Email Safari Page Links

You can now email Safari page links easily. When you are on a Safari page whose URL you wish to email someone, simply use the keyboard shortcut Command-Shift-i. The email which appears will already have a title. All you do is fill in the “To:” line.

Where Did That Download Come From?

When you download a file using Safari, Safari writes the URL of the page you downloaded the file from in the file’s Spotlight Comments field. To see where the file came from, just select the file, press Command-i (File>Get Info) and look in the Spotlight Comments field.

Merge Windows

Safari 3 now allows you to drag and drop tabs. You can drag a tab off the bar to create a new window or drag it onto an existing window to add it. You can also use this to rearrange the order of your tabs. If you have lots of open windows each with different numbers of tabs, there is an easier way to get them all into one instead of dragging and dropping. In the Window menu you will find the “Merge All Windows” command. This will instantly combine all your open windows into one tabbed window.

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Since nearly the beginning of Mac-dom, when you wanted to find out which key combination produced a font’s special characters (stuff like ©, ™,£, ¢, %, ƒ, etc.), you used a utility called KeyCaps.

More than a decade later, KeyCaps is still a part of Mac OS, but a better way to access these special characters is through the Character Palette.

You can access it two ways: (1) from within Mac OS X business apps (like Mail, TextEdit, Stickies, etc.), just go under Edit and choose “Special Characters” or click on the “Actions” pop-up menu at the bottom of the Font Panel and choose “Characters;” (2) add Character Palette access to your menu bar so you can access it when you’re working in other applications (like Microsoft Word or Adobe InDesign).

You do this by going to the System Preferences in the Apple menu, under International, and clicking on the Input Menu tab. Turn on the checkbox for Character Palette, and check “Show in menu…”, and it’s icon will appear in the menu bar.

Either way you open it, here’s how you use it: When you open the Character Palette, choose “All Characters” from the View menu, then click on the “By Category” tab. The left column shows a list of special character categories and the right column shows the individual characters in each category. To get one of these characters into your text document, just click on the character and click the “Insert” button in the bottom right-hand corner of the dialog.

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Sometimes, CDs and DVDs (removeable media) can be stubborn and refuse to eject via the normal Mac OS X methods

– pressing the eject key on the keyboard; using the Command-E keyboard combination; clicking the eject button next to the item in a finder window; dragging the icon on the desktop to the trash; or pressing the F12 key (usually on laptops).

There are a number of ways to help coax media out of an optical drive in such a situation.

Before applying these methods, however, note that busy discs (either startup disks or disks with an open file) should not be ejected. Using any of the aforementioned methods on a busy disc will get you nothing. Be patient with a disk that will not eject immediately. Sometimes a disk continues to be “busy” for several seconds even after you’ve closed open files or applications on the disc. Waiting a few moments, then re-attempting the ejection usually works in these situations.

If all the normal methods fail, there ARE a few more tricks you can use to help oust the troubling disc:

Hold down the mouse button at startup. Holding down the mouse button or trackpad button during startup will usually cause a misbehaving optical drive to eject its media.

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Hello, and Welcome to Help Your Mac!

While I have plenty of experience with Macs, websites, and computers in general, I never had managed to get the website for HYM going. Well, here it is — the start of it anyway!

Check back from time to time, as I have some cool plans for the future. Hints, Tips, Discussions, Do-It-Yourself instruction, etc.