GETTING TO THE GOODIES FAST

Want fast access to the most commonly used icon-related tasks? Just Control-click directly on an icon and a pop-up menu appears with a list of tasks you’re likely to take advantage of at one time or another.

CHANGING A FILE’S ICON

Just as in previous versions of the Mac OS, if you don’t like a file’s icon, you can change it. To copy an icon from one file to another, just click on the icon you want to copy and press Command-I to bring up its info window. In the General section, click on the tiny icon to the left of the file’s name then press Command-C to copy that icon into memory. Then, go to the file whose icon you’d like to replace, press Command-I to bring up its info window, click on the existing tiny little icon, then just press Command-V to paste the new icon over the old icon. There you go.

DON’T LIKE YOUR NEW CUSTOM ICON? CHANGE IT BACK

If you’ve added a custom icon to one of your files and later grow tired of it, just click on the icon, press Command-I then press Command-X, and the file’s original icon will pop back into place.

COPYING AND DELETING AT THE SAME TIME

If you’re archiving a file to disk, you can drag the icon of the file you want to archive directly to that drive and the Mac will write a copy to that drive. However, your original file still lives on your current hard drive. If you want to have that file deleted from your drive as soon as it’s copied to another drive, just hold the Command key as you drag your icon, and Mac does two tasks for you – it copies the file to the new drive, and deletes the original from your drive.

NEW FOLDER SPEED TIP

Need another folder to store your files but refuse to use the new keyboard shortcut Shift-Command-N? You have two choices: Either click on the Action button and choose New Folder or just Control-click on an empty space in any Finder window, and then choose New Folder from the pop-up menu.

CLEANING UP WINDOWS ONE ICON AT A TIME

Want to bring some order back to your icons? Just hold the Command key while dragging any icon and when you release the mouse button it automatically snaps to an invisible alignment grid helping once again to keep your icon tidy and organized. See Mac OS X cares. Another way to “clean up”, icon by icon is to click on the icon you want aligned and then choose Clean Up Selection from the View menu.

DRAG-AND –DROP DESKTOP PRINTING

Want the ability to print a document right from your desktop (without opening the application first?) Go under the Apple menu, under System Preferences and choose Print & Fax. When the preference pane appears click on the Printing button then click the Set Up Printers button. Your printer appears in the Printer List dialog. Click on it, then go under the Printers menu (in the menu bar) and choose Create Desktop Printer. A standard Open/Save dialog appears asking you where you want to save it. Click Save and an icon for your printer appears on the desktop. To print a document, just drag-and-drop it on this icon. Some documents, such as TextEdit files and PDFs, go straight to the printer. Other files launch their default application and open the Print dialog.

PRINTING FROM THE DESKTOP (W/O A DESKTOP PRINTER)

Don’t want a Desktop Printer icon cluttering up your desktop, but you still want to print files from the desktop or a Finder window. Then try this little trick: Control-click on the file you want to print to bring up a contextual menu. Go under Open With, and choose Printer Setup Utility from the list. (If it doesn’t show upthere, you have to click on Other, then use a standard Open dialog to navigate to the Printer Setup Utility – its inside the Applications folder, within the utilities folder.). Just choose it, and it either starts printing or takes you directly to the default application’s Print dialog.

SEEING THUMBNAILS IMAGES OF YOUR PHOTOGRAPHIC

Tired of seeing the default icons for your digital photos? Then change just one tiny preference setting, and working with digital photos in Finder windows becomes infinitely easier. The preference is called Show Icon Preview and turning it on automatically replaces the default file icons with thumbnail previews of your photos, so you can see what they look like right in the Finder window. This preview is only available when viewing a Finder window in Icon view, so start by clicking on the View by Icon button in the toolbar. Then, press Command-J to bring up that window’s View Options and turn on Show Icon Preview. That’s it—now your digital camera images won’t have generic icons. Instead, they’ll display thumbnail photos of your full-sized images as their icons.

