About This Mac » tip of the day http://www.aboutthismac.com News, Tips and Tricks for Your Mac Wed, 06 Apr 2011 16:08:34 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Mac Tip of the Day: Expose and Aluminum Keyboard http://www.aboutthismac.com/2008/mac-tip-of-the-day-expose-and-aluminum-keyboard/ http://www.aboutthismac.com/2008/mac-tip-of-the-day-expose-and-aluminum-keyboard/#comments Thu, 11 Sep 2008 21:27:00 +0000 Daryl http://www.aboutthismac.com/2008/09/11/mac-tip-of-the-day-expose-and-aluminum-keyboard/ If you have been a mac user for long enough time you will know all about the Expose feature. If not then here is a quick review.…

Expose allows you to quickly do the following:
See All the windows you have open,
Push all windows to the side to quickly view just your desktop,
See just windows from the current application

These key commands are some of the most commonly used keys on my keyboard. By default,

F9– Shows All Windows
F10– Shows Application Windows
F11– Shows Desktop

While you can set hot corners or mouse shortcuts (a tip for another post) for these commands, most mac users quickly learnt these keys when they bought their first mac. However, if you have just bought yourself a brand spankin new mac, or got yourself a new Aluminum keyboard you will notice that F9, F10,F11 are now defaulted to “Next”, “Mute”, and “Volume Down” respectively. While this keyboard now included F3 as the new “Expose — Show All Windows” command it leaves the other two commands, most importantly, “Show Desktop” out to dry. Oh sure you can press “Function” and F11 to still get to the “Show Desktop” feature but on both the macbook, and the keyboards have the “FN” key in a very poor location which makes this key not very “short.“

AH, there is a solution.
By default, ⌘ + F3 will “Show Desktop” and Control + F3 will “Show Application Windows“

This actually turns out to be quite ergonomical and sooner than later you will forget F11.

BONUS: Pressing ⌥ + F3 will bring up System Prefs for Expose and Spaces. As well you will find that ⌥ + F12 will bring up System Prefs for Sound

EVER MORE BONUS:

⌘ = Command
⌥ = Option
⌃ = Control

]]> http://www.aboutthismac.com/2008/mac-tip-of-the-day-expose-and-aluminum-keyboard/feed/ 1 Tip of the Day: Spotlight http://www.aboutthismac.com/2008/mac-tip-of-the-day-spotlight/ http://www.aboutthismac.com/2008/mac-tip-of-the-day-spotlight/#comments Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:06:00 +0000 Greg http://www.aboutthismac.com/2008/08/27/mac-tip-of-the-day-spotlight/ How often do you use “Spotlight”? This is one of the biggest gems in Mac OS since its Tiger (10.4) introduction.

To activate Spotlight, you can either click on the magnifying glass on the top right of your screen, or use the keyboard shortcut: command + spacebar.
Once you activate Spotlight, type in what you want to find. Every file, from applications to emails to documents, are indexed by your computer.

Find the file/application you want, press enter and it will open the document or application.

Why is this so important? Well, I never use the dock anymore. I rarely use the Finder to find stuff. Spotlight is where I go for everything! It’s faster than taking your hands off of the keyboard or searching through endless finder windows for that one document from last year…

Remember: command + spacebar!

Notes:
1. Top Hits (most frequently accessed files or applications) are always the first hit at the top and are automatically highlighted. This makes it super easy to launch applications. Just hit enter when you see the name of your favourite application!

2. Everything in your documents –not just their names– are indexed by Spotlight. If you can’t remember the file name, but can remember that it had the words “cashflow” and “Greg Benson” in it, type them into Spotlight and the document will show up

3. If you just want to see where a file is rather than open it (like if you want to copy it to your portable USB drive), highlight it, then press command + enter to open its enclosing folder

4. If you don’t see the file you’re looking for, hit “show all” for a longer list

5. If you’re looking for a specific type of file, you can specify what you’re looking for right in Spotlight. Just type in a keyword or two, then kind:jpeg, kind:document, kind:pdf, kind:photoshop… you get the idea

6. Want to know a word’s definition, synonym, etc? Type it into Spotlight and select definition!

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