Mac shortcuts for n00bs

August 11, 2008

tagged as , , ,

in Mac OS X

Print Selections

I felt like such a noob yesterday when I complained that Macs can’t “print from selection” like you can on Windows. It’s probably the only thing I’ve wanted to do that I knew about in Windows and couldn’t do with my Mac.

My husband said it depends which program you’re in. I said, you get the same print window in all Mac programs…

Print Menu

Then I opened the print dialogue and saw something I’d never seen before. A menu item for Camino! Programs can have their own specific printing instructions. There’s one for Firefox too.

Print Settings for Camino

The Option Key

As a scientist who’s writing µ all the time, it would have been so handy to know that holding the Option key on your keyboard produces a whole lot of other characters.
There’s quite a few Greek letters, symbols and abbreviations. Some of my favourites are µ º © … They all took the hit of a few keys, instead of scouring the special characters dialogue!

I went through all the keys and made a PDF of what they do. If it’s useful or you, please download it. Or you can just tap away on your keyboard and see what you can find!

Download: The Option Key (PDF)

{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

1 Gio 08.12.08 at 6:01

Interesting! I just found out a few weeks ago that hitting Alt (on a PC) and a number produces some interesting symbols as well. For instance, Alt+3 makes a heart symbol.

Also, I had no idea you were a scientist - that’s pretty cool. smiley

Leave a Comment

You can use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Comment policy