Member
Join Date: Oct 2005
|
Background: I've been using the PC since 97 when I went to college. I'm a CS grad working with Linux and Windows servers/pcs for the last 4 years. I am now on day two with my first Mac. It's a new 17" PB with all the fixings. I am running into a few annoyances and hoping those in the know can help me make this experience a bit better.
Onto the questions: Mac OSX Notes: 1. How to change hostname. I can set it via command line, but would rather not have to set it to my login script. Where is it actually located? I saw references to it from /etc/hostconfig but there is no hostname entry there. FIXED: Thanks ShadowOfGed 2. What is with the Safari and the fact that you can’t tab into anything but text and textarea boxes. Every other browser I can tab into select boxes and use space to check them as well as form buttons. Grrrr.... Why do programs not actually close when you hit the X? Can you change that setting? FIXED: Thanks for the heads up on the system prefs Brad 3. BBEdit isn’t that great. In php there is no bracket matching or auto completion of functions I can figure out. I did load in the php Glossary from the website. Anything else I am missing I need to use? NVM, I got Zend studio working. I guess I've always heard how great BBEdit was I actually was a bit jealous as a windows user. Not all it's hyped up to be. 4. Virtual PC asked me if I wanted to install the scripts to my toolbar and I said yes (why not?). Now how do I go back and remove that? (Up by battery, wireless, etc) FIXED: Thanks paul! 5. Does Mail support imap labels at all? I can’t seem to find a way to use them but I always use the generic ToDo and Important labels in my Windows mail clients like thunderbird. 6. Is there a keyboard shortcut for the + button? I see one for minimize. Oh well on this one...thanks for the notes about it 7. Can anyone suggest a program that would allow me to program the extra buttons on my MS bluetooth mouse? I managed to get buttons 4/5 to be expose items, but I would also like to set the scroll wheel left/right to min/max functionality. 8. Any way to set folders in finder to auto sort? Every time I move something I have to go to view->arrange by name or kind to get a clean look. FIXED: Thanks luca! Thanks so much for the help. I'm liking this machine for the most part so far and will have an extensive review later on. :smokey: Last edited by deuce868 : 2005-11-03 at 13:20. |
quote |
ಠ_ರೃ
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Minnesota
|
I won't be able to help with most of your issues as they're beyond the scope of my knowledge, but I'll help you where I can.
Quote:
Quote:
On the Mac, though, each program could be thought of as full-screen and transparent. There is a single menu bar along the top of the screen. When you close all the windows of a program, that program stays running until you decide to quit out of it. This is nice because it ensures that the program stays in RAM. You don't have to wait for it to launch again, just click the dock icon of an already-running program and it'll open a fresh window. Now, I realize Windows kind of does this too - if you launch Firefox and then close it, subsequent launches of Firefox will be a lot quicker. But there's no visual representation of that at all. The keyboard shortcuts for switching between windows and applications are slightly different as well. Command-tab (same key position as alt-tab) switches between running applications. Command-` (or Command-~ depending on how you look at it) switches between windows in the currently active application. Each window is considered subordinate to the full application. It might take some getting used to if you have used Windows all your life but Mac users swear by this method. Quote:
Quote:
Sorry for all the uncertainty, as it's been a while since I've done any of this. Oh, and welcome to the Mac world and to AppleNova! |
||||
quote |
Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: New York City
|
re: 4
command drag it out of the menubar |
quote |
Travels via TARDIS
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Earthsea
|
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
|
||||
quote |
Member
Join Date: Oct 2005
|
Thanks for the help so far. I find that I use the + a lot because when I open finder and I have a bunch of folders it seems the finder will setup a scroll bar horizontally and I'd rather have it run vertical. This way I can scroll down the list of files/folders with my mouse wheel. Finder just always seems to be too short vertically for my tastes.
|
quote |
ಠ_ರೃ
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Minnesota
|
You can always switch it to List view instead of Icon view (if you're using Icon view).
