[Luca]

I won't be able to help with most of your issues as they're beyond the scope of my knowledge, but I'll help you where I can.

Originally Posted by deuce868 2. What is with the Safari and the fact that you can’t tab into anything but text and textarea boxes. Every other browser I can tab into select boxes and use space to check them as well as form buttons. Grrrr....

I find that nice as it allows me to quickly switch between text entry areas. However, I do think it would be nice to be able to do the same with check boxes and pop up lists. Personally I find it annoying when Windows browsers have to select every single link when you hit tab, as it basically destroys the functionality of using tab since it takes forever to get anywhere. I think you can mess around with this in the "Full Keyboard Access" preferences... it's either in Keyboard & Mouse or Universal Access in the system preferences.

Originally Posted by deuce868 Why do programs not actually close when you hit the X? Can you change that setting?

You can't change it, and with good reason. OS X does not work the same way as Windows. Windows considers every individual window in the taskbar to be an entire application. When you use alt-tab, it switches windows. Another thing is that Windows puts the menu bar inside each application window.

On the Mac, though, each program could be thought of as full-screen and transparent. There is a single menu bar along the top of the screen. When you close all the windows of a program, that program stays running until you decide to quit out of it. This is nice because it ensures that the program stays in RAM. You don't have to wait for it to launch again, just click the dock icon of an already-running program and it'll open a fresh window. Now, I realize Windows kind of does this too - if you launch Firefox and then close it, subsequent launches of Firefox will be a lot quicker. But there's no visual representation of that at all.

The keyboard shortcuts for switching between windows and applications are slightly different as well. Command-tab (same key position as alt-tab) switches between running applications. Command-` (or Command-~ depending on how you look at it) switches between windows in the currently active application. Each window is considered subordinate to the full application.

It might take some getting used to if you have used Windows all your life but Mac users swear by this method.

Originally Posted by deuce868 6. Is there a keyboard shortcut for the + button? I see one for minimize.

That button used to be useful, back in OS 9. With Column view in OS X, I rarely or never use it, since its only useful function is the "zoom to fit content" function in Finder. In most other applications, it simply randomly moves and resizes the window. I don't think there's a keyboard shortcut for it, though it is available in the Window menu. There might be a way to configure it to a keyboard shortcut either through the System Preferences (somewhere) or through a third-party program.

Originally Posted by deuce868 8. Any way to set folders in finder to auto sort? Every time I move something I have to go to view->arrange by name or kind to get a clean look.

Finder's a bit unreliable about this, as the Finder itself is hardly changed from 10.0 (that's a big campaign among OS X users - FTFF: Fix The F*cking Finder). In general, though, you should be able to get everything to auto-sort by going into their View Options (Command-J, I think). Make sure the radio button at the top is set to "All Windows" (I think it is there by default), and then click the "Arrange By Name" check box. That should do it. Also, give column view a try! It's pretty nice.

Sorry for all the uncertainty, as it's been a while since I've done any of this. Oh, and welcome to the Mac world and to AppleNova!