User Name
Password
AppleNova Forums » Genius Bar »

First Mac & first round of questions - Long


Register Members List Calendar Search FAQ Posting Guidelines
First Mac & first round of questions - Long
Thread Tools
deuce868
Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
 
2005-11-03, 11:26

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
Luca
ಠ_ರೃ
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Minnesota
 
2005-11-03, 11:48

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:
Originally Posted by deuce868
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....
I find that nice as it allows me to quickly switch between text entry areas. However, I do think it would be nice to be able to do the same with check boxes and pop up lists. Personally I find it annoying when Windows browsers have to select every single link when you hit tab, as it basically destroys the functionality of using tab since it takes forever to get anywhere. I think you can mess around with this in the "Full Keyboard Access" preferences... it's either in Keyboard & Mouse or Universal Access in the system preferences.

Quote:
Originally Posted by deuce868
Why do programs not actually close when you hit the X? Can you change that setting?
You can't change it, and with good reason. OS X does not work the same way as Windows. Windows considers every individual window in the taskbar to be an entire application. When you use alt-tab, it switches windows. Another thing is that Windows puts the menu bar inside each application window.

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:
Originally Posted by deuce868
6. Is there a keyboard shortcut for the + button? I see one for minimize.
That button used to be useful, back in OS 9. With Column view in OS X, I rarely or never use it, since its only useful function is the "zoom to fit content" function in Finder. In most other applications, it simply randomly moves and resizes the window. I don't think there's a keyboard shortcut for it, though it is available in the Window menu. There might be a way to configure it to a keyboard shortcut either through the System Preferences (somewhere) or through a third-party program.

Quote:
Originally Posted by deuce868
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.
Finder's a bit unreliable about this, as the Finder itself is hardly changed from 10.0 (that's a big campaign among OS X users - FTFF: Fix The F*cking Finder). In general, though, you should be able to get everything to auto-sort by going into their View Options (Command-J, I think). Make sure the radio button at the top is set to "All Windows" (I think it is there by default), and then click the "Arrange By Name" check box. That should do it. Also, give column view a try! It's pretty nice.

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
Paul
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: New York City
 
2005-11-03, 11:53

re: 4
command drag it out of the menubar
  quote
ShadowOfGed
Travels via TARDIS
 
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Earthsea
 
2005-11-03, 12:24

Quote:
Originally Posted by deuce868
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.
Well, I don't have my first mac yet, but I (uh) saw it running on a ThinkPad. Unofficially. Of course. Anyhow, I think the hostname configuration is actually in the Sharing preferences pane. It's right at the top, and pretty obviously labeled "Computer name" I still don't see why this is listed with the sharing settings instead of the network configuration... go figure.


Quote:
Originally Posted by deuce868
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?
OS X comes with vim. I prefer vim for editing stuff; I've never used BBEdit, but perhaps vim has what you're looking for. I'm sure you know already, but just to make sure: vim is a console app.

Quote:
Originally Posted by deuce868
6. Is there a keyboard shortcut for the + button? I see one for minimize.
I don't know about you, but in OS X I find that I don't feel the same urge to maximize apps like I do in Windows. An in some cases, the + won't even maximize an app. I don't know if there's a shortcut, but perchance you'll find that, over time, you use the + button less and less... just a thought.

Quote:
Originally Posted by deuce868
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:
Well, maybe not so much help, but... information... Hope you like your PowerBook, I'm really looking forward to my PowerMac.
  quote
deuce868
Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
 
2005-11-03, 12:56

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
Luca
ಠ_ರೃ
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Minnesota
 
2005-11-03, 13:00

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
deuce868
Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
 
2005-11-03, 13:02

That's probably a good thing to try for a bit. Thanks
  quote
bassplayinMacFiend
Banging the Bottom End
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
 
2005-11-03, 13:03

Quote:
Originally Posted by Luca
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.
That's because FF is still in the disk cache. Wait longer between relaunches and you'll be back to the original load time. FF isn't still running somewhere in the background when you click X, but its files are still in pagefile.sys.
  quote
Brad
Selfish Heathen
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
 
2005-11-03, 13:07

Well, it looks like a number of these have already been answered. Let's see what is left...

Quote:
Originally Posted by deuce868
2. What is with the Safari and the fact that you can’t tab into anything but text and textarea boxes.
As Luca said, go to System Preferences -> Keyboard and Mouse -> Keyboard Shortcuts and enable Full Keyboard Access. This is actually the correct behavior, inheriting your system settings instead of a local variable. If you want to tab between everything on the web page and not just form elements, open Safari's preferences -> Advanced and check the "Press Tab to Highlight" option.

Quote:
Originally Posted by deuce868
Why do programs not actually close when you hit the X? Can you change that setting?
I'll expand on what Luca said. Ready for a rant? Okay, here goes...

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:
Originally Posted by deuce868
3. BBEdit isn’t that great.
I agree completely.

Quote:
Originally Posted by deuce868
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.
Not that I know, but I've never seen anyone use IMAP labels either.

Quote:
Originally Posted by deuce868
6. Is there a keyboard shortcut for the + button? I see one for minimize.
Unfortunately, no.

Quote:
Originally Posted by deuce868
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.
USB Overdrive is one third-party solution.

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
SonOfSylvanus
Fro Productions(tm)
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: London Town
 
2005-11-03, 17:11

Quote:
Originally Posted by Brad
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.
Just try and "resize" Mail.app, Dictionary.app, TextEdit.app, and other Apple applications (those were just ones in my Dock)...

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
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Post Reply

Forum Jump
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


« Previous Thread | Next Thread »

All times are GMT -5. The time now is 14:34.


Powered by vBulletin®
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2004 - 2024, AppleNova