@Jason: thank you for letting me know about the keyboard shortcuts setting! this is a big improvement.

i am not sure i clearly communicated my whine about drop down boxes. my issue is not selecting items from them, but getting focus to them from the keyboard so i can proceed with selection. my experience with web forms in os x is that tab will cycle focus across text boxes (and i think radio buttons as well) but it skips over drop-down lists. if i don't have focus to the drop-down, pressing the space bar or the character i need just appends those keypresses to whichever text box currently has focus. for over two years now, i've been dying to know how to change focus to a drop-down via the keyboard on OS X.

@GeekLady: i needed to follow Jason's instructions before your suggestion worked...

@Robert C: thank you for those pointers! unfortunately, i have to use windows at work, so i like to keep the different things i have to remember between it and os x to a minimum. if i get into the habit of using command-d, or command-., i know i may reflexively start trying to do it in windows too, and previous experience tells me that would be frustrating.