Mac Kindergarten

Alright, so you watch a video in QuickTime Player and need to find something on a webpage.

With today’s quick tip there is no need to pause the video or miss a single second of it, just because you activate a different application and thus obscuring the video.

Background scrolling
Mac OS X has good support for scrolling of inactive window, which means you don’t need to bring a window to the foreground and make it the topmost window in order to simply scroll down.

Just move the mouse cursor over it and start to scroll - the window will stay in the background (i.e. under the other windows) but still scroll down.

Very handy to view fast changing information on the web, while doing something different.

Background moving
It turns out, you can not only scroll a window in the background, but also control and move it. To do so, hold down the command key before you start to click and drag the window in question. Doing so will keep the current window active and on top of all other windows, while you can view information in the background window and interact with it.

Moreover, you can even click on items in the background window while still holding down the command key. So you can watch videos while reading your emails.

Not a huge tip, but sometimes really useful. Once you’re used to it, you will miss it when it’s not there. It just one of those features.

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Tags: mouse, quick tip, visual information

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 at 10:43 am and is filed under quick tip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.