To capture a screen image in Apple OS X, you have two options. Firstly, to capture an image of your entire screen, select Command-Shift-3. You will hear a camera click sound and a PNG file will be created on your desktop containing the image. To capture a particular section of your screen, select Command-Shift-4. Your cursor turns in to a crosshair, now just click and drag your mouse to select the part of the screen you want to capture. When you let go of the mouse button, you will hear the same camera click sound and, as above, a PNG file will be created on your desktop containing the captured image.
Monthly Archive for June, 2011
When using groups in the Address Book, you may want to see which contacts are not assigned to any of your groups. This is a pretty convoluted method but until Apple provide a smart group option in Address Book to accommodate this requirement, you can do the following:
- Backup your Address Book by selecting File then Backup Address Book
- Create a new group and call it anything you like (I suggest “Z”)
- Select all of your contacts and drag them in to this new group
- Click on your first existing group (let’s pretend it is called Group1) and select all of its contacts (Command-a)
- Click on the Z group and you will notice that only the contacts you have just selected are highlighted
- Press Tab once to switch focus to the Name column
- Hit the Delete key and then click the Remove From Group button
At this point, you have a group called Z which contains all your contacts except those listed in Group1. Repeat steps 4 thru 7 for all your remaining groups and you will end up with group Z containing only those contacts not assigned to any other groups.
To quickly cycle through open applications in MS Windows, hold down Alt and repeatedly press Tab. Just let go of all keys once the desired application is highlighted. Similarly, in Apple OS X, hold down Command and repeatedly press Tab. Another option in OS X is to use Expose. Press F9 to invoke it and then just select the desired window with your mouse. However, if you have Spaces enabled in OS 10.5 (aka Leopard), Expose will only show you open windows in your current Space whereas the Command-Tab method will cycle through all applications across all Spaces.
If you ever used a System 7 Mac, you will probably remember the character palette. Just like the character map in Windows, you can find all sorts of symbols that are not easily reproduced on a keyboard. Strangely, this feature seemed to have disappeared in OS X. However, it does still exist, it is just not a standalone application any more, now it is really a component of each application. You can find it in the Edit menu of nearly all applications and it is called Special Characters. You can also launch the character palette using Command-Option-T.
It is pretty straightforward to take a screenshot and bring it into a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation. But that is longer than necessary, you will end up with an additional file on the desktop and the website in your presentation will not update automatically. A more dynamic way of doing this involves loading the website into your presentation but unfortunately, this only works with Keynote and not PowerPoint. To accomplish this, you simply drag the small icon that is on the left side of the url in your web browser over to the Keynote presentation. You can then be sure that your Keynote presentation will stay current no matter when you show it. Even if you do not have internet access, it will simply show the latest downloaded version. One other small caveat to note is that this only works with Safari and Camino, so no Firefox.
What are known as shortcuts in Windows environments are called aliases in Apple OS but, frankly, the process of creating them can be a pain. When you use the Make Alias menu item or Command-L shortcut in Finder, it creates the alias in the same folder and adds alias to the name. You then have to move it around and rename it. However you can create an alias while dragging it to another folder. You simply have to hold down Command-Option while dragging it. An arrow will appear showing you that you are indeed creating an alias and not moving the original file. This is faster not only because you will not have to subsequently move the alias but also, Finder does not add alias to the title so you do not have to rename it.
It is pretty straightforward to take a screenshot and bring it into a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation. But that is longer than necessary, you will end up with an additional file on the desktop and the website in your presentation will not update automatically. A more dynamic way of doing this involves loading the website into your presentation but unfortunately, this only works with Keynote and not PowerPoint. To accomplish this, you simply drag the small icon that is on the left side of the url in your web browser over to the Keynote presentation. You can then be sure that your Keynote presentation will stay current no matter when you show it. Even if you do not have internet access, it will simply show the latest downloaded version. One other small caveat to note is that this only works with Safari and Camino, so no Firefox.