Since I'm not doing a great job of updating this Mac blog with the lessons I'm putting into practice, I'm going to try opening it up to information I may not be using now but might be valuable to me or other budding Mac lovers in the future. Today's lesson is about the New desktop alert tool that Facebook has covertly put out. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks exactly like the Google's Gmail notifier. It's main purpose is to alert you to incoming notifications and messages; if you want a more full-features option, Facebook has an Adobe Air app, and there's always 3rd party apps like Seesmic Desktop and Tweetdeck.
Showing posts with label OSX. Show all posts
Showing posts with label OSX. Show all posts
Posted by
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8:35 PM
Labels:
applications,
OSX
Back when I was using a PC I had my computer completely pimped out for Google. I was running Google Desktop for its quick-launch & gadget integration, Google Talk for it's chat & Gmail integration, and Google Chrome. So far I've been trying to find alternatives for those programs, such as Adium for chat (I'll definitely use Chrome though when it's finalized for Mac). However, I really missed seeing instant Gmail alerts. Enter Google Notifier for Mac. It puts icons in your top bar for Gmail and Google Calendar that give you alerts and quick access to functions. For now I've turned off Google Calendar alerts because I've sync'd Google Calendar with iCal, but I might swap one for the other in the future.
Posted by
Unknown
on
6:07 PM
Labels:
OSX,
tips and tricks
So this might be the most surprising find yet: Apparently there is no native "full screen window" mode in Mac OSX. Not only does this mean that you can't quickly maximize a random program window, but you also can't move into full screen browser mode in Safari or Firefox (Windows users are used to hitting F11 to make all of the window frames and toolbars disappear when you need all of your screen space for browsing, screenshots, or slideshows). Instead of having a full screen mode Mac focuses on giving you what it feels optimally need, though this seems impossible to predict on many web pages. I've embedded someone's video below that illustrates how annoying this can be.
From everything I'm reading there are two options for fixing this problem. The first is to install an app called Megazoomer, which adds a hot key to fully maximize your active window. However, it doesn't remove the toolbars etc. when you're in a browser. To solve this challenge supposedly you Opera for Mac has a full screen browser mode. Together these two apps supposedly should get me to a feature that was built in on Windows, one that I found very useful often.
Posted by
Unknown
on
6:26 PM
Labels:
OSX,
tips and tricks
Something I needed to learn quickly in order to put together this blog - how to take screenshots in Mac OS. It turns out Mac has a lot of native screenshot capability built right into the operating system. Depending on whether you want to take a full screenshot, a screenshot of an active window, or of a custom selection, there are hot keys for all choices. Each will save the selected screenshot to a ".png" file on your desktop:
- Command-Shift-3: Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it as a file on the desktop
- Command-Shift-4, then select an area: Take a screenshot of an area and save it as a file on the desktop
- Command-Shift-4, then space, then click a window: Take a screenshot of a window and save it as a file on the desktop
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My name is Kevin. I've been using PC's exclusively for over 13 years and as a techie my lack of knowledge about Macs is embarrassing. Finally I've decided to go all in, buy a new 13" Macbook Pro, and start my journey into the cult of Mac.
