Mac Tricks And Tips » Mac 101

Mac 101 – Saving Files

admin — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 18:25:03 +0000

Hey

As part of my Mac 101 series and a personal request from Brady, I am going to introduce good techniques on saving files. If you are new to the OS and have come from Windows saving files is slightly different but once you learn the tricks of the trade it is really simple. I can quickly navigate to deep levels on my Mac with the slightest of ease.

When you first open the Save dialog box you will see something like the image below. The open box will also look similar. Many of the techniques I mention here can be applied to opening files.

You should notice three things. The box where you name your file. The drop down menu showing “Desktop” and the encoding. The encoding section of the box will vary in applications and for the most part you don’t have to change. If you click on the drop down list you will be given a list of your Hard Drives main areas which are found in the sidebar of your Finder windows (Pictures, Music etc) and recent places. These are quick links to main areas where you can save your files.

The problem with using the drop down list is that it isn’t very specific. Brady’s problem was that he had to move files with Finder after saving them to his Desktop. You can of course get around this problem. If you click on the small down ward triangle where you name files you will be given a normal save box which you will have seen before.

Like with Finder you can navigate through your computer to the exact folder. You can use the view buttons in the top left corner. It basically becomes a small Finder window where you can save your files.

Saving files isn’t hard, it just takes a couple of minutes to work out what everything is and how you do it. If you are form Windows the second screen shot is very similar to the save dialog boxes you have seen before.

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Mac 101 – Saving Files

Mac Tricks And Tips

Mac 101: The Dock

admin — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 16:15:06 +0000

Hey

As part of the Mac 101 series, I am going to move onto the Dock. The dock is a very crucial part of the Mac OS X system. A lot of your interaction with programs will belong here. For example nearly all of your commonly used programs will reside in the dock, plus any programs you are currently using. As well as this icons such as Trash, stacks and other documents will end up in your Dock. Its an important place, so you better learn how to use it.

The Dock

The Dock is that simple bar across the bottom of your screen. It is split into two main sections. The left is your applications. Theses are the programs which are open, and which are ready in waiting. On the right is the area dedicated to stack, minized programs and the Trash icon.

Setup

Setting up the dock is simple. Go to System Preferences > Dock. Here you will have a couple of options. The size. This is how big the dock will be on your screen. I prefer a small dock to maximise screen space. The magnification. When you hover over the dock, the magnification effect will increase the size of the dock. You can change this value here, or turn it off. The position. If you are short on screen real estate you can change the location of the dock. The sides enable you to have more vertical screen space since this is the smaller side. The final preference is the minimizing effect. This is the animation that is shown when you minimize a window.

There is not a lot of variables which you can change. Although there are a lot of hidden shortcuts which you can use to get the most out your dock.

Using The Dock

Using the dock is simple. Every time you click on an icon it will open that application. For example if you click on the TextEdit icon, it will open that program. If that program is already open, it will bring all of the windows forward for that application.

You can add any icon to the dock by drag and drop. Select the item you want drag it from Finder and place it on the dock. Its icon will then be added. You can remove any icons from the Dock by dragging them off. A small animation poof will play and the icon will be removed.

A lot of dock icons have a right click menu. This right click menu will enable you to access features of the program quickly and easily. Most apps will vary there right click menu. iTunes for example has a lot of right click options to let you change what is playing. All application will have the following menu.

The “Remove From Dock” option will remove the icon from the dock. It is the same as dragging the icon off. “Open At Login” is used to open the program when you log on. For example if you want Safari top open when you log in, you select this option. “Show In Finder” shows you the application in a Finder window. “Hide”, hides all of the windows for that application, useful if your screen is getting cluttered. Finally Quit, closes all of the applications windows and quits the program.

Stacks

Stacks are a new feature of the dock in Leopard. They enable you to add folders to the dock and view their contents. To add a Stack simply drag a folder from Finder to the right hand side of the Dock. When you right click on the stack you change the Stack settings.

Shortcuts

The Dock has a few shortcuts. They are not as numerous as other applications but they are still there.

Command + Click = Shows the app in Finder
Command + Option + Click = Hides all but the current application
Command + Option + D = Enables/Disables show hide on the dock

Customizing

You can customize the dock quite easily, either by Terminal shortcuts or applications.

Enable A 2D Dock. This changes the dock from the slanted 3D look to a more 2D version. Replace yes with no to reverse the effect.

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES killall Dock

Increase Dock magnification size. You can increase how big the magnification is on your dock past the preset limit. Change 512 to a size you want. Although don’t go past 512 as this can cause problems.

defaults write com.apple.dock largesize -int 512

To reset change the value back either with a different number of use the preference option in System Preferences.

You can make hidden applications icons in the dock transparent by applying this command.

defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool YES killall Dock

Replace Yes with No to reverse the effect.

