How to contribute a tip (or start a thread)…

Don’t you hate it when work and life in general gets in the way of fun? With my Take Control of Fonts in Snow Leopard book out, and Take Control of Safari 5 waiting for its spot in the editorial/production queue, and my spate Macworld articles done in timely manners, and medical adventures under control for the time being… it’s back to the fun of my two blogs, this and iPadPunditry, starting with an entry in both blogs about what it’s like to combine Me, Mac/iPad, and Medicine.

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Blogs, of course, are set up to let the author be the main voice and others do the commenting. If you want to contribute a tip, or comment on something Mac-ish that’s not in reply to something already said, do it as a comment on this post. I’ll convert it to its own post (with whatever name you use for it) so it can be a standalone item.

~Sharon Zardetto

Where to get Safari extensions

Of course, there’s Apple’s Extensions Gallery, easily reachable from within Safari by opening Safari Preferences, going to the Extensions pane, and clicking Get Extensions. But for extensions not in the Gallery, try these sites for links to developers:

http://safariextensions.org/

http://safariextensions.tumblr.com/

http://www.macosxtips.co.uk/extensions/

http://www.pimpmysafari.com/category/extensions

 

Safari 5: Swapping tab sets in a window

I recently finished my latest ebook, Take Control of Safari 5. Of course, “finished” is a relative term – it goes to an editor or two, and comes back with comments. And it’s a good thing there was a delay of a week or two between when I finished and when it was finished, because in that time period I discovered a trick – totally by accident – that fixed a problem I had given a red Warning! notice to in the penultimate version.

A dozen things wrong with Word 2011’s Find/Replace function

I’m searching for something nice to say about Word 2011’s Find/Replace approach, but I’m too overwhelmed by what’s wrong with it to highlight the one thing I do like. It takes umpteen keystrokes to just get to the old Find and Replace dialog (and do I mean old!) which is not only where I need to do most of my search operations, but the only place you can do certain searches. But even way before that, the “simplified” approach is unfriendly, inconsistent, and buggy across its three – yes, three – different locations for dealing with searches. Join me for the tour (de farce).

Is this the only way to organize Safari’s extensions?

Well, it’s the only one I can figure out. It’s driving me crazy that I can’t quickly scan the list in Safari’s Extensions preference pane because the extensions are listed in the order they were installed – which is to say, in no useful order at all.

I certainly don’t do this every time I install an extension – most extensions are in and then out after a brief testing period. But for those that stay in, when I want to do anything with them – change options, or disable them temporarily while I test a similar one, or delete them after all – it’s sooo much easier if they’re listed alphabetically so I don’t have to scroll up and down in the list to find them. So, every so often, I take five minutes to get them organized again. Here’s how:

Finder smart folders and Word documents

“Smart folders” are an under-utilized feature of Mac OS X. You define search criteria and make a smart folder that forever (sort of) after will display all the items that match those criteria (the items aren’t moved into the folder—the “folder” is just a list. But the apparent lack of enthusiasm for smart folders may just be from a lack of understanding the more powerful and flexible features of Spotlight: if you don’t construct complicated search criteria, there’s no need to store them. My recent tips article in Macworld (so recent that I won’t have a URL for it for a day or two – but I have to post this so I’ll have a URL to put in the article!) shows a search construct for recent Word documents, something that must take into account that a general search for Word documents by file type also grabs Word templates and (for Word 2011) settings files, as well as auto-recovery and “work” files. That’s four types of files that you don’t want in your search, two of which need to be excluded by their “Kind” and the other two by their names. Even if you don’t use Word, or need to find Word documents, take a look at all the components of this search setup because it’s infused with all sorts of valuable Finder search techniques.

The new font in Office 2011 (and what’s wrong)

I won’t keep you in suspense: there’s nothing wrong with the font. It’s just that Word can’t handle it. Okay, now a little suspense in regard to the problem…

The font is one that comes with Windows 7, Gabriola.ttf. It’s a script font that starts out pretty – and usable at smaller sizes for short blocks of text – and waxes into elegant beauty when you use some of its more advanced features, the glyph variants that give you all sorts of choices for fancy, swashy characters suitable for larger type sizes.

Safari: What’s wrong with this menu?

The Cupertino Interface Police were looking the other way when Safari’s menus were built. Take a look at the View menu’s first command: Hide Toolbar. More specifically, look at the keyboard shortcut for it: Command-|. What’s wrong with this? Hint: Look at the shortcut for Zoom In: Command-+.

Finally, a use for the Help menu’s search field!

I find the search field in the Mac’s Help menu generally useless: it searches only the menu commands in the current application for a match—and a best-guess as to which menu the desired command might be in, followed by a quick scan of the commands in it, is an easy way to find a command whose location has slipped your mind. (Although I suppose you could get lost in InDesign menus…). But the feature seems made for Safari.

Me, Mac/iPad, and Medicine

This is what being a Mac professional means in your personal life:

Two weeks ago, as part of my ongoing medical adventures, I was waiting in my very own private walled-not-curtained pre-op cubicle for what, given my history, was a minor procedure. The doctor (one of my two very favorites) walks briskly down the hallway, spies me through the open door, and stops in:

“Sharon! Sorry to keep you waiting, I’m running behind. I have someone in the O.R. for a very short procedure—15 minutes—and you’re next. But, I’ve gotta tell you—I have NO free time at home anymore since I got my iPad! I just can’t put it down!

“Also, I have to ask you: I’m having trouble syncing my Blackberry to my Mac [he had just switched from a PC]. Maybe you can tell me what I should be using.”

And he was swiftly off to his other patient. The nurse in my little room, busy setting up an IV, looked a little taken aback during this exchange, although I couldn’t quite identify the look on her face. And then she said:

“I’m having trouble syncing my iPhone to my PC…”

That’s what it’s like being a Mac pro.

Wouldn’t trade it for any other job.

Except maybe Queen.

Get Address Book phone numbers in the Spotlight menu

Spotlight in your menu bar hooks nicely into Address Book. Type a name in the search field, and the contact(s) will show up in the Spotlight menu. Point to the contact, hover for a few seconds, and get all the phone numbers for that contact in a help tag, so you don’t have to open Address Book itself. But, wait – that’s not the tip, because there’s a slight problem: all the phone numbers show up, unidentified as to which is work, home, cell, and so on.