POWER COPY AND PASTE

In previous versions of Mac OS X (and Mac OS 9 for that matter), if you clicked on a file, copied it (Command-C), then opened an application (like Mail) and pasted it (Command-V), it would only pasted that file’s name which is just this side of worthless. Now in Panther, in some applications, it pastes the actual file, so you can copy and paste a file from a Finder window or the desktop right into your application. Okay, so what if you do want just the name (which happens from time to time)? Just click directly on the file’s name (to highlight it) then press Command-C to copy it. Now, you’re copying just the name. It’s a power-pasting thing!

ADDING AUTOMATION THROUGH FOLDER ACTIONS

At the office, I’m on a network and I have a Drop Box where my co-workers can send me files. However, for a long time, if a freak put something in my Drop Box, I wouldn’t know it unless they called or e-mailed me and told me so. But now any time one of them drops something in my Drop Box, a message dialog appears that says, “Something freaky is in your Drop Box.” This is a simple Apple-Script (think of an AppleScript as a built-in automation for your Mac, just like Photoshop Actions add automation to Adobe Photoshop). 

Mac OS X includes some cool sample Scripts (Actions) or you can download about a bazillion from the Web for free.  To assign a Script to a folder, start by Control-clicking on that folder then choose Configure Folder Actions from the pop-up menu that appears. This brings up the Folder Actions Setup dialog. This is where you toggle various Scripts assigned to folders on and off, or even edit Scripts (if you know how to write AppleScripts).

Click the plus-sign button at the bottom left of the dialog to add your folder to the list (this actually brings up a standard Open dialog that shows you folder, so click on your folder in the Open dialog and click Open). Once you do this, a window pops down with a list of built-in sample Scripts you can assign to this folder and their names give a cryptic description of what they do. Pick the one that sounds like what you want to do (to replicate my Drop Box warning,” choose “add –new item alert.scpt”) and click the Attach button (you’ll see your newly assigned Script appear in the column on the right of the dialog). You’d think that would do it, but you have to do one more thing because although you assigned a Folder Action to this folder, you have not yet enabled Folder Actions. Click the Enable Folder Actions checkbox at the top-left corner of the dialog. This is a global on/off switch, so any folder to which you’ve attached Scripts is now “activated”.

By the way, once you apply Actions to a folder, you can turn Folder Actions on or off globally b Control-clicking on any folder and choosing Enable Folder Actions or Disable Folder Actions from the pop-up menu. Note: You have to Control-click on the folder to access these Folder Action command; they don’t appear in the menu if you click on the folder and then click the Action button in the Finder window. Why? I have no idea.

MAKING .ZIP FILES (COMPRESSED FILES) IN ONE CLICK

One of my favorite Panther features is the ability to create .zip compressed files from within the Os. (Basically, this shrinks form within the file size, ideal for files you’re going to e-mail –smaller file sizes mean faster file transfers.) To create a compressed file either Control-click on the file then choose Create Archive (which is Apple-speak for “make a compressed .zip file”). Or you can click on a file then go to the Action menu (the button that looks like a gear up in the Finder window’s toolbar) and choose Create Archive from there. Either way, it quickly creates a new file with the file extension “.zip.” This is the compressed file. You can also compress several different files (like three for example) into one single archive file-just Command-click on all the files you want included then choose Create Archive of 3 items from the Action menu. A file is created named “Archive.zip”. By the way, if someone sends you a .zip file don’t sweat it-just double-click it and Panther automatically decompresses it.

SEARCHING BY COLOR LEVEL

Besides the visual benefits of having certain files tagged with a color label, there’s hidden benefit: You can search for files by their color. For example, let’s say you misplaced an important file for a project you were working on. You can press Command-F to bring up the Find function and from the Search for Items pop-up menu, choose Label. Then, click on the color for the files you labeled in that project, click Search button and it instantly finds and displays all the files with that color. Searching by color-only Apple is cool enough to come up with a search like this!

CREATING YOUR OWN LABEL NAMES

Don’t like the names Apple created for the colors used in the Color Labels feature? Then, just create your own by going under the Finder menu and choosing Preferences (or use the keyboard shortcut Command-,). When the Finder Preferences dialog appears, click on the Labels button and you’ll see a field beside each color where you can input custom names. This is great for designating a color for “Hot Projects” or “Backup These Files”, or perhaps a project name like “Anderson Catalog” or “Vegas Blackjack Table Scam.”