Aoraki Macintosh User Group Home Page

Snippets from Previous Meetings

May Meeting 2005



BATTERY LIFE HINT

  • For users of battery-powered computers (iBooks/Powerbooks), the kindest thing you can do to your battery is to useit rather than plug in your mains adapter every time you use your computer ~ by using up the battery's charge fully then recharging it you can prolong its useful life.


PRINTER HINT

  • If your computer is running MacOS X but you are are using a Classic (MacOS 9) application, you will not be able to print unless you have installed the MacOS 9 drivers for your printer.

SESSIONS



MacBASICS ~ TAKING CONTROL

HOT CORNERS in MacOS X

Tony described the use of Hot Corners for controlling alternative screen views. The Expose feature, introduced in MacOS 10.3 (Panther), allows the user to press function keys to view either
  • all open windows (F9), or
  • all windows of the current application (F10), or
  • the desktop (F11).
These views can also be activated by using Hot Corners ~ when the cursor is moved to one of the corners of the screen, the desired view appears, or a screensaver can be started. Hot corners are chosen in the System Preferences/Expose pane.


FUNCTION KEYS

The above discussion led on to a look at the uses of Function Keys, which in MacOS 8-9 could be programmed to perform assigned tasks, such as opening favourite applications. This facility could be applied in a variety of useful ways; however, it was not included in MacOS X. ÊUsers of MacOS 10.2 (Jaguar) or higher can programme their keyboard's function keys by using the Trusoft shareware application HotApp, a shareware application ($US15) - visit: http://www.trufsoft.com/HotApp.html

MacOS 9 CONTROL PANELS

Sheryl and Roger demonstrated the uses of various MacOS 9 (and earlier) Control Panels, through which users can customise the appearance and behaviour of their computers. Similar functions are available in MacOS X through the System Preferences panes.

Both Control Panels and System Preferences are accessed via the Apple Menu in the top left-hand corner of the screen. Note: the appearance of the Apple Menu icon is indicative of the operating system which is currently in use: if the apple is multicoloured the computer is in MacOS 9 or earlier (or running MacOS X's Classic mode), whereas if the apple is blue (indicating Aqua appearance) then the computer is operating in MacOS X.
A further indication is the default system font used in the menu bar: in MacOS 9 text appear in Chicago font; in MacOS X Lucida Grande is used. [The system font was customisable in MacOS 9, but does not appear to be so in MacOS X].

The options available in various Control Panels were examined, including the Appearance, Memory, Extensions Manager, Speech and Date & Time panels:


[The above MacOS 9 screenshots have a slightly MacOS X appearance (coloured buttons, striped title bar) due to an Aqua theme being used in the Appearance control panel.]

Use of the MacOS 9 Control Strip was also demonstrated, with examples given of how to reposition the strip and reorder its icons.

SPOTLIGHT & DASHBOARD

Tony described two new features from the recently-released Tiger (MacOS 10.4) operating system. SPOTLIGHT is a fast, comprehensive search-and-find facility which is accessed from the Menu bar. Typing an entry gives an almost immediate listing of any file on the computer which contains the search text, whether in a filename, text within a file, or even e-mail messages which contain the search text in the sender's address. The search results are initially displayed as a list, but may also be shown as a detailed window, in which results may be grouped, sorted and ordered:

[Some of the above results have been closed to save space]


Images may appear as a list or, as shown above, as thumbnails. Clicking on the above the thumbnails produces an instant slideshow of the images, with the ability to view them either successively or simultaneously as a full-screen index sheet. Clicking on any icon or image takes the user straight to the item, opening the appropriate application in the process. It's a very fast and very powerful feature! More information on Spotlight at a future meeting.

DASHBOARD gives fast access to a number of selected on-screen mini-applications called widgets. Pressing the F12 key (or moving the cursor to a designated hot-corner) opens the Dashboard screen, onto which can be placed a number of chosen widgets, such as a local (ie. Timaru) weather forecast indicator, calculator, NZ Google search panel, stock market indicator, recipe-of-the-day, clock, calendar, dictionary/thesaurus, foreign language translator, unit converter, address book, spelling checker, etc, etc! Each widget takes up very little memory, and additional widgets can be downloaded from the Apple Website. New widgets are constantly being made available Ð over 100 new widgets were added during the past week!

[One of my favourites is the screen-capture widget which gives almost instant access to screen/window/selection capture without having to remember keyboard combinations or open the Grab application Ð this makes tasks such as the production of these Minutes much quicker. A further refinement (not included in Dashboard) is a freeware download which enables a widget to remain either on the desktop or as a floating window over any open application even when the Dashboard screen is not activated Ð this is even more useful. I'll give a demo at the next meeting - T.C.]

If you have Panther (MacOS 10.3) you can access a similar widget system by downloading the shareware ($US19.95) applicationKonfabulator, which has a bank of over 1000 widgets, and acts in a similar way to Dashboard. Visit: http://www.konfabulator.com/

BLOGS & BLOGGING



Mary introduced members to the topic of Blogs and Blogging. "Blog" is an abbreviation of weblog, which is a website on which the author posts dated entries on whatever topic he/she wishes to share thoughts and comments. Readers can respond to the posted entries with comments of their own, forming a simple interactive forum of common interest.

Further developments to the basic text-based blog format are audioblogs (incorporating sound clips), photoblogs (useful for sharing images on the web if you don't have your own website) and moblogs (operated via a mobile phone).

Mary demonstrated her presentation with several examples of blogs:

For further information on blogs and blogging, visit: http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/blog

REMINDERS

Next AMUG Evening meeting will be on Friday June 24, 7.30pm.

Next AMUG Daytime Meeting Monday June 20

Committee Meeting on Mactropolis:  Tuesday June 14, 9.00pm
Regards to all....

Secretary: Tony Climo, Aoraki MacIntosh Users Group