:
Start of Line HOME
End of Line END
Start of Document CTRL+HOME
End of Document CTRL+END
Not *real* consistent. And there’s no single line single key shortcut, like on a Mac.
That's one of the little things that bugs the *&^% out of me on Windows. On a Mac, if I want to copy a URL from the address bar to paste into an e-mail or AIM, it's a piece of cake -- shift-up-arrow goes to the beginning, shift-down-arrow selects the line, and command-C copies. Windows one-line text fields also don't seem to have a consistent double- and triple-click behavior.
In fairness, there might be an equally simple way to do that in Windows, but it's not as automatic to me.
That's one of the little things that bugs the *&^% out of me on Windows. On a Mac, if I want to copy a URL from the address bar to paste into an e-mail or AIM, it's a piece of cake -- shift-up-arrow goes to the beginning, shift-down-arrow selects the line, and command-C copies. Windows one-line text fields also don't seem to have a consistent double- and triple-click behavior.
In fairness, there might be an equally simple way to do that in Windows, but it's not as automatic to me.
That's one of the little things that bugs the *&^% out of me on Windows. On a Mac, if I want to copy a URL from the address bar to paste into an e-mail or AIM, it's a piece of cake -- shift-up-arrow goes to the beginning, shift-down-arrow selects the line, and command-C copies. Windows one-line text fields also don't seem to have a consistent double- and triple-click behavior.
In fairness, there might be an equally simple way to do that in Windows, but it's not as automatic to me.