The Table View Selection bug: What it is and how to fix it
Some people (notably John Gruber 
) find one behaviour in Mail.app “both wrong and endlessly frustrating”.
The problem is this: If you use Shift-Arrow keys to select multiple messages in the Mail’s Message Viewer, hitting Shift-Up to deselect a message highlighted by mistake doesn’t deselect it. It selects the message immediately above the top selected email instead.
Try it. I had never even attempted this before, so it was news to me.
The fault is caused (I learn from John’s post) by the default list controls in Data Browser (Carbon apps like Finder and iTunes) and in NSTableView (Cocoa apps).
Jim Speth has written a plugin for Mail.app that makes the Shift-Arrow key combination behave as many believe it should.
If ⌘-Clicking the offending item selected by mistake doesn’t satisfy, this may be solution for you.
LiveJournal blogger Nevyn has taken the fix a step further by turning the plugin into an Input Manager that will correct the behaviour in all Cocoa apps. One small hitch; it crashes the Adium 1.0 beta.
[Via Daring Fireball ]
Similar Posts:
- Mail Type Select 2.6: Finder-like text matching in Mail.app, now universal
- Forward only selected attachments
- Faster text dragging in Cocoa apps (like Mail)
- 10 most useful keyboard shortcuts
- Shortcuts 1.0: Contextual menu hotkeys
Tags: apple mail. Message selection, bug, keyboard shortcuts, mail.app
July 28th, 2006 at 7:03 am
The problem is that some nut at Apple (Jobs himself?) thinks that this is the right behaviour! The real proof, IMO, is that if you do this in the Windows version of iTunes, you get the same stupid behaviour. This certainly doesn’t come from any Windows control, so it must have been a deliberate addition (unless the iTunes port is at a really low level, I guess).
July 28th, 2006 at 10:32 am
That’s interesting. I didn’t know that about the Windows version. I wonder if it was a deliberate addition or a sign of careless or low level porting.
July 29th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
actually i have always liked this feature of mail – it makes sense to me… ah well, can’t please everyone.
July 31st, 2006 at 9:51 am
Greg, you’re the first person I’ve heard of who actually prefers this way of handling selection to be the default action for shift-arrow selection. To me, it feels totally useless and very counterintuitive. Nevyn’s input manager, while great, is slightly wonky.
The better hope is that Apple will change this behavior, which honestly 99% of its customers must find irritating (or, if it’s the first time a user has experienced the behavior, seems simply unexpected and unhelpful).
Thanks for finding the (partial) solution, Hawk Wings! (and Nevyn!)
July 31st, 2006 at 4:03 pm
The first person I’ve heard of, too.
Greg (assuming you don’t mind sharing): had you used keyboard control of textboxes much before OS X? I’m wondering if maybe this makes more sense if it’s the only behaviour you’re used to – perhaps the main reason it’s so odd to the rest of us is that we’re used to how everything outside of OS X (earlier Mac OS/System, Windows, etc) behaves.
August 5th, 2006 at 9:43 am
FWIW, Gruber has a much more extensive piece up about this now.