Mason Sklut.com | The Macintosh Weblog

Setting Up OmniOutliner For “To-Do” Lists

Included with all new Macs is a neat little app called OmniOutliner. It serves as an “outliner” application which helps you put together your ideas. When you first open OmniOutliner, you may be shocked by how plain and simple its interface is. After this article, you will be surprised at all the power that OmniOutliner has. My main usage for this application is to make and manage my to-do lists — and man does it do a great job of doing that.

1. Go ahead and open up OmniOutliner.
2. Click on the “Inspect” button in the top right corner, or just hold down the Shift, ⌘ (Command), and “I” keys.
3. In the document that is open, select everything by holding down the ⌘ (Command) and the “A” keys. Now in the Inspect panel, go to the “Document: Display” section. Check off “Horizontal Grid” and “Vertical Grid”.
4. If you’d like to change the color of the grids, just click on the small color box beside “Horizontal/Vertical Grid” in the Inspect panel. Then select your color using the Color window (personally, I prefer a light gray color because it’s easier to look at).
5. One of the key steps in setting up a to-do list is proper organization.
6. The best way to organize your to-do list is with “categories”, such as “Other”, “To Buy”, “Projects”, or “Organize”.
7. To make these categories, just type the word in the first line with bold (hold down the ⌘ (Command) + “B” keys) print followed by a colon (“:“).
8. After you’ve typed the category title, hit the Return key, then the Tab key.
9. To add a column for due dates, just click on the “Add Column” button.
10. Now just type in your due dates in that extra column.
11. If you plan to use OmniOutliner a lot for one to-do list, I recommend you set it up to open that to-do list every-time you use OmniOutliner.
12. Just hold down the ⌘ (Command) and “,” keys and in the preferences window, check off “Open documents which were open last time you quit”.
13. That’s it! You can do as much customization as you want, but I prefer to keep my to-do lists very simple and easy to follow.

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Helpful Tips For Using Numbers ’08

In the new version of iWork ’08, Numbers was included along with the traditional Pages and Keynote applications. Numbers is basically Apple’s version of Microsoft Office Excel. In this article, I am just going cover to basics you need to give you a general idea of how much Numbers is capable of. To experience more of Numbers functionality, I highly recommend you use the Inspector panel (hold down the Option, ⌘ (Command), and “I” keys to activate it) along with the built-in Templates to truly take advantage of making graphs.

Calculating Graph Data

1. When there is a graph with data filled in it, you can easily find out everything about the graph such as sums, averages, minimums, and maximums within a few clicks.
2. To start, select the first item in the graph and hold down the Shift key.
3. Then click anywhere else to finish making your selection.
4. Instantaneously, you’ll notice results appear in the bottom left sidebar in Numbers.

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Changing The Style For A Graph

1. Select the graph for which you want to change the style.
2. Now, take a look at the Styles menu in the left sidebar in Numbers.
3. Choose any one of those styles and it will be automatically be applied to your graph.

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Order Graph Data From Ascending/Descending

1. As I mentioned previously, to select a specific range on a graph clicking once and hold the the Shift key, then click one more time to finalize your selection.
2. Hover your mouse pointer over a graph until the column headers (“A”, “B”, “C”) appear.
3. When you put hover your mouse pointer over one of the columns, you should see a small arrow appear.
4. Click on the arrow, and choose “Sort Ascending” or “Sort Descending” to change the order of the data.

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Changing The Data Units In A Graph

1. Go ahead and select the parts of the graph you want to change the units for (remember: use the Shift key to select specific areas).
2. Now go up to the Format Bar and select one the the units listed (1.0 $ % ✓).

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Adding Images To Your Graphs

1. Numbers makes adding images to your graphs incredibly easy.
2. Select and spot to place your image and open up the Media Browser (located above the Format Bar beside Inspector).
3. Now drag and drop your image into the graph wherever you’d like.
4. You can also add a shadow or reflection via the Format Bar.
5. Use the Inspector panel to change how your reflections and shadows appear.

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Helpful Keyboard Shortcuts To Speed Up Your Workflow

The longer you use your Mac, the better you will get at it. In Mac OS X, there are an insane amount of keyboard shortcuts to the point where you can even remember them all. I’m just going to mention common ones that will help you use your keyboard more than your mouse.

Logging Out

1. If you want to log-out without having that window appear asking if you are sure, just hold down the Shift, ⌘ (Command), Option, and “Q” keys.

