Maria’s Guides

An opinion poll.

I launched this site as a spinoff from by blog, An Eclectic Mind. The idea was to provide an online home for my computer how-to articles and book support information that was separate from my blog.

To meet visitors’ needs and deliver the content they want most, I’ve put together a poll to ask what information visitors want most. While I won’t provide only the most-wanted content, I will provide more content for that topic than the others.

What do you think? Tell me what you want to see here. And don’t be afraid to use the Comments form or link below to get more specific or list your second and third choices for content.

 Loading ...

You can find this poll in the sidebar — at least for a while. Although you can only vote in the poll once, you can use the Comments feature for this post as many times as you like to sound off on this topic.

A list of shortcut keys you can use in most Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard dialogs.

This is the first in a series of quick articles that list shortcut keys available in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. In this piece, I’ll tell you about some of the shortcuts you can use in Mac OS X dialogs.

Tab

The Tab key advances you to the next area of a dialog. So, if a dialog contains multiple text boxes for entering information, tab moves you from one to the next. You can tell when an item in a dialog is active because a blue border appears around it or a blue (usually) selection bar appears within it (or both, depending on the item).

In this example of the Open dialog for Apple’s Pages application, the Search box is active; you can see the blue border around it. If any of the list items were active, they’d have a blue bar on the selected item.

Return or Enter

Pressing return or Enter “clicks” the default button in the dialog. The default button is blue and pulsating — it stands out from other buttons in the dialog.

Not all dialogs have a default button and, in many cases, the default button isn’t the one you’d expect it to be. For example, when I select a podcast and press the Delete key in iTunes, I’d expect the Move to Trash button to be the default. It isn’t, as shown here. The Keep Files button is the default. Pressing return removes the file from iTunes, but who knows where it is or goes on disk?

Keep in mind that although these shortcut keys should work in the Finder, they may not work in all Mac OS X applications. It really depends on the software developer’s implementation of Mac OS standards. Try them and see for yourself!

Letter or Command-letter

This one is kind of tricky and doesn’t work all of the time. But I’ve found that it works in many applications.

If you have a dialog with multiple buttons, you can “click” one of the buttons by pressing the letter key corresponding to the first character in the button name. So in the dialog shown above, you can choose Move to Trash by pressing M.

In some applications, you might have to hold down the Command key while pressing the letter key.

You can also use a letter key to quickly go to the first item starting with that letter in a selected scrolling list.

Escape or Command-. (period)

Pressing Escape or Command-. is the same as clicking the cancel or close button in a dialog. At least it should work that way.

Up Arrow and Down Arrow

Pressing one of these arrow keys highlights the previous or next item in a selected scrolling list.

Left and Right Arrow

Pressing one of these arrow keys enables you to move horizontally in a multiple-column list. For example, in the first screenshot here, if the first column was active, you could use the right arrow key to activate the second column.

Page Up and Page Down

Pressing one of the Page keys scrolls a selected list one windowful at a time.

Command-Shift-G

You like the Go To Folder dialog that you can use in the Finder? Well, you can also use it in an Open or Save As dialog. Just press Command-Shift-G while the dialog is open. You can then enter a path to the folder you want

I have a mental block when it comes to that dialog and never seem to enter the right path on the first try.

Page References

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide includes more information about these topics:

• Keyboard shortcuts, page 23.
• Dialogs, pages 207-209
• Go To Folder Command and Dialog, pages 52-53

Hidden away in iTunes U.

The iTunes Store is a vast place. But don’t let the word “store” keep you away. Besides being an excellent source of free podcasts and video podcasts on a wide range of topics, the iTunes Store is also home of iTunes U.

The U stands for University. Wander through there with iTunes and you’ll see an amazing collection of lectures from major (and not so major) universities and other institutions of higher learning.

Now drill down to find the University of South Florida’s Lit2Go Audio files. These audio files, which are available as podcasts you can subscribe to or MP3s you can download singly, include recordings of public domain fiction and non-fiction from authors like Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll, Charlotte Bronte, Bram Stoker, H.G. Wells, Emily Bronte, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and so many more.

Okay, so the works aren’t read by their authors. And the readers aren’t incredible audio actors, like Jim Dale, who reads the Harry Potter books. But they are complete audio books of dozens of classic works. And they’re free.

As I type this, I’m downloading all chapters of Mark Twain’s classic novel, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. I’ll be loading it into my iPod. During Thanksgiving week, I fully expect to be trapped on an airplane for at least the 10 hours of total scheduled flight time. I’ll be prepared.

Know of any other sources of free audio books? Don’t keep it to yourself. Use the Comments link or form to share what you know.