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.

In one of my previous posts (Full screen on OS X) I have written about Megazoomer, a very useful piece of software that lets you maximise your window to a full screen size.

Just press Command-Enter, and the front-most window grows to fill your entire display. Megazoomer was only available for PPC platform, but now there is also the univesal binary. See details and download from Ian Henderson’s website.

Also, thanks to Eddie for pointing out something that I have completely forgotten to write about – OS X zoom feature. From about 10.4.7 or 10.4.8 Apple silently introduced a new feature to Mac OS X – screen zoom.

Just hold the Control key down and scroll your mouse wheel up, and your screen will zoom in. Scrolling the wheel down will zoom out. On Mac notebooks you can hold the Control key down and scroll the trackpad with two fingers (what’s this called – twin-scroll?) to achieve the same.

There are a few ways to increase text size on Mac, but to zoom in the graphics, e.g. small image on the website, this is just perfect solution.

We tend to say “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it”. But would someone please tell Apple - It’s broken, please fix it!

Earlier this evening I was writing an article about some cool stuff on Mac, and I needed to capture the screen when selecting the application using Command-Tab, see below.

Whatever I tried it wouldn’t work, as I wasted my valuable keys onto switching applications function. I needed to press Command-Tab, then while the image is on the screen – capture it. The way to do it would be Command-Shift-3, but the Command key was already in use.

Then I thought – Grab ! Yes, Grab has that function where you can start the ticker and you have 10 seconds to get your screen ready before it fires off. I was in Firefox, so I just clicked Firefox / Services / Grab in the menu bar, and three options popped out; Screen, Selection, and Timed Screen. But I’ve got all three Grab options grayed out. (?)

Quick jump to Google and a few forums suggested that this will work only with cocoa applications. So I opened Safari, Mail, iCal – same story. Someone said, you need to select something before it will work, so I selected a few lines of text – same result, just greyed out. Even suggestion of having TextEdit open wouldn’t work.

Finally I thought I could open Grab as an application, couldn’t I? So, surely there it is, in the Applications / Utilities folder. Once you open it, just select Capture / Timed Screen (or Command-Shift-Z on your keyboard) and the ticker starts.

Funny thing is that the generated file is actually a TIFF, but since I need to crop and resize it, it really isn’t a big deal.

When I think back, I’m pretty sure the Grab worked as service just fine in Panther, but not in Tiger (10.4.8) Can someone with Panther check this and let me know? Or even better – let Steve know.

[tags]Grab, OS X, screen capture[/tags]

We all know about Command-Tab function on Mac and Alt-Tab on Windows. But what if we have multiple windows of the same application, Safari for example, and want to switch between them?

Command-Tab won’t be of any help as it will give us only one window of each application to deal with.

I guess quite a few people didn’t know this, myself included. You simply press Command-~ (tilde). That’s the key just above the Tab key on your keyboard. Sweet and simple.

Another cool thing I figured out while fooling playing around with my Mac. If you are in any cocoa application and select some text, press Command-Shift-Y and the text is automatically stored in a sticky note on your desktop. A perfect reminder right before your eyes.

Not only this works with the text, but the hyperlinks will be stored as well, which is nice.

Images? Well… yes, see below. I was really surprised to see it capturing an image and also being able to save it.

Another way of capturing the selection is if you click on Application name in the menu bar, select Services and then Make New Sticky Note.

And no, it doesn’t work in Firefox.

Read my earlier article Cool things you can do on Mac for more tips.

[tags]OS X, Cool, Stickies, windows[/tags]