Applications

1. If you want to quit an application hold down the ⌘ (Command) and “Q” keys.
2. If you’re using multiple windows in an application (for ex. multiple Safari windows), use the ⌘ (Command) and “`” keys to switch between the windows.
3. When you’re using your Mac and you’ve got several applications open, instead of going to the app with your mouse, use the
   ⌘ (Command) and the Tab keys.
4. Whenever you have quit an application, you sometimes get a “Don’t Save, Cancel, or Save…” drop-down menu. Most of the time you can use the ⌘ (Command) and “D” keys to select “Don’t Save” or hit the Return key to select “Save”.
5. If you want to close a window in an application, simply use ⌘ (Command) and “W” to close that window.
6. To undo something, hold down ⌘ (Command) and “Z”.
7. To hide an application, hold down ⌘ (Command) and “H”.
8. To save a document, just hold down ⌘ (Command) and “S”.

Trash Can

1. If your trash-can is full and you’d like to empty it, use the
   ⌘ (Command) and Tab keys until you get to Finder, and hold down the Shift, ⌘ (Command), Option, and Delete keys to empty the trash without the “are you sure” window appearing.

Shut Down, Restart, Sleep

1. When you’re ready to shut down, restart, or put your computer to sleep use the following keyboard keys.
   To Shut Down, use the ⌘ (Command), Option, Control, and ⏏ (Eject) keys.
   To Restart, use the ⌘ (Command), Control, and the ⏏ (Eject) keys.
   To Sleep, use the ⌘ (Command), Option, and ⏏ (Eject) keys.

iChat

1. If you have your iChat preferences setup so it doesn’t log you in once it opens, then use the ⌘ (Command) and “L” keys to sign on.
2. If your Buddy List doesn’t appear, hold down
   the ⌘ (Command) and “1″ keys.

Safari

1. When you’re in Safari, hold down ⌘ (Command) and “L” to go directly to the address bar.
2. Use ⌘ (Command), Option, and “F” to go to the Google Search bar.
3. If you need to search a website for something hold down ⌘ (Command) and “F” for a find menu.
4. If you want to switch between tabs, hold down Control and “Tab”.
5. When you want to bookmark a web page, hold down ⌘ (Command) and “D”.
6. If a website is stuck, hold down the ⌘ (Command) and “R” keys to refresh it.
7. To browse a website, hold down Option and the downward/upward arrow key (￬ ￪).
8. To make a new tab, hold down ⌘ (Command) and “T”.

Dashboard

1. To open up Dashboard, just hit the F12 key (you may need to use the Fn key for a laptop).
2. To view your widgets, hold down ⌘ (Command) and the “+” key. To browse through them, use ⌘ (Command) and the arrows keys (← →) .

Mail

1. To see if you got any new mail, hold down Shift, ⌘ (Command), and “N”.
2. If you want to see your Inbox, hold down ⌘ (Command) and “1″. For Sent mail, hold down ⌘ and “4″.
3. To reply to a message, first make sure the message is selected (use the Tab key until if it’s not selected); then hold down ⌘ (Command) and “R”.
4. To send a New Message, hold down ⌘ (Command) and “N”.

Finder

1. If you’re in Finder, hold down Shift, ⌘ (Command), and “N” to make a new folder.
2. Hold down ⌘ (Command) and “F” to use the Find search.

iTunes

1. To play or pause a song, hit the Spacebar.
2. To go to the next song, hold down ⌘ (Command) and the right arrow key (→).
3. If you accidentally close the iTunes window and your music is still playing, just hold down ⌘ (Command), Option, and “1″ to show the iTunes window.
4. If an item is highlighted in the sidebar, you can type the letters of another sidebar item to go to it. For example, type “po” and the blue highlighted rectangle switches to Podcasts.
5. To fast-forward through a song, hold down ⌘ (Command), Option, and the right arrow key (→).
6. If you want to highlight what song is currently playing, hold down ⌘ (Command) and “L”.

How To Export iMovie Projects To iDVD

Recently, I was making a video in iMovie with pictures and titles. I prefer iMovie instead of iDVD when I need to add titles and Ken Burns effects. The only problem that I was faced with was to make the iMovie project work on a DVD. There is no visible way to do this, but with a few work-arounds anything is possible. Here’s how:

1. With your project opened in iMovie, go to the Share menu and choose Media Browser.
2. In the window that appears, select “Large” so it will be displayed at its best quality.
3. When the movie has been uploaded to the Media Browser, open up iDVD.
4. In the pop-up window that appears, click on “Create a New Project”.
5. Enter a name and save the iDVD project to a location.
6. Once your in iDVD, click on the “Media” button in the bottom right corner of the window.
7. Click on the “Movies” tab at the top and select your movie project under the iMovie section.
8. When you’re sure that you have everything ready, insert a blank DVD-R disc and choose “Burn DVD” from the File menu.
9. Done! That wasn’t too hard was it?

