What is Digg?26 Comments
- RabbiRob, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6The article lists the symbols at the beginning. I think you're describing the Option key.
- JackAxe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Just to be a tard, that's not all of them.
Apple doesn't list the trouble shooting shortcuts, like zapping PRAM and booting into Open Firmware as an example.
This list covers the rest;
http://guides.macrumors.com/Keyboard_shortcuts - rickcarson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Wow. That is an awesome tip. Don't know why you got dugg down... the Apple anti-fanboise must have arrived.
- rumble, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I think you mean "you're" right (not "your")
- chrishavel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Windows equivalent for OS X shortcuts? Switch to decaf ...
- r00kie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2cmd+option+ctrl+8 is for accessibility, it helps people who have problems with contrast and their vision. I've met a few people who used it all of the time. Not to mention its fun to do to public terminals... esp. when over Apple Remote Desktop, I love to watch people freak out by opening photobooth
- imcquill, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2They also have not listed a lot of the text manipulation shortcuts which seem to work in all cocoa/carbon apps with text boxes (ie. TextEdit, Mail, Safari when their is a text box, anything mac ap..) which seem to be carry-overs from Unix aps like emacs and pico. For example, ^k deletes the current line after the cursor. You can do this a whole bunch of times in a row, then ^y pastes back all of those consecutive lines somewhere else (all independent of the normal clipboard, which is useful). ^d does a forward delete of a character, ^a and ^e go to the beginning and end of the line, etc...
These are great for all the people who haven't had to adjust from their unix/linux habits. - rickcarson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You could be right in that there might be better ways of doing things.
So far Apple's "Grand Experiment" seems to be working out pretty well.*
As for your suggestion, the Eclipse IDE is a good example of what you propose. Lots of buttons and toolbars and sub-windows each with their own set of tabs etc.
However I've used Eclipse and in practice it is a horrible user interface. All the buttons and toolbars and other windows crammed onto the screen all at the same time... not good. There are some things they could do better, but once you start dealing with a moderately sized project you end up with a postage stamp sized area for doing coding in.
So for an IDE yes it is handy to have all these buttons sitting there ready to be pushed, the whole functionality of the program is right there at your finger tips (mouse tips?). But in the real world I don't spend most of my time in an IDE pushing buttons, I spend most of my time reading and writing code.
Eclipse fans don't take this as an attack on Eclipse per se, there are lots of things that Eclipse does well, like the plugins and particularly CVS integration. But I'm just using it as an example of a massively over-cluttered 'all on one page' user interface.
At the other extreme we have an IDE like XCode. Frankly, XCode looks quite old school and it took me a while to get into it. But now that I've found out a bit more about the 'hidden features' I'm loving it. An example might be how all the different things are in their own windows all floating around. On a Windows system that sucks. Eclipse by comparison quite rightly munges everything together in one big screen because years of experience have shown us that _on Windows_ that is the best way to do it. Whereas in XCode when I'm coding, the code gets its own Window. That I can fill up the screen and make the text an 18 point font if I want (I know at least one Eclipse fan who codes in a 4 point font on a 21 inch monitor... ye gods). The interface is minimalistic, but includes some funky functionality, such as being able to quickly flip between the interface (.h 'header' file) and matching implementation (in a C'ish' language). And all that space that would be taken up by things like the runtime log and project management? Those functions are still there, they are just in other windows.
What makes this 'old school' kind of interface work is Exposé. I can with the flick of the wrist magic my way into those windows with the other rarer functions, without sacrificing my precious screen real estate.
The other thing you mention is the keyboard shortcuts. Again, on Windows keyboard shortcuts other than the immediate basics (cut and paste) generally suck, and so _on Windows_ you are right to disdain them. But on OS X, the keyboard shortcuts are awesome.
How can that be? It is because on Windows each developer reaches down between his butt cheeks and pulls his own shortcuts out. So there is no point learning them, as they will radically change from one program to the next (other than cut and paste) which is exponential sucktitude.
Whereas on OS X, there is this kind of user interface guidelines thing, which prescribes a whole bunch of shortcuts in advance. So on OS X each shortcut you learn in one application (as a general rule) makes you a little bit better/faster with most of the other applications on your computer. Awesome raised to the power of 2.
*I haven't looked at the new MS Office 'ribbon' by I understand that offers a new way of handling the 'button/toolbar issue'. It will be interesting to see if this innovation from Redmond catches on outside the Windows/Office world.
- rabidbadger, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You could print to pdf, and keep it in the dock? And after a few days you will learn the ones you need most. Keep the pdf around for later when you find you need a new one?
- nimbuscott, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1option, command, F
I was looking for that in the Finder.
Thanks! - luckyaba, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2That is really useful. Nice post!
- tony.pitale, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Useful, bookmark it and come back if you need something.
It is missing some shortcuts however. Apple-option-eject for example (put computer to sleep) whereas the shortcuts for restart and shutdown are listed.
You could always look at the shortcuts listed in the keyboard preferences.
Thanks JackAxe for the other list. I've been compiling a cheet-sheet that I give to any new Mac users I know and any converts, especially. - 3Den, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1To be fair, what you describe are not OS X shortcuts, but openfirmware and/or EFI shortcuts, and work regardless of what OS is on your mac, and they vary by model.
- catullus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1anyone have a mac shortcut key combo for returnng to the Login Window w/o logging off completely (i.e with fast user switching enabled)?
- r00kie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1How else would you figure out shortcuts with no menu selection. The arrow key options are a good example of this.
- DaceDiath, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I think you mean without the remote :) but your right it is handy.
I love the option+ctrl+command+8 function (invert screen colors) is there a real use for this function? or is it just for fun? - dingmah, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I never knew you could open Front Row with the remote! Awesome. Now I won't have to search all over for my remote.
It's CMD-ESC for anyone who might have missed it. - gyve, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0um what about CMD+SHIFT+U to open the utilities folder?
- Sanctity, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0It's good, but there are more shortcuts out there...
- ulmedas, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0This saves so much time. I always have to do a google search whenever I notice I need a shortcut for oft repeated actions.
Besides, the stupid track pad is like two and a half inches away, plus all of my weight is on my wrists, so the less I have to use the track pad (or heaven forbid, a mouse) the better. - ThirdPrize, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Apple seem to have missed the point of a GUI. By keeping toolbars and buttons down to a minimum they force users to use the menus, or more usually the keyboard shortcuts.
- sunfivets, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1so great
- kybrown17, on 10/12/2007, -8/+0No digg because it really isn't that useful. What, are you going to bookmark this page and look at it everyday? Kind of a long way to get to a list of short-cuts...
- Hamsterpotpies, on 10/12/2007, -14/+1Huu??? I no make sence in linux.
- firsttube, on 10/12/2007, -17/+1no windows equivalent? no digg! :P
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