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I'm a web developer who works on Macs. I do most of my testing on Firefox and Safari and then test my sites on IE to ensure compatibility. I have Parallels and Windows XP running and I find that I repeatedly hit Ctrl-R to refresh the page, only to have it open the "Run" window each time.

Is there a way to make IE (8 in particular, but I also test in 7 and 6) or Windows recognize Ctrl-R as refresh instead Run?

I should add that I'm technically hitting Cmd-R if that makes a difference to anyone.

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2 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

That's normal...on Mac, Command==WIN, Control==CTRL, Alt/Option==ALT. So Cmd-R translates to Win-R, which is the windows hotkey for run. Control+R translates to CTRL+R, which is what you want.

So basically what you want to do, is swap the WIN and CTRL keys inside your virtual machine. If Parallels has this option, that's the easiest way, otherwise you can do it pretty simply with AutoHotKey. An example script to swap CTRL and WIN:

LWin::Control
RWin::Control
Control::LWin

Here's another way that might work, by editing the registry.

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I chose this answer because it mentioned the virtual machine solution. Interestingly enough, if you try and turn off the default mapping of Command to Control, it still doesn't work. You actually need to force Command-R to Control-R. Since I only really use it for IE, I'm ok with that. – Paulo Oct 22 '09 at 18:16
Well, I'd still highly reccomend my script. No offence to davr, of course, as it'd work, but mine would only remap for IE - so if you DID use another piece of software thing'sd be ok :) – Phoshi Oct 22 '09 at 18:19
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up vote 1 down vote

Like the other answer, AutoHotKey is your friend! :D

SetTitleMatchMode, 2
#IfWinActive, internet explorer
#R::F5
#IfWinActive

That'll remap win&R (Cmd&R, to you) to F5, the standard refresh key. :)

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