Anomalies Photoshop CS6 - Liquify Keyboard Brush resizing shortcuts & Selection Alt

Question

Using Photoshop CS6 (13.0.1) Extended with Windows 7 Pro Service Pack1 O.S.
New Box HP Z420 Workstation
Intel Xeon CPU E5-1603 @ 2.80 GHz
16.0 Ram
Issues:
1. Intermittently on any selection - Keyboard Alt key on right of spacebar gives me the double arrow
alt key on left of the spacebar gives me Plus with the submenus.
2. More importantly in the Liquify (Shift+Ctrl+X) intermittently when using the brushes shortcut resize keyboard key they May on May not work ( { or } ) with the
tools on the left side
3 For efficiency shortcut keys are necessary - I use the allot - Fashion Industry
4 Suggestion ?? - I had our Tech Div. check out the keyboard - no issues there

Answer 1

Contact Sheet is a welcome return. So many features can be adapted. I made this a few years ago by sizing up 40 images, and turning off titles, and ‘Flatten Layers’ when making the contact sheet. It was then fairly simple to FT each layer to give some overlap, and use Layer masks for creative affect.
It was eventually incorperated into a poster for the organisation running the event.
Some interesting JDIs  (thanks so much for the typed list!).
The Eye dropper changes appeal to me, and Ctrl J now working on Groups is very welcome.  Lots more there, but what worries me is that there are apparently twice as many new JDIs in CS6 as there were in CS5, which makes me think I must be missing a lot of the CS5 JDIs.  is there a list somewhere?