Cool OS X Features - Enlighten Me

I just found out about Expose in another thread. It really is a great feature, and I didn't even know it existed. Takes some time for us switchers to find all these neat tricks. Anyone else know of some nice tricks that the average NooB may not know about?

the dock has lots of hidden uses, you can add folders of apps, like a folder called Graphics, and have all design/photo/page layout apps in it. there is also lots of useful utilities, like digital color meter which will give you the rgb or cmyk breakdown of any color you see on your dusplay. also, theres the toolbar and sidebar in any finder window. you can add apps that are drag and drop to either, trsh cans, functional actions, etc. theres more, but Im at school, so Ill get back later.

Here are two books that I highly recommend to any switcher, I found them packed with useful information and tips that everyone needs to at least try:

Book 1: Killer Tips

and



Book 2: The Missing Manual

*clears throat*
killer tips is a killer rip, off.

Macman said:

*clears throat*
killer tips is a killer rip, off.

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For someone new to the OS (OSX) I think it gives some very good tips and shortcuts that any Windows user will find handy. I know when I switched last June ('04) there were things that I never knew could be done until I read some of the tips in this book.

I guess, to each his/her own. :yinyang:

thats true.

Thanks for the input guys...keep the tricks coming

If you hold the shift key in, then click on the 'yellow' 'hide into dock' button in a finder window then it will slowly go into the dock and also back out if clicked on again, useless but it looks really cool.
The ability to take pictures of the desktop is also really handy with the keyboard shortcut apple+shift+3 for the hole screen and apple+shift+4 for a selection of the screen.

Press control + F1 to turn on keyboard access. Now Control + F2 is like alt+f in wondows, and Control+F3 will allow you to open an app from the dock without your mouse

System Preferences >> Universal Access >> Click "Turn On Zoom" .. now Command+Option+= will zoom in and Command+Option+- will zoom out ... there are a lot of useful things in OS X like these.. i suggest getting The Missing Manual : Panther

that zooming is cool, obly problem is that if you take a screenshot zoomed in, itll still look bad.

Mr Bobbins said:

If you hold the shift key in, then click on the 'yellow' 'hide into dock' button in a finder window then it will slowly go into the dock and also back out if clicked on again, useless but it looks really cool.
The ability to take pictures of the desktop is also really handy with the keyboard shortcut apple+shift+3 for the hole screen and apple+shift+4 for a selection of the screen.

Click to expand...

holding shift also works with expose. also, after holding shift+command+4, tap the space bar, a small camera will appear and it will take a pic of any window its over.

Macman said:

holding shift also works with expose.

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awesome i never knew that!

holding shift works with a few other features ... hold shift while minimizing a window.

hold down command+option and click on the button in the upper right hand corner of a window ... itll bring up the customization

and just for fun: control+option+command+8

MacAddikt said:

and just for fun: control+option+command+8

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Well I'll be buggered, I've been looking for a "night time" mode for my planned car Mac and that fits the bill nicely and should be easy to do from an AppleScript (I've decided to use AppleScript Studio to write the front end, if anyone has some cool icons they'd like to see in a car or ideas for a cool looking layout feel free to send them my way).

Amen-Moses

i personally like holding the option key when opening a folder or a drive....i like my area clean, .


also holding option while switching to another application. just hides it like it was never there.


Josh

jbsengineer said:

i personally like holding the option key when opening a folder or a drive....i like my area clean, .


also holding option while switching to another application. just hides it like it was never there.


Josh

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ya, i like hiding apps too, but when switching apps, i use Command+Tab ... and Command+Option+Tab doesnt do the job i hoped it would (hide and switch)