Cool Mac Gear

I usually have a bunch of windows open while I'm working, which can be a pain when I want to find something on the Desktop, hidden behind all those layers of windows. I keep a lot of stuff on the Desktop.

I use Unsanity’s cool WindowShade X haxie extensively, and it helps a lot, but if I just want to click on an icon back there on the Desktop, it's a hassle to windowshade half a dozen or more windows, although still better than minimizing them to the Dock.

One workaround is the Hide Others command in the Application Menu, a holdover from OS 9. Just click on the Finder to make it the active application, and choose Hide Others from the Finder menu.

Option- clicking on the Finder icon in the Dock also hides other application windows, but it inconveniently opens up a Finder window on the Desktop, which is a pain. Yet another shortcut that works in OS 10.2 is to click on the desktop and press Command > Option > H to hide others.

There is a little freeware hack called Show Desktop, which will hide all open applications and show your Desktop by clicking on its Dock icon or menu bar icon (your option). Shift-clicking on the icon will show all applications for quick access. Show Desktop can also be configured with an exclusion list for more precise user control.

You can download Show Desktop here:
http://www.everydaysoftware.net/showdesktop/index.html

Another way to hide/show the Desktop, at least theoretically, is by installing the Script menu that comes bundled with OS X (you can find it in your AppleScript applications AppleScript folder). Included among these AppleScript are:

Finder Windows-Hide All, which minimizes all open Finder windows to the Dock Finder Windows-Show All, which opens all minimized Finder windows.

However, I tried these and didn;t find they worked very well. Your milage may vary. Anyway, dragging down through a menu and submenu is no improvement on the simple olf “Hide Others” command.

While we're on the topic of the Finder, a couple of evenings ago I inadvertantly selected all of the (hundred or so) icons on my desktop just before pressing the command > O “Open” shortcut. OS X obediently proceeded to open every document and application selected, plus a bunch of disk images that were stored on the Desktop. As you might imagine, this took a while, and caused a pageout frenzy.

However, the iBook didn't crash, and even stayed dialed up to the Internet throughout. I had to wait until things settle down and then spent a while closing and quitting all the currently unwanted stuff that had opened.

It would be nice if there were an universal override keyboard command or something that one could use up to abort such processes, but the cool thing is that it really caused no problems other than some lost time. The stability of OS X is truly impressive in such incidents.

iBook screen freeze letter

In response to David Layman's letter,

Quote:

"Some time ago I read about the shortcut for sleep, which I have been using for the last several weeks. "Control-eject" [eject is at the upper-right of the keyboard, above the delete key on the iBook] summons a shutdown dialog, which includes the option to sleep.. Make sure you hold the eject key for about one second."

Another way to get that dialog is by pressing the power key (for far less than one second).

Cedric Sullivan

RE: Opening Word Documents Without Word

From Mac Help Desk, Inc

You forgot to mention, now don't giggle too hard here, AppleWorks 6.x.

It seems to open just about every Word document that I've ever thrown at it. It opens and saves to Word (and Excel too!).

For most folks who type 'regular' documents [even long, complex ones] this might be a solution to 'No Microsoft'

Dru Richman
CEO, CTO, Mac Help Desk, Inc.

HI Dru;

I agree, but I did mention AppleWorks. See the first paragraph:

“I haven't used all of the alternatives, but in my experience, $49.00 ThinkFree Office does a decent job, albeit not 100 percent formatting accurate. Mariner Write, AppleWorks, and the not yet finalized iNisus Writer Express for OS X all have Word translator filters. There is also the freestanding $20.00 icWord utility.”

;-)

Charles

The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here:
http://www.applelinks.com/news/odyssey/

CM

Charles W. Moore