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The weather widget has a few cool functions.
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Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983
T h e R o a d L e s s T r a v e l e d
What they forgot to tell you at the store about OS X Tiger, Part 1
Aug. 31, 2005
By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2005, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2005, The Post-Standard
Tiger, the latest version of Apple's OS X operating system, is full of little touches and hidden features. I'll tell you about some of them this week.
1. My favorite by far is the instant dictionary built into Tiger. No matter what you are doing -- typing into a word processor, reading a Web page, looking at something in the mail -- you can get an instant dictionary definition of anything you select. Simply select a word and press Ctrl-Cmd-D. (To dismiss the little pop-up dictionary window, click to the side.)
2. My next favorite, almost as exciting as the pop-up dictionary, is the ubiquitous slide show in Tiger. Select a group of photos in any window (or on your desktop), then right click and choose Slideshow. While the slideshow is displaying, press the "I" key (not the "1" key) to see the images grouped on your screen. You can then click on any of the smaller views to see that image full screen. (The ESC key stops the slideshow.)
3. Every day I rave about a new feature in Safari, the outstanding OS X Web browser, that lets Tiger users save entire Web pages, images and all. With Safari open to a page, press Cmd-S (or, if you really like the extra effort, click the File menu and choose Save). Choose where you want to save the Web archive.
4. Safari also has the coolest RSS feature I've ever seen. RSS is a way to read stuff on the Web without all the nonsense of Web page graphics, tables, headlines and forms. Click the RSS tab in Safari's preferences to set it up. I have mine check for updates every 30 minutes, and I have it update RSS feeds only in my Bookmarks Bar, where I have a lot of important Website shortcuts. As I write this, I have more than 1900 RSS feeds waiting to be read. Ouch! (I'll tame it one of these days. It's too much fun to change right now.)
5. A slideshow in Mail? You've got it any time you get more than one image as an attachment.
6. An automatic way to keep grandma happy: Mail will scale down your attached images before sending them. Look for a pop-up menu in the lower right corner of the message window.
7. Tiger has a hidden way to manage application windows. Click the Window menu of most any OS X program. Then, while keeping the menu open, press the Option key. Now you can do an "Arrange in front" operation. Try it and see if you like it.
8. The weather widget has a few, um, cool functions. (Sorry.) Click on the main weather icon to collapse the window or open it back up. Click the little "i" in the corner to flip the window, then click the AccuWeather label for a complete forecast for your location.
9. PDF operations are much more flexible. Click the Print item in the File menu of any program that can print and you'll see options to mail a PDF of the item -- great for Web pages you'd like to send in their complete form to a non-Tiger user, for example -- or to do many other things with the PDF. (PDFs are perfect replicas of whatever you are printing, so they are ideal for Web pages, documents, images, screen shots and so on. All modern computers can view PDFs.)
10. Preview, the image-and-PDF viewer for OS X, is finally growing up. As before, it does a fine job of converting images (you might never have realized this, however, since you have to use the Export function), but now it also does slide shows. You'll see that under the View menu.
There's a lot more hidden away in Tiger. I'll tell you about more of the secret stuff in coming weeks.
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