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Make Web Galleries With iPhoto

I’m sure many users have noticed .Mac’s new web gallery feature. As neat as it looks, it’s quite easy to create your own custom galleries right within iPhoto. Here’s how:

1. Open up iPhoto from your dock or your Applications folder.
2. Select an album or several pictures for which you want to be in the gallery.
3. Go to the File menu and choose Export.
4. In the Export Photos window, go to the Web Page section.
5. Add a title and change the layout settings for the page(s).
6. When you’re all set, click on the “Export” button and choose a location to save the pictures to.
7. Then upload the “index.html” file, the “Images” folder, the “Resources” folder, the “Pages” folder, and the “Thumbnails” folder using an FTP program (Cyberduck).
8. To see an example of what the gallery looks like, click here for a screenshot.

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Change PDF Settings On The Fly In Safari

Safari has always been able to read/open PDF documents quite fast using Preview. Some people choose to view PDF’s in Safari using Adobe Acrobat Reader because of the tools it has, but if you didn’t know this already—Preview can do just about all of what Acrobat can do (for viewing PDF’s in Safari). Here’s how:

1. Open a PDF in Safari.
2. Once it loads, right-click on the document.
3. A contextual menu should with many options: Back, Reload, Save Page As…, Print Page, Open with Preview, Automatically Resize, Actual Size, Zoom In, Zoom Out, Single Page, Single Page Continuous, Two Pages, Two Pages Continuous, Next Page, and Previous Page.
4. Most of those features I just listed are pretty self-explanatory, so I’ll touch base on a few of the less-known ones.
5. Automatically Resize will expand the PDF size according to your browser.
6. Single Page Continuous is the default setting for viewing PDF’s—all the pages will appear, scroll down to view them.
7. Two Pages Continuous is similar to Single Page Continuous except there is one more page that will appear.

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Open Words Documents With TextEdit

For those of us who don’t own a copy of Microsoft Word, you may think that viewing Word documents you get in emails is impossible. Due to TextEdit’s word-processing capabilities, it can easily open any Word document, including 2007 Word documents. Here’s how:

1. Locate your Word document.
2. Right-click on the document icon.
3. In the contextual menu that pops up, go to Open With, and choose TextEdit.
4. The document should then open up in TextEdit.

screenshots: Click here for a screenshot

Make Incredible Holiday Cards With iPhoto

With the new iPhoto ’08, creating holiday cards couldn’t have been any easier. With very affordable price ranges and tons of themes to choose from, you can’t go wrong with iPhoto. In the past couple of years, family members have been amazed by the quality look of these cards. For those of you need help making a holiday card this season, here’s how:

1. Open up iPhoto from your dock or your Applications folder.
2. Once it’s open select the “Card” button on the bottom on the iPhoto window.
3. A drop-down menu should appear with a bunch of themes.
4. Choose an appropriate theme for the season and click the “Choose” button.
5. Drag and drop pictures from your iPhoto library onto the card in the sidebar.
6. Switch back to the holiday card by selecting it from the sidebar.
7. You should now notice all of the pictures you have imported will show up.
8. Once again, just drag them into the area on the card that you wish.
9. If you need to change the layout of the picture, just click on the image in the card and a resize pop-up box will come up.
10. Drag the slider until the image fits the area on the card.
11. If you would like to change how your card looks, use the Orientation, Design, Background, and Settings buttons.
    1. The Orientation menu allows you to choose horizontal or a vertical layout for your card.
    2. The Design menu allows you to change the overall layout of the image boxes.
    3. The Background menu allows you to change the background color of the image boxes as well as the text color.
    4. The Settings menu allows you to change the text style for the card.
       1. To change the font color, highlight an area of text and right-click on it. Go to Font > Show Colors and choose a color there. If you need more help, read my article on how to change colors of text.
12. Once you’re done with the changes, click on the “Buy Card” button in the bottom right corner of the window.
13. After it’s done updating the product info, a window will come up with order settings. Login in with your Apple account then you can change the quantity of cards you want and how you want it to be shipped. Click “Buy Now” when you’re ready.
14. That’s it. You’ve now successfully made your first holiday card in iPhoto.

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5 Tips For Using Safari 3.0

Safari 3.0 adds many helpful features to make for more efficient web browsing on the Mac. Besides the more obvious changes to Safari like the look and feel of it, there are more unnoticeable changes like these:

Drag And Drop File Uploads

Have you ever visited a website with a “Choose File” button where you have to navigate until you locate the file you want to upload? Now, Safari makes that whole upload process a breeze.

