Gaz s Mac Notes. Startup Turn on the power button, after about 5 seconds you should hear a Dmmm sound indicating that the Bootup sequence has started. Login with a user and Password. If you login as a Guest any work that you save during the session will be lost when you shutdown. The opening screen is the Finder and the icon for this program is the two inward looking faces. The icons along the bottom are in the Dock which is similar to the Task bar in the windows operating system. A single click on a program s icon in the Dock will launch it. To do a Safe Boot Hold Shift key Boot from CD/DVD Hold C key Shutdown. Click on the Apple icon (LH end of the menu bar), and click on Shutdown (or Restart) etc. If a program freezes a forced Quit can be done by simultaneously pressing the Option, esc and Command keys. This brings up a window allowing you to select the program to close. If the Mac freezes a forced Shutdown can be done by pressing and holding the Power button The Keyboard Shortcuts Command + A Select All Command + Tab Select Application Command + C Copy Command + 1 View as Icons Command + X Cut Command + 2 View as List Command + V Paste Command + 3 View as Column Command + P Print Command + Cycle thru Finder window Command + I Information Command + Space Bar Spotlight (Search) Command + S Save Command + L Make Alias Command + Z Undo/ReDo Command + Q Quit a program
There are, of course, many other keyboards shortcuts if you want to investigate further. Multiple Selections Sequential Random Select first, hold the Shift key while selecting the last in list. Select the first, hold the Command key while randomly selecting the others. More on the Keyboard.. The Delete key. When an item is selected, and the command+delete are pressed, the item is removed. If this was done accidently, there will usually be an Undo (command + Z) function available under Edit. When you are typing text, the Delete key will remove one character to the left of the cursor position. If you want to remove a character to the right of the cursor, hold the Fn key while you press the Delete key. The four Arrow keys in the bottom RH corner of the keyboard allow you to move the Cursor one character to the left or right and one line up or down. The upward facing arrow key in the top RH corner of the keyboard will Eject a DVD or CD that is inserted the drive. The esc key in the top LH corner is occasionally used to free up a program that may have frozen during some operation. The Mouse Ideally, the mouse is used with a neutral coloured mat which offers optimum tracking, however it can be used on almost any surface. If you find that the pointer operation is erratic check that the surface under the mouse is suitable. A red coloured surface will cause this problem. As the mouse is moved around the table you will see the Pointer also move around on the screen. At times it will appear as an arrow, but when moved into a section on the page where text may be entered, it becomes an ornate vertical line when it is referred to as the Cursor. When the cursor is placed at a position where you want to enter text, click the mouse and a small flashing vertical line appears at the position on the page. One click (downward pressure on the front section) will select an item. It might be a click on the Menu bar which will cause a sub- menu to be displayed. If you are in the Finder application and you click on a file twice (referred to as a double click), the program associated with that particular file will be launched and the file will be displayed.
If you are in a page where the blue bubble is at the RHS of the window, you can roll the Scroll wheel to move up or down the page However, if you hold the Control key down on the keyboard while you move the Scroll wheel, you will Zoom in or out on the screen. In the Mouse section of the Preferences you can configure the RH side of the mouse to act as a Secondary button. If this has been done, when you point to an item on the screen you will be presented with a small menu offering some actions or operations that you may perform. This menu is called the Contextual menu. Window operation. To Move Click & Hold in Title bar (where Test.docx is), move mouse to move position. To Resize Click & Hold in the lower RH corner shaded area, move mouse to resize window. Top LH of Title Bar Red Spot Close File (Not Application) or close a program window. Orange Spot Minimise File to Dock. Green Spot - Fill screen (or half) with the window. Top RH of Title Bar Bubble Add/Remove Icon menu bar. Move up or down page either click (& hold) on the RHS blue bar, then move the bar. - Or just scroll with the mouse wheel. (only when the bar is present). Move from side to side - Click (& hold) on the bottom blue bar, then move the bar.
