New computer!

[oyceter]

I have a new computer! It arrived a day earlier than expected! I am now busy trying to customize the hell out of it!

I'm also a little intimidated -- I switched over to Mac (please no gloating, Mac users).

So, Mac users, tell me your favorite shortcuts!

So far I am enjoying the hot corners, and I finally figured out that cmd+arrow was the same as ctrl+home/end on my PC. On the other hand, I'm annoyed that my home and end buttons seem to do absolutely nothing on Mac. Can I change that?

ETA: what LJ client do you use? I've been using Semagic, which I like, but there doesn't seem to be a Mac version.

Comments

[issen4.livejournal.com]

I'm annoyed that my home and end buttons seem to do absolutely nothing on Mac. Can I change that?

Lemme know if you can do that! I switched to a Mac at work and it's aaanoying me. D'you know, the tab key doesn't work the same way as in Windows either?

But F9 and F11 are cool.

[oyceter]

I know! I keep trying to tab to get to the "enter" button on webpages, and it keeps going to the URL bar! So annoying.

What do F9 and F11 do?

Some comments below have tips on how to remap the home and end keys.

[issen4.livejournal.com]

Ooh yeah. That tab key function fails. It so annoys me that for example, after typing this comment, I have to move to my mouse and click 'post command'--on pc, I just go tab+enter. Sheesh, Apple!

There is no typeover (aka 'insert' key) either. Instead, there's a 'help' key.

And the animated opening of files and windows... hate hate hate. (Luckily you can switch that off.)

F9 shows you all the windows at once, and F11 shows your desktop. You can adjust to use other shortcut keys if you prefer, though. See Expose... um, dunno if it's the same on your computer, mine's a somewhat old model.

[oyceter]

Siiigh. The tab key thing annoys me the most.

Also, huh! I think they remapped some of the function keys for the new iMac. At least, F3 is expose or something.

[whumpdotcom.livejournal.com]

XJournal is the client I use. http://sourceforge.net/projects/ljkit/

For commerical software, I recommend Bare Bones Software's Yojimbo. It's a useful tool for stashing links, downloaded pdfs, and serial numbers for software.

Bare Bones also has a free (as in beer) text editor if you do any scripting/HTML work.

You can subscribe to syndication (Atom/RSS) feeds in the Mail client.

Mars Edit is a good general purpose blog editing tool if you have blogs outside of LJ that you contribute to.

I'm still learning Leopard so don't have any favorite tricks yet.

If you're inclined, learn some Unix and get the power of the terminal working for you.

Leopard has some new frameworks for dealing with RSS/Atom/Syndication feeds, but I need to play with those more to see what I can do with that. The command line tool for working with feeds is called pubsub.

Lots of people use NetNewsWire for reading feeds. There's also the open source feed reader Vienna.

I use Planet as my aggregator, but setting that up involves some command line work.

[oyceter]

Oh, awesome, thanks for the tips! Hrm, does XJournal tell you when people have friended you? Semagic would do that, and it was really helpful.

Also, yay free text editors! I do HTML, so that's really helpful.

[whumpdotcom.livejournal.com]

XJournal doesn't do real-time notifications, but if you set up LJ Talk in iChat (LJ has a page on that) you can get your friend notifications over iChat.

[oyceter]

Got it, thanks!

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

If you like keyboard shortcuts, you might be interested in the application launcher LaunchBar (http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/index.html). Or if you'd like to look at other options (I've heard people speak well of Quicksilver as well, but haven't used it myself), here's an article (http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/mac/2004/04/09/launchers.html).

...can't help you on the LJ client bit. I just type everything in a text file and paste it in. I'm weird that way.

You're on 10.5, right? Let us know what it's like! I'm still on 10.3.

[oyceter]

ZOMG AWESOME. I am so getting that. Maybe I will try Quicksilver first and switch over, or something else.

I think I am on 10.5? I forgot to check, ha. It's definitely Leopard though. And sadly, I can't tell what bits are new and what bits aren't because I have no idea what 10.3 is like!

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

Oh--Home and End take you to the beginning and end of a document, although Command plus up/down arrow do the same thing. I actually prefer the Windows behavior but don't know if there's a hack to get around this. (I would be cautious about system hacks, however.)

[quivo.livejournal.com]

Exactly. However, to do page up/page down without tearing out your hair, FN + Home/End will do the trick, and you can usually page up and down by pressing the space bar or SHIFT + SPACEBAR if you're in a browser or something like that.

[quivo.livejournal.com]

LJ Client: I occasionally use Deepest Sender (extension for Firefox) if I want to use a client. xJournal is good (someone upthread mentioned it), but it just doesn't integrate well into the way I post stuff.