There's a quick n' dirty Google Image Search of where you should click. |
quote |
Member
Join Date: Oct 2005
|
That's probably a good thing to try for a bit. Thanks
|
quote |
Banging the Bottom End
Join Date: Jun 2004
|
Quote:
|
|
quote |
Selfish Heathen
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
|
Well, it looks like a number of these have already been answered. Let's see what is left...
Quote:
Quote:
Mac applications are designed to work differently than Windows applications. In Windows, the window itself is the document and is the application. If you close the document, you close the application. Poof, gone. On Mac OS, however, the document and the application are logically separated. You can have one application handling several documents, one document, or no documents, one application handling several windows, one window, or no windows. This actually makes better sense than the Windows Way when you think about it. Here's a Computer Science perspective that might help. I can't immediately remember a design pattern that fits this concept perfectly, but MVC and Observer comes to mind, sort of. On Windows, each window is all of the MVC or both the observer and the subject. When you close a window, you're not only closing the view/observer, but also the model-controller/subject that talks to it. When you destroy an instance of a view/observer, though, it shouldn't destroy the rest! That's precisely what Windows does. On Macs, however, the window is more so just the view/observer. A document or view does not equate to an entire application! An application is an object that processes tasks. A window is a view for some data that belongs to the application. Simple as that. You shouldn't have to re-instantiate and destroy the application object every time a single task starts and completes, especially if the application is capable of doing many different things (like most applications are). The Mac way actually has a number of benefits besides just being more logically correct. Leaving an app running without a document means you still have access to the menu bar items without having a document open. Take a web browser, for example. Say you want to view your bookmarks. The Windows way means that you have to keep a web page open to get access to this functionality. Why? How does that make sense? The application should be abstracted away from the document views; the former shouldn't require an instance of the latter simply to exist. The Mac way also means for conserving resources. Allowing a single application to handle multiple documents means less memory is needed for multitasking. Remember when Internet Explorer actually offered this as an option, whether to run it as one instance or multiple? Allowing the application to remain active also means not having to wait to reload the whole binary and its components every time you want to do something. Windows actually tried to implement something like this with MDI. MDI allows you to run an application, you guessed it, without any documents open. You also get a global menu bar (like Mac) instead of one bolted to each of the document windows. Last I recall, Photoshop is an MDI app. Microsoft Office used to be MDI too. Microsoft's MDI implementation was poorly designed and suffers an assortment of UI usability problems, though, and is generally shunned by developers. Anyhow, that's the long answer (or part of it). The short answer is, no, you cannot change this behavior. Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Take note of ShadowOfGed's comment that the green button is not maximize! It's "resize" and is supposed to do the following: If the window does not snugly "fit" the content, resize to fit. Else, restore the previous size of the window. That's how it's supposed to work. This implementation generally works better, again, with the way Macs are designed. Mac OS strongly encourages multitasking and has pervasive drag-and-drop implemented. If an application is maximized, multitasking and drag-and-drop are seriously hampered because you can't get to anything else since it's all covered by your one giant window. As Luca said, though, you'll find that as of late there are many applications that lazily use the Windows maximize method or do something even more bizarre. This can no doubt be attributed to the recent influx of Windows and Linux developers to the Mac user base who don't understand the correct conventions. However that may be, you should still keep in mind not to expect the resize button to mazimize content to the screen. The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting. |
||||||
quote |
Fro Productions(tm)
Join Date: May 2004
Location: London Town
|
Quote:
It is horrifying, utterly and completely inexplicable. I love the "Resize" function when properly applied. I a b s o l u t e l y hate it in its Windows incarnation. I mean... bouncy bouncy |
|
quote |
Posting Rules | Navigation |
|
Thread Tools | |
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
I want to do a Mac Mini car install, but I have some questions | junebughunter | Genius Bar | 10 | 2005-08-27 18:12 |
Stupid Mac graphics card options | Luca | Third-Party Products | 33 | 2005-07-01 01:34 |
new to mac, couple questions | meepzork | Genius Bar | 1 | 2005-04-19 17:49 |
Games specifically for Mac | Banana | General Discussion | 24 | 2005-03-28 14:03 |
How long until OS XI? | psgamer0921 | Apple Products | 22 | 2004-06-30 19:19 |