You can make the dock spring loaded by using the following command in Terminal.

defaults write com.apple.dock enable-spring-load-actions-on-all-items -boolean YES

When you drag and drop a file onto the dock icon it will open in that application.

You can also move the dock to either the left or the right of the screen by using one of the following commands.

defaults write com.apple.dock pinning -string start

defaults write com.apple.dock pinning -string end

To reverse simply change the options within System Preferences.

Background Image

You can change the background image of the dock. It is simply a .png image that is used to render the effect. you can easily change this to what you want. The best way to do this is to follow this post. It details all of the commands needed to change how your dock looks.

Conclusion

If you are new to the Mac, hopefully this post will shed a bit more light on the subject. It is really hard to write for everyone. So if you have a question please leave a comment below.

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Mac 101: The Dock

Mac Tricks And Tips

Mac 101: Introducing Finder

admin — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:18:47 +0000

Hey

I got an email this morning asking me to do a basic tip. I mean basic. This person who didn’t leave there name is new to the Mac and wanted to know more about Finder. I was more than happy to oblige. This post is designed to run through Finder. It will post some basic information, plus a couple of hints and tips. It is designed to get new people to the OS system up and running. Its not hard to get a hand of Finder. It just takes a bit on no how.

Finder

Finder, if you didn’t know already is the program for organizing, files and folder on your Mac. It is simple to use. The idea behind this application is to find where your programs and files are. If you open a new window by either clicking on the Dock icon, a folder or hard drive on your Desktop or pressing Command + N when Finder is selected as the application, you should see a window that looks like this (minus the numbers).

The numbers mean the following:

1) The next and back buttons. These buttons move you to the next and previous folder which you have visited.

2) Thumbnail, List, Column, and Quicklook view. Each of these views are different. Thumbnail view is used to see large thumbnails of the file of folder you are looking at. List view is the one shown above. Column view is similar to list views side by side. Column view is very useful for moving files around. Quicklook view shows you a Quicklook of the file you are looking at. More on Quicklook later next week.

You can remove the stripes in list view with the following Terminal command

defaults write com.apple.finder FXListViewStripes -bool FALSE killall Finder

3) The Quicklook button to access Quicklook of a file or folder.

4) The extra tools buttons. You can access a couple of extra tools from this button.

5) Extra apps area. This is a small area which you can use to add applications and functions to your Finder toolbar. To add your own simply drag and drop any application into this area. If you want to customize it more right click on the tool bar and select customize.

6) The current folder. By default this would say “Desktop” or “My Folder”, so you can easily see which folder you are in. If you want to change it so it shows you your current path simply enter the following into Terminal and restart. To revert change YES to NO.

defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES

7) Spotlight. The best search engine tool for searching your Mac. Enter any search term and you computer will find all of the files and folders relating to that search term.

8) Harddrive & Devices. When you add a hard drive or a CD, iPod, or disk image to you computer it will appear here. This is a simple place to access all of these pieces of external media.

9) Network Drives. If you have any networked drives, disk or anything of a similar nature it will appear in the Shared area.

10) Places. A quick shortcut area for adding shortcuts to other places on your hard drive. These can be links to any part of your computer. Simply drag and drop the files or folders in this area. To remove them, drag the link off the sidebar.

11) The number of items in the folder and the amount of disk space left. As you can see, I don’t have a lot of disk space left.

12) Your actual files and folders. You can access a lot of information from this area, such as the name, size, date made. Clicking on the titles at the top can be used to re-arrange the files. List view is the most useful.

13) Hide toolbars. Although this number should have appeared earlier I couldn’t be bothered to re-arrange my list. This little button will hide/show you toolbars and sidebar when clicked. Gives you a cut down version of Finder.

Using Finder is pretty easy. You can quickly move between folders by selecting folders. If you ever want to see the tree of which folder you are in right click where the number 6 is on the image above. This will show you a small list of which folder you are and the path to get to this folder.

Customizing Finder is also very easy. If you don’t quite like how Finder looks or works you can change a couple of variables. If you right click in any folder and select Show View Options, you will get up a small pane. This pane can be used to change the size of icons, the text size, as well as more pieces information such as date added etc. The view options will change depending on what view you have the folder in. So experiment to get something you like. If you have thumbnail view enabled, you can add a background image for that folder through the Show View Options.

Shortcuts

No introduction to Finder would be complete without some shortcuts.

Command + , = Preferences (not a lot here)
Command + Shift + Delete = Empty Trash
Command + H = Hide Finder
Command + Alt + H = Hide Others
Command + N = New Finder Window
Command + Shift + N = New Folder
Command + Alt + N = New Smart Folder (for settings rules for finding files)
Command + O = Open selected file
Command + W = Close Window
Command + Alt + W = Close All
Command + I = Get Info (Find more information about a file)
Command + Alt + I = Show Inspector (Like Get Info but always stays open and changes information with selected file)
Command + Y or Space Key = Quicklook
Command + F = Find
Shift + Command + F = Find by name
Command + Z = Undo
Command + A = Select All
Command + Alt + A = Deselect All
Command + [ = Go Back
Command + ] = Go Forward
Command + M – Minimize
Command + Alt + M = Minimize All

Conclusion

Hopefully any new users out there will have a better idea how Finder works. It isn’t hard to get your head around. Once as you start working with Finder for a week, you will get the hang of it and be working like a pro.