As in MS windows, if a button in a message is coloured Blue it indicates that this is the most likely response and it may be accepted by just pressing Enter on the keyboard instead of clicking on it. File and Folder management. This is done using the Finder which is similar to windows explorer. The picture above shows part of the folder (and File) tree of the Macintosh Hard Drive. The presentation of the information may be changed using the icons above the Name column in the picture it is similar to the Views function in Windows. As in windows, clicking on the small triangles beside Folder icons opens the Folder and this is indicated by the triangle pointing down. The File highlighted in the picture was selected by pressing the C key. The order that Folders and Files are arranged in the Columns can be changed (sorted) by clicking in the Title section of a particular column. The default presentation is alphabetically in the Name column. If we want to have the Files sorted in descending size, just click on the word Size at the top of that column. A second click at that position would sort the files in ascending size. A third click would revert to descending size etc. Files or Folders may be Drag and Dropped from one location to another, Copy (or Cut) and Pasted and Deleted within the Finder application. Deleted Files go into the Trash (at the RH end of the Dock). To Delete a File hold the Command key while pressing Delete or right click on the file and select Move to Trash from the Contextual menu. You can also click on the file and while holding the mouse button
down, just drag the file to the Trash icon. An accidentally Deleted file may be recovered from the Trash by clicking on the Trash icon to open a window showing the deleted files. Then right click on the file that you want to recover and select Put Back from the menu. A File may be opened by 1. Double clicking on it which causes the default application (associated with that file type) to launch with the file displayed or 2. Dragging and Dropping the file onto the required application icon on the Dock. Applications (Programs). Applications may be launched by a click on their icon if it is on the Dock. If it is not there, go to the Applications folder at the RH end of the Dock and click on it. Then select the application that you want from the list. Applications are closed by ( for example if you are using MS Word)) clicking Word (to the RHS of the Apple icon) on the Menu bar, then select Quit Word. Alternatively, you can use the short cut keys and just press command +Q. Note that until you close the application it will remain active, but is reduced to an icon in the Dock, so you just need to click on it there to re- open it. (Similar to the way a program is minimised to the Task bar in Windows). Programs on the IMac. Safari. Is the web browser included in Mac OSX and has similar functionality to Internet Explorer, Firefox etc. Mail. Is the Email client included in Mac OSX and is similar to Outlook Express, Thunderbird etc. IChat. Is the Mac OSX remote video chat program similar to Skype. It also functions as a Text messaging utility similar to Windows Messenger. Pages. This is a word processor which has a good deal of functionality and many template based document proformas. Pages does not offer many of the advanced WP functionality found in MS Word but is very good for basic use. It saves documents in it s native.pages file format but the documents may be exported as.pdf,.doc,.rtf, and.txt. It can open files in.doc and.docx formats as well as the native.pages To insert a picture, R/C and select Import Image from the contextual menu. Numbers. This an extensive spreadsheet program also supported with many template proformas. It also saves files in it s own native.numbers file format, but again they may be exported as.pdf,.xls and.csv formats. Keynote. Is the Mac OSX presentation program similar to Power Point. imovie and itunes. These are the Mac OSX media (sound and vision) programs. Preview. Is the Mac OSX default picture viewer. Preview will also read PDF files if an Adobe Acrobat Reader is not installed.
Entourage. Is part of the Mac OSX Microsoft Office suite and provides similar functionality to MS Outlook. ie Email client, Calendar, Personal organiser, planner etc. Other bits. System preferences. This is similar to the Windows Control Panel and is used to set various system parameters such as the Date & Time, User accounts, Networks access etc. Spotlight. Is the powerful Mac OSX file system Search function used for locating Programs, Folders and Files. It may be invoked using the keyboard shortcut command + space bar. The search criteria box appears in the top RH corner of the screen. It can also be launched by clicking on the magnifying glass icon beside the time at the RH end of the Menu bar. Capture Screen shots. To capture an image of a window to use in a document (for example) may be achieved in a couple of different ways. You can use the Grab utility (found in the Utilities folder under the Applications icon on the Dock). When launched, select Window under the Capture menu. A small window pops up directing you to click on the Choose a window button followed by a mouse click on the window that you want to record. The sequence is completed with a file (image) being placed on the Desktop. Alternately, you can use the keyboard shortcut command+shift+4+spacebar. This results in a camera icon on the screen which you move over the window that you want to capture. When the camera is over the window. The window is highlighted (in blue) and you click the mouse to complete the operation. An image of the window is placed on the desktop in the.png format. Help. Mac OSX has operating system Help items that are accessed via Help on the System Preferences Menu bar. Specific Help for each application may also be found on the Menu bar for each individual program. PDF Files. You can create PDF files from any program by Printing the file. When the Print dialog window opens you will see at the bottom a PDF button. When you click the button you can select Save as PDF. G.Alcorn. 14/1/2012.