Silvermac

This is the summary of some tips for new Mac users I have posted in my blog over the past 18 months. If you are new to Mac, I would recommend you read them, you may find some of them very handy, a few maybe quite fascinating.

Installing applications on Mac is somewhat different to the installation you may have experienced on Windows. While some new users struggle to get it at first, it is incredibly simple and easy. [details]

The Dock provides easy access to some of the applications on your Mac, displays which applications are currently running, and holds windows in their minimized state. But if you see it only as a pretty strip of cool bouncing icons, then you’re dead wrong. There is so much more to Dock then you could imagine. [details]

What’s the jelly bean’s job in OS X – We all know about that jellybean on the top right corner of OS X windows. And we also know that clicking it will toggle the toolbar on and off. But what if we wanted to customise the toolbar even further. [details]

Shortcut to Desktop – Sometimes, when saving the file, we’d like to have it saved directly to the Desktop, but the option provided by OSX points somewhere else. This explains how to save the file to desktop in one keystroke. [details]

Accessing menus – If you come from Windows world and are used to using menus, you may feel a little strange that you can’t do it on Mac. Actually … you can. [details]

Zooming the screen – One of the great features of OS X (10.4) is that you can zoom in the screen, perfect when viewing small images. [details]

Slideshows in Finder – Imagine you have 80 photos on a CD and you’d like to preview them all. You can either double-click on each one to open them in Preview, import them all to iPhoto, or simply use Slideshow in Finder. [details]

Changing icons in OS X – There are trillions of beautiful icons for Mac out there, so why not use them, you can replace your default icon in a few simple step. [details]

Screen capture and text clipping - One thing I couldn’t live without is the screen capture, lets you select an area, window or full screen. And capturing text is even easier, just select and drag away. [details]

Switching windows and applications – Many new Mac users are slightly disappointed that Cmnd+Tab (Ctrl+Tab on Windows) is actually switching between applications and not between the windows, as they used to do in the Microsoft world. But there is something else that works even better. [details]

Other things you may find useful are Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts and Most popular Mac applications, as well as few handy tricks such as invert screen and slow motion.

One thing many switchers to Mac hate is not being able to access the menu via keyboard shortcuts. For example, in Windows Alt-F gets you to File menu item, Alt-T to Tools, Alt-V to View, and then you select from there.

There is no such thing on Mac, but there is something else, and not many new Mac users know about it. It’s Control-F2.

Go ahead and press it, then watch your Apple menu.

It gets highlighted and you can do the rest with your arrow keys. And it works in all applications, so just select the application you want with your mouse, or Command-Tab on your keyboard, then press Control-F2 and you’re in business.

This is one of the first things I have learned when I switched to Mac, and I thought it may be handy to any new Mac users out there.

Sometimes you would like to save the file to your Desktop. Once you click on File | Save as in your application menu bar, the save dialog box appears offering you one location, usually the Documents folder.

Of course you have a few options what to do, you can save it there, you can click on the drop-down menu and select one of the most common locations, or you can click on a little triangle icon and open the Finder mode.

But if all you want is to save the file on your desktop, simply hit Command-D (Apple-D) on your keyboard, and the save location will automatically change to Desktop.

If you are using Finder in column view, it can be very frustrating when viewing file names that are longer than the column width, usually around 24 characters. But luckily, there is simple solution for this – you can click the vertical column divider and move it until file name becomes completely visible.

Even better, you can double-click on it and the column will stretch just enough to display the longest file name in its full length.

In this case the folder name User Guides And Information was a little too long, but once double-clicked, the column stretches nicely to display the folder name in full.