5 uses for the spacebar

Tap into this unassuming key's hidden productivity tricks

by Sharon Zardetto, Macworld.com

Ancient Greek and Latin writings had no spaces between words; you just had to be familiar with where words started and stopped in order to read textlikethis. But we should be grateful to the spacebar for more than just its sacred word-separation calling, because it can also perform quite a few tricks in various environments.

1. Play and pause

In any application that provides Play and Pause controls, you can use the spacebar to alternately play and pause the content. This includes movies and slideshows, as well as audio-only files such as those you play in Apple iTunes and GarageBand.

2. Open spring-loaded folders instantly

Spring-loaded folders are one of OS X’s most-overlooked timesavers. In the Finder, drag an item, hover over a folder, and after a brief pause (so the Mac knows you’re not simply hesitating before dropping the item in) a Finder window springs open, revealing the folder’s contents. This makes it easy to see that you’re moving or copying an item into the correct place if your folder names are less than descriptive. It also simplifies getting into subfolders.

You set the length of the spring-open delay in the General pane of Finder -> Preferences. Or, avoid the delay altogether by pressing the spacebar to open a hovered-over folder instantly.

Even if you turn off the spring-loaded folders feature by going to Finder -> Preferences and deselecting the Spring-loaded Folders And Windows setting, pressing the spacebar still opens a folder when you hover over it holding an item to drop into it.

Spring-loaded folders work from the Dock, too. Press the spacebar to open a folder in the Dock without waiting, whether or not spring-loading is turned on in the Finder’s preferences.

3. Access screenshot options

When you need to document some aspect of your Mac’s behavior, a screenshot of the full screen is seldom necessary. Sure, you can press Command-Shift-4 to select an area to capture to the Desktop (or Command-Shift-3 to save the whole screen as a file on the Desktop), but if you add the spacebar you’ll access more options.

Pressing the spacebar before you drag across an area to capture it changes your cursor to a camera and lets you select an entire window (or a dialog box, or a menu without its title) by clicking on it. Pressing the spacebar after you’ve dragged a selection rectangle—but before you let it go—allows you to move the selection rectangle around on the screen to adjust its position before capturing the shot; let go of the spacebar with the mouse button still down if you want to adjust the size of the rectangle after you’ve moved it.

4. Zoom in on windows in Exposé

One of the more clever feature tweaks in Snow Leopard involves the space bar. When you invoke Exposé, Mac OS X displays your open windows in a grid on your screen, at a substantially reduced size. Sometimes it’s hard to recognize which window is which when you’re in this view, and the window’s title isn’t always a good enough clue. Now you can use your space bar to zoom in and preview your Exposé windows. Just move your cursor over a window and press the spacebar. If it's the window you want, press Return. If not, you can press the spacebar again to zoom back out.

5. “Click” on items using the keyboard

With All Controls turned on the in Keyboard Shortcuts preference pane, tab to a menu (the blue halo shows it’s selected) and use the spacebar to open it. Use an arrow key to highlight a menu choice, and then use the spacebar again to trigger the command.

Prefer to move around in dialog boxes or Web pages using the keyboard instead of the mouse? Select All Controls under Full Keyboard Access in the Keyboard Shortcuts preference pane (in Leopard’s Keyboard & Mouse preferences, or Snow Leopard’s Keyboard preferences). With All Controls active, a press of the Tab key selects, in turn, every component of whatever you’re working in—a dialog box, for example. Once you’ve selected a component, press the spacebar in lieu of clicking the mouse.

So, for instance, with All Controls on, tabbing around on a Web page includes not only the search and other text fields on a form, but all its clickable spots, and the spacebar “clicks” the selected item.

Sharon Zardetto has been writing Mac tips since the Mac was born. One of her current ebooks is Minifesto: Time Machine .

See more like this: business, Mac OS, Finder

5 unexpected uses for the Option Key

Access hidden features with this keyboard star

by Sharon Zardetto, Macworld.com

The Option key is the unsung hero of the keyboard. Since the earliest days of the Mac, it has provided access to special font characters; revealed alternative commands in menus; and let you Option-drag to create a copy of something, such as a Finder icon or a graphic selection (from MacPaint to Photoshop CS4!). Its capabilities have only increased with time, so it’s always worth pressing Option to modify a click or drag, just to see what might happen. Here are five of my favorite Option key tricks.

1. Reverse your scrollbar preference

Most of the time, I use the scrollbar—for example, in Apple’s Safari or Microsoft Word—to move my view a full page or screen at time. (By default, when you click on a scrollbar, that’s what it does.) But sometimes—in a long document, for instance—I know that I want to go to a point about three-quarters of the way through the document. It’s easier to click where I want to go—three-quarters of the way down on the scrollbar—than to click and drag the scroller to get there.

You can choose between these actions—Jump To The Next Page or Jump To Here—by setting the Click In The Scroll Bar To option in the Appearance preference pane. Or, have it both ways: Option-click in the scrollbar to temporarily reverse the setting you’ve made in Preferences. So, if your setting is Jump To The Next Page, an Option-click in the scrollbar will instead jump you to a particular spot.

2. Open preference panes using function keys

You love the convenience of dimming or brightening your screen with a quick press of F1 or F2, but sometimes you need to adjust other aspects of your display. For instance, you might want to temporarily change the screen resolution to test something. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could get to the Displays preference pane as quickly as you can change the screen’s brightness?

Wish granted! Hold Option while pressing either of the function keys that controls brightness, and the Displays preference pane opens. This works with other function keys, too: hold Option while you press any of the volume function keys (F3-F5 or F10-F12, depending on your keyboard), and the Sound preference pane opens. If you have your system set up so that you need to press the Fn key to trigger the special features on the function keys (the ones represented by icons), then just add the Option key to the mix: Fn-Option-F1, for instance.

3. Switch speakers from the menu bar

You need to switch from the internal speakers to your headphones for a Skype call, or you’re the last one in the office so you want to blast your iTunes playlist through your external speakers. If you’re using Snow Leopard, and your Volume menu is in the menu bar, you don’t have to open the Sound preference pane to switch output devices: press Option before you open the Volume menu, and instead of getting the volume slider, you’ll see a list of available input and output devices. (To make the Volume menu appear in the first place, go to the Sound preference pane and select the Show Volume In Menu Bar option.)

4. Option-click to open multiple Inspector palettes

The Macworld article Rule the Office notes that you can open multiple Inspector windows in Keynote and Pages by using the View -> New Inspector command. But this always opens a Document Inspector, so you must then click on the icon for the Inspector you need. Instead of using the menu command, Option-click directly on an icon in an existing Inspector palette to open a new Inspector for that category.

5. Choose a startup disk when booting

You’re staring at your blank Mac screen; you have two (or more) startup drives for your Mac, but you forgot to specify the one you want to use in the Startup Disk preference pane. You don’t have to start up, change the setting, and restart: just hold down Option when you turn on the Mac and you’ll see available startup drives displayed on the screen. Choose the one you want and you’re good to go.

Sharon Zardetto is long-time Mac writer. You’ll find another Option trick for volume settings at her MacTipster blog.

• See more like this: business, Finder, Mac OS