Mac Kindergarten

The last post was on how to open multiple pages in Safari with one click, utilizing the Auto-Click feature for bookmark folders.

However, there are times, when you don’t want to open all the sites, inside a folder, but pick a single one.

To do so, hold down the option-key and click on the Auto-Click folder (we named it Favorites). This will pop up the list of all bookmarks in this folder, allowing you to select the one you wish to open.

In these days of the battle for users, between the web browsers, every browser checks, if it is the default browser. The default browser is opened if you click on any web page link (e.g. in a email message).

As you go along and have multiple browser installed (e.g. Safari and Firefox), both want to be the primary choice. Here is how you set your default browser, ending the nagging. (more…)

QuickLook is one of the great features of Leopard, that make life much easier. But you can not only use it, to quickly preview a file without having to open it.

There is more to it. You can create instant presentations, picture slideshows or movie playlists with QuickLook. All right from Finder. Here is how.

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Long title, quick tip. Using the previous tutorial on SafariStand we configured Quick Search, a great tool which lets you search directly from the address bar in Safari.But that’s not all. Quick Search also live in the contextual menu.

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Previously, we looked at how to temporarily override the warning of “all files being removed permanently” when you empty the Trash.If you want to turn this into the default behavior and never display that warning again, read on. (more…)

Every time you control-click your trash bin to select Empty Trash, you have to confirm that “you want to remove the items in the Trash permanently”.

If you are sure, that you want to do it and are annoyed by this confirmation, just hold down the option key, before you click Empty Trash - no more questions asked.

To set up this permanently, read this post.

We already had a post on the Dock and how you can use it to see what’s going on. We also used the contextual menu of the Dock icons a bit.

But there is more to the icons in the Dock, as it might seem. When an application is running, try control-clicking its icon. This will reveal a set of basic commands for this application.

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To quickly access your browser’s address bar, press command-L. This will highlight the entire address currently in your address bar, ready for you to type a new one.

Bonus: Safari has auto-completion of your input built in. So instead of typing www.mackindergarten.com you only need to type mackindergarten in the address bar and Safari will add “www.” in front and “.com” in the back.

You walk out of the room and don’t want to leave your Mac accessible to anyone? The content on your hard drive are only meant for you to be seen?

Lock your screen - fast and easy with a widget. The widget is called Locker and only takes up a tiny bit of space on your Dashboard. You can download it here.

After the download is done, open the widget (in case it doesn’t open automatically) and place it somewhere convenient on your Dashboard.

Double click the widget to lock the screen of your Mac.

If you are not yet familiar with the dashboard, please read this post for more information.

So there are a bunch of applications you use whenever you have your Mac on. Adium for Instant messaging, Safari for web browsing and so on.

Instead of opening them one by one every time you turn your Mac on, control-click their icon in the Dock and select Open at Login.

To remove the automatic start at Login again, just click the icon again. You see there is a little check mark next to Open at Login, click the menu item again to remove the check mark and thus disabling the automatic start.

If the desired application has no icon in the Dock, please read this post on how to get it there.