Fave shortcuts:
Cmd + Ctrl + Option + 8 -> inverts screen colors. I've got no use for it right now, but it's fun :D
Ctrl + Tab and Ctrl + Shift + tab -> (in Firefox) switches between tabs. One-handedly. The other method in Firefox requires two hands, and I really, really hate that :P

Home/End buttons: from what you said, I don't think you're using a mac keyboard, so I'd say you can probably get hold of something that will help you remap those keys so that they do the Home/End thing properly. ETA: Great lifehacker article here tells you how to do just that (http://lifehacker.com/software/keyboard/mac-switchers-tip--remap-the-home-and-end-keys-225873.php). And I should think its a Leopard-ready fix as well, since you'll just be monkeying with a system file that's there for programs to edit (afaik), but if it doesn't work, you can just delete the lines you added and be fine.

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link! I'll consider applying that trick.

oyceter, if you don't use that technique, then in single-line boxes (like the Subject text box when I post LJ replies or the URL text box in Safari), the up and down arrow take you to the start and end of the line.

[oyceter]

Oh! Dude, that makes no sense! But I will remember that, thanks -- it's definitely been getting to the beginning and end of single-line boxes that's been driving me crazy.

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

Heh. It makes sense to me. "up arrow" means try to move up to the preceding line and stay in the same horizontal position (same column in fixed-width text displays), and if that is not possible, move to the closest approximation. So if there is no previous line, the closest is the start of the current line. Analogous reasoning applies to the down arrow.

[ginny-t.livejournal.com]

Cmd + Ctrl + Option + 8

I never knew!!!! *excited* I will have a use for this, as a friend's journal is in the most illegible colours. And it's just nifty. Thanks!

[quivo.livejournal.com]

XD Occasionally I use it just for the lulz, or to make myself feel like people can't read what's on my screen (even though that's unlikely- the contrast makes it waaay easier to read for me, so my theory is probably 100% wishful thinking). But it's such a nifty option to have :)

[oyceter]

Ooo, awesome! I knew the Firefox tab switching from Windows, though I'm still annoyed that it goes sequentially instead of going in the order you had them active. I have Focus Last Selected Tab to switch to the last active tab when I close one, but it doesn't seem to work with ctrl+tab.

Awesome, thanks for the home/end link!

[maerhys.livejournal.com]

Yay! I switched to a Mac 2 years ago and it was worth every penny.

I have found this really, really helpful: http://www.gosquared.com/liquidicity/archives/172

[oyceter]

More keyboard shortcuts! Thank you!

I am reveling in the shiny of my new machine right now.

[ginny-t.livejournal.com]

No gloating! Welcome, though. ^_^

[oyceter]

Hee, thank you!

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

Best thing I ever did for my Mac is OneKey (http://www.everydaysoftware.net/onekey/index.html). Hide your stupid bouncy dock forever, and use function keys to launch applications! Yay!

I love the Mac OS, but I hate the dock. (:

BTW, I'm the last fan alive not to use an LJ client. I comment and post through the site itself.

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

Dude, you're not alone. I keep my Dock hidden and almost never use it except occasionally mousing over to see which apps I have running when I want to quit out of stuff so I can run World of Warcraft or FCE.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

There are whole websites devoted to dock-hatred. (: Google "hate the dock" and watch the screeds flow by!

[oyceter]

Oooo!

I, um, actually like the dock so much that I had a version of it on my Windows machine, ha. Though coding the function keys looks even better.

Btw, do you use Excel on Mac? And if so, how do you toggle in to a field to edit the text? It used to be F2 on Windows, but my function keys are all coded to do things, and fn+F2 doesn't seem to work either.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

Sorry, my Mac is Microsoft-free. (: My guess? Double-click on the field.

[oyceter]

Yeah, that works, but I mourn my keyboard shortcuts! Excel's the big one here; I can do most things in there keyboard-only. The one useful skill I took away from investment banking!

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

I'm sure there are keyboard shortcuts for it, I just don't happen to know them offhand. Sorry!

[readsalot.livejournal.com]

No, you're not the last one, because I don't use an LJ client either. I think about it every once in a while, but I like writing my own html, and I type fast enough that it's not a problem.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

Exactly. We'll be a club of two, then.

[hederahelix.livejournal.com]

Welcome to Macland, says she who also switched recently.

There are many things I love, a few I hate--of the hate, mostly, that I feel like a giant n00b again. Like I didn't know you could click on the little icon next to the URL to have the whole URL highlighted. One of my coworkers told me this when I bitched about the whole missing the home and end keys, because as a PC girl, I was apparently all about the keyboard shortcuts.

[oyceter]

OMG. I hate feeling like a n00b so much. Especially because I'm a touch typer and a keyboard shortcut user, so I still have to think every time I try to ctrl+c or something. It also doesn't help that the command key is closer to the space bar, compared to the control key. And I feel so dumb because I get confused about the simplest things!

But oh, the shiny!

[quivo.livejournal.com]

Like I didn't know you could click on the little icon next to the URL to have the whole URL highlighted.

ZOMG did not know that either, and I switched a year ago! *facepalm* There are so many nifty things about this OS that unless you've been using it and its predecessors several years- the way one might have used Windows 98, 2000, ME, XP and so on- you just don't come across the nifty stuff unless you dig and dig and dig.