1. With Safari open, go to a website with an upload page, such as ImageShack.
2. Now, drag and drop any file on your computer onto the ”Choose File” button.
3. It should then appear beside the “Choose File” button.

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Dashboard Web Clips

Although this may seem like a unnecessary feature, you’d be surprised at how many times Web Clips will come in handy. For instance, as often as Digg.com gets updated with news, it can be almost obsessive to want to refresh your browser every 2 minutes. Thanks to Web Clips, no more “obsessive compulsiveness” with the refresh button.

1. Go to any site in Safari such as Digg.
2. Go to the File > Open in Dashboard.
3. The screen should dark out everything except the selected area.
4. Just hover your mouse over any part of the site, and it will automatically estimate the area you want. Click on the white square after you have it where you want it and drag the corners to your liking.
5. After you are satisfied with your Web Clip selection, click on the “Add” button in the purple bar that appears underneath your bookmarks bar.
6. After you click the “Add” button, Dashboard will open up with the Web Clip you just made.
7. To change how the widget itself looks (the border design), click on the small “i” icon on the bottom right hand corner of the widget.
8. Change your theme to any one of the 6 that there are.
9. Now you’ve made your first Web Clip!

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Bookmark Multiple Tabs

In previous versions of Safari, you would have to save bookmarks to a folder and enable “Auto-click” to open all the bookmarks at one time. Now, it’s much easier to group a bunch of websites into one bookmark.

1. With several sites open in Safari, click on the Bookmarks > Add Bookmark For These (# of) Tabs.
2. Now a bookmark should appear in your bookmarks bar. When you click on it, all of sites you just bookmarked will open in separate tabs.

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Restoring Sessions

Whenever I’ve browsed multiple, sites I get carried away sometimes with the close window hotkey (⌘ (Command) + “W”) and end up closing Safari by accident. This can become a huge annoyance as you would imagine. Other browsers like Firefox and Camino have had the ability to restore previous windows, but for some reason up until Safari 3.0 you didn’t have an option for that.

1. Open a bunch of sites in Safari.
2. Close them all or quit Safari.
3. Open up Safari (if you quit it) and go to the History > Reopen All Windows From Last Session.
4. If you closed just one window, follow the same steps, except in the History menu go to Reopen Last Closed Window.

screenshots: Click here for a screenshot

SnapBack To Another Webpage

Have you ever been on one website and clicked on a link that directed you far beyond from where you just were? Well, before you know it, that site you started off on, has “bit the dust”. To prevent that from happening, just enable SnapBack on a webpage, then you won’t be so frustrated when you get directed to another site.

1. With any page open in Safari, go to the History > Mark Page for SnapBack.
2. Click on another link within the page you were just on.
3. Now, you may notice a small orange circled arrow icon in your address bar.
4. Click on that orange icon to get back to the main site that you marked for SnapBack.

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Make Songs With GarageBand Quickly And Easily

In iLife ’08, Apple added lots of neat templates, sounds, and other useful features that come in handy. From experimenting with most of the iLife apps, I must say Magic GarageBand is one of my favorites. For the average user, GarageBand can be a hard program to start off with due to its very detailed interface. Thankfully, with GarageBand ’08 you can now use GarageBand to make very basic songs with the Magic GarageBand feature. Here’s how:

1. Open up GarageBand.
2. In the startup window that appears, choose “Magic GarageBand” from the list.
3. When Magic GarageBand opens up, you should see a row of themes on the bottom of the window.
4. To hear an example of what each sounds like, click on a theme and click the play button. I recommend changing the slider to “Entire Song”, that way you can get a better idea of what it will sound like in general.
5. Once you’re done with that, click on the “Audition” button in the bottom right corner of the window.
6. In the Audition window, you should see what looks like a real stage and instruments.
7. While the song is playing, feel free to swap out the instruments, by clicking on an instrument on the stage and changing it to one that appears in the row of icons corresponding to that instrument.
8. If you aren’t quite ready and want to experiment more with the other genres, click on the “Change Genre” button on the left corner of the window.
9. Once you feel comfortable with the song, click on the “Create Project” button on the right hand corner of the window.
10. GarageBand will open with its normal view and there, you can edit your song with more advanced settings to make it sound “professional”. If you are done and don’t want to mess with it anymore, then quit GarageBand and the song is saved automatically.
11. To access the song you just made, browse to the “Music” folder in Finder.
12. From there, click on the “GarageBand” folder and it should be in there.

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