Howto question: keyboard navigation of application menu in gnome or xcfe

I’m playing with 11.2 but find myself dropping back to my old 10.1 system frequently because KDE 4 sux so bad. And please don’t ding me (again) because I’m behind the release curve. It is what it is and a solution to my issue will likely be needed whenever I upgrade again.

I touch type and hate to take my fingers off the keyboard to use the mouse. So it is important to me to be able to navigate the application menu by typing on the keyboard. This works with KDE and icewm. It does not work with xcfe, at least by default. The only reason I’d try gnome is to find out if it works there and I’d rather not spend an hour and a half doing another install only to find out it doesn’t.

So, after my long-winded background explanation, is there an easy way in either xcfe or gnome to turn on/enable/configure the capability to navigate the application menu using the keyboard and not the mouse?

Thanks

Hi
In Gnome 3.2.1/11.4, alt+first letter of application if your searching,
then arrows to navigate. Or alt+F2 and enter the first character and
arrow keys to browse. Universal Access will allow keys to be used for
the mouse as well.


Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.4 (x86_64) Kernel 2.6.37.6-0.7-desktop
up 22:46, 4 users, load average: 0.21, 0.11, 0.10
GPU GeForce 8600 GTS Silent - Driver Version: 285.05.09

Oops that should be Alt+F2 plus type name (or part of name, tab
completion is possible).


Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.4 (x86_64) Kernel 2.6.37.6-0.7-desktop
up 22:54, 4 users, load average: 0.08, 0.14, 0.13
GPU GeForce 8600 GTS Silent - Driver Version: 285.05.09