[How-to] Mac OS X Commands/Tips

JPT · 02:09 AM

Helpful tips for new Mac OS X users!

Exposé is so cool that the new Windows Vista blatantly copies off Mac OS X. As mentioned earlier, the F9, F10 and F11 keys expose your windows. F9 will show all your open windows (not the ones that are minimized). F10 shows all windows within one application, and F11 hides all open windows. And if you get the chance, try holding Shift while pressing the Exposé keys!

Dashboard is quite possibly one of the most brilliant of Mac-unique inventions (up until Windows Vista anyway, cause they’ve attached their own widget engine…). Access your Dashboard by pressing F12. For now it might not have any widgets (widgets are various little tools) but we can change that quickly.
A few of the widgets pictured above include: the Weather widget, Gmail Inbox, Wikipedia, Dictionary, Translation, etc. You’ll notice a little button at the lower left corner which is a list of all your available widgets. There’s a huge collection of them, Apple and nonApple-made, here: http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/
OS X wouldn’t be as awesome without its hotkeys. As mentioned earlier, most Windows commands that involve Ctrl can be replaced by Apple, such as refreshing a page is Apple+R. Quitting out of an application is Apple+Q. How do you switch between applications? Mac OSX has Apple+Tab, which displays each application (but not each individual window) and you can use your cursor to select the appropriate window. What if you want to find the Properties of a given folder or object? Highlight the object and press Apple+I to get its information. You can rename folders and items from Apple+I (what’s cooler, you can rename things even when you’ve got them open) and it also gives you the file properties. Within applications like Firefox or Safari, don’t forget hotkeys like Apple+T (new tab), Apple+W (close current window), Apple+# (go to # tab)

Taking Screenshots: There isn’t a PrintScreen key on your Mac. Instead, press Apple+Shift+3, which will take a picture of the whole screen just like PrintScreen. The image itself, unlike Windows, will plop itself on your desktop, named “Picture #.png”. If you want to take a picture of only a section of the screen, press Apple+Shift+4, which will give you a cursor to make the selection. Lastly, another notable screenshot feature is Apple+Shift+4+Spacebar, which will take a screenshot of the window of the application you’ve got open.

The Control Panel on a Mac is known as System Preferences, which can be found on the dock, or if you’ve gotten Quicksilver, you can just type “System Preferences”. You can find many, many helpful things on your System Preferences such as Appearance of your Mac, language settings (which are defaultly available), keyboard/mouse control, Display settings, Security, Accounts, Sound settings, Screensaver and desktop backgrounds. Feel free to explore!

There’s something similar to Program Files in your Mac, called the Applications folder. This folder contains all the applications installed on your Mac.
In order to install new programs, there isn’t quite an Installation Wizard like you’re usually familiar with. Instead, most of the time you’ll get at disk image (a file with an extension of .dmg) which you can “mount” by double-clicking. Once you’ve mounted it, you may see something similar to this window:
Follow its instructions to install: just drag the .app file into your Applications folder, and ta-da! You’ve installed the program.
What if your Mac locks up or if you want to force quit a program? Instead of CTRL+ALT+DEL, you should press Apple+Option+Esc, which acts exactly like the Windows Task Manager.
If you ever encounter any hardware issues or if you’d like to know what kind of hardware you’ve got, head over to the very top left of your screen and click the Apple. Choose “About This Mac” and then “More Info” which gives you the System Profiler. Also available from the Apple is Dock Preferences,
In many Windows applications, if you’d like to mess with its settings, there’s usually an Options menu for that. In a Mac, the Options menu is always right next to the Apple on the top left of the screen, under “Preferences.” You should also know that in order to change default applications (such as setting Firefox to be your default internet browser over Safari), you need to go to the original default application and head into Preferences to do this.
Lastly, if you’re really missing Windows or maybe DOS, there’s always Terminal, which is (kinda) the Mac version of your Command Prompt. You can get to Terminal by going to Applications, then it’ll be under Utilities. Here’s a nice tutorial to using Terminal: http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/ma...minal_one.html

dyanismith · 05-11-2006, 08:12 AM

And don't forget Spotlight! It's another one of OS X's jaw-dropping features that puts Windows to shame.

To invoke Spotlight, just press ⌘+spacebar and type whatever you're looking for. The results are displayed as you type.

Not only that, the standard File Open Dialog Box has Spotlight. So when you're trying to find something, you don't even have to switch to the Finder to look for it.

Nicoleto · **Hello to everyone -** 06-18-2006, 12:06 AM

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