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Mac 101: Introducing Finder

Mac Tricks And Tips

Mac 101: 56 Useful Mac Shortcuts

admin — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:28:20 +0000

Hey

As part of a new series that will be making an appearance over the next couple of months is Mac 101. This series will focus on basic tips and tricks for the new user to the Mac system. Since Macs are growing in popularity I thought it was a good idea to do some sort of series to anyone in this category.

This first post will be a big list of useful shortcuts for the Mac. This list was actually recommended by a reader from the contact form. The email was sent in about month ago so I haven’t been to long in replying. Anyway this list will be split up into two sections basic key commands and the rest of them. This list will not include any F1-12 shortcuts as these vary widely depending on the keyboard and age of computer. Of course, if you have anymore that are not features on the list please leave a comment below.

Overview

A quick over view of the shortcut symbols used on this page. They should display correctly as they are unicode as part of the font. This works on Firefox and Safari so you should be ok. The list below is for anyone who isn’t quite sure.

⌘ = Command, the most common modifier.

⌥ = Option or Alt.

⇧ = Shift

^ = Control. Not used as frequently but is still there.

Basic Shortcuts

This is a list of shortcuts that should be hardwired into your brain. These are usually the most commonly used. Most of the shortcuts on the list are for Finder, although a lot will work in other applications. If I wrote a list for every single application out there I would be here for ever.

⌘ + Q = Quit
⌘ + W = Close window
⌘ + O = Open a file in your application
⌘ + P = Print
⌘ + C = Copy
⌘ + V = Paste
⌘ + X = Cut
⌘ + S = Save
⌘ + Z = Undo
⌘ + A = Select All
⌘ + Y or Space = Quicklook
⌘ + Tab = Cycle through windows

Personally I use all of those shortcuts all of the time. It helps to remember them and use them. Most will come naturally over time.

Other Shortcuts

This is the list where every other shortcut resides. Have a look through and see if there is anything which is of interest to you.

⌘ + ⇧+ 3 = Take fullscreen picture
⌘ + ⇧ + 4 = Take selected area screenshot
⌘ + ⇧ + 4 + Space = Take screenshot of window or menu
⌥ + ⌘ + Escape = Bring up Force Quit window
⌘ + Space = Spotlight search
⌘ + ` (back tick) = Cycle through applications windows
⌘ + . = Cancel operation
⌘ + ⇧ + ? = Open help
⌘ + I = Get Info
⌘ + [ = Go backwards in history in Finder
⌘ + ] = Go forwards in history in Finder
⌘ + Up Arrow = Go to previous folder in hierarchy
⌘ + Down Arrow = Open folder of file in Finder
⌘ + ⌥ + T = Show hide Finder’s toolbar
⌘ + Delete = Move item to Trash
⌘ + ⇧ + Delete = Empty Trash
⌘ + E = Eject disk
⌘ + F = Find
⌘ + G = Next result in Find option
⌘ + H = Hide application
⌘ + M = Minimize
⌘ + N = New window
⌘ + ⌥ + W = Close all windows
⌘ + ⇧ + Z = Redo
⌘ + ⇧ + H = Go to Home folder
⌘ + ⇧ + D = Go to Desktop
⌘ + ⇧ + C = Go to Computer
⌘ + ⇧ + K = Go to Network
⌘ + ⇧ + I = Go to iDisk
⌘ + ⇧ + A = Go to Application
⌘ + ⇧ + U = Go to Utilities
⌘ + ⇧ + G = Go to folder
⇧ + ⌘ + Q = Log out
⇧ + ⌘ + ⌥ + Q = Log out immediately.
⌘ + D = Duplicate in Finder
⌘ + ⌥ + 8 = Turn on Voice Over
⌘ + ⌥ + + = Zoom in (if turned on)
⌘ + ⌥ + – =Zoom Out
⌘ + ⌥ + D = Show/Hide Dock
^ + Eject = Show shutdown dialog
^ + ⌘ + Eject = Close all and restart
⌥ + ⌘ + Eject = Sleep
⌘ + Shift + F = Find file by name
⌘ + R = Refresh widget

Conclusion

Although a lot of these are for Finder they are very useful to learn especially if you use a function quite frequently. If you have any more general shortcuts please add them in the comments. If you want a cool little application to check which shortcuts are availble to you I recommend KeyCue, I have previously written about it here. It is a good little application for finding new shortcuts on your system.

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Mac 101: 56 Useful Mac Shortcuts

Mac Tricks And Tips