A few more tips for the Windows Switcher (that means you, DanTekGeek) that I quite like:
- Translation: This is about the best thing about the program "Sherlock". You can open it into a "Translation" channel. From here, it's possible to highlight and drag in a whole lot of Japanese text (or several other languages) and instantly have it translated into shoddy but readable English. There is a limit of a page or two of text, though. This makes browsing international sites quite fun.
- Dragging & dropping: Highlight text and drag it to the desktop or a folder, and you'll create a "Scraplet" of that text. You can view it by double clicking, or drop it into a document to paste it in. In this way, by simply using a bit of space on your desktop, you can have several levels of copy-paste going on at once. This makes doing complicated documents quite fun.
You can drag an image straight from Safari to a folder to save it.
You can drag a file onto a folder icon, and either wait a second or just hit the space bar for that folder to spring open, allowing you to navigate through several levels of folders before you "drop" the document. This is called "Spring loaded folders".
- Print to PDF: Any program supports a "Save printout to PDF" option in the print dialog. This means you can store webpages, word documents, or anything that is printable as an Acrobat PDF file. This is a very convenient file format.
- Getting serious with Unix: There's a lot of neat terminal tricks that make life easier for the Unix guru. You can drag-drop a file or folder onto the terminal window to "type" its full path and filename into a terminal. You can also use the "open" command in the terminal to open files or applications, even when you're logged in remotely via SSH. Then, there's also the "osascript" command that lets you run AppleScript commands from the terminal.
This is really quite neat. I can logon to my Mac remotely and open any application, issue any command, retrieve any file ... the uses are limitless.
- AppleScript Folder Actions: When you get a little more confident with your Mac, check out AppleScripts "Folder Actions" feature, which lets you automate tasks when something changes in a given folder. Want to be alerted when a friend uploads something to your Public DropBox folder? Would you like scanned photos dropped into the "incoming" folder to automatically call up GraphicConvertor and generate a preview icon, then launch in PhotoShop? All this and more is possible with a bit of research and playing around.
- In finder, use the Cmd-Shift-G shortcut to type a folder to go to.
- If you have a server you like to connect to EVERY time you sign-on, such as your Windows box, then just connect to it as normal, then drag the icon for it into your "Login Items" in system prefs. Now it'll connect every time (you can even save the password in Keychain so it won't prompt you).
You could also drag the icon to your Finder toolbar, or to your Finder Favorites, for easy access.