annoyances i hope are easy to workaround!

P

purk155

Registered
Hello people. I guess this is an increasingly common statement but here goes.. 'I am a recent switcher, totally new to macs, and I'll never go back...duh'

However I do have a handful of annoyances which I am sure there are ways around hence my bothering you nice folks.

So here is a list of things that I'd like to do differently.

I'm a researcher by day so I would be happy to just be pointed in the direction of answers/clues.

I'd like to :

1) add an automator plugin/workflow thingy to the apple menu.

2) make the home & end buttons move to the end/start of a line.

3) prevent the 'are you sure you want to shutdown' from being shown.

4) go up a level (not necessarily back) in the finder.

5) make double clicking the app title bar expand not minimize the window.

6) make clicking the red (close) button quit the app not minimize it.

7) make an automator finder action to 'move finder item' to a tba location at the time of moving. i don't know where i want to move a file prior to wanting to move it. also a 'copy file to...' option would be very useful especially whilst I am still transferring stuff from my PC.

8) make the 'show dock' trigger more sensitive. when the dock is set to 'auto hide' it sometimes takes a few attempts at moving to the very bottom of the screen before it opens. can it allow open apps (in full screen mode) occupy the screen area behind the dock? if i have it behave like the windows task bar (always on top) when i maximize a window/app it will leave the bottom corners of my screen with noting but a nice view of some trees in france (my desktop wallpaper) because the dock is not 100% of the screen width.
^---- minor annoyance which I can live with unless there is a simple fix.

9) have key combos bound to a given key. i.e command+W (close window) bound to the escape key?

10) have an automator/workflow bound to a given key

11) find out which processes are not required? and how to prevent them from starting at startup. fyi. there is nothing in the 'startupitems' directory (in system/library) that i put there myself, just the 16 i think i had when i opened the box.

12) sometime when i click the red close button apps go back to the dock (in the 'running apps section', not the 'open windows section' of the dock) so when i relaunch the app it remains hidden forever, or at least until i quit and reload the app. This is very annoyting as I can easily lose my work.

************************************************

Now I appreciate that some of these requests are making a truely incredible OS function slightly more like a truely terrible one, but these are my requirements.

Thanks for any feedback.

James
 
I'll take a stab at a few:
2. home & end keys are for documents, not individual lines
3. press Option when choosing to shut down.
4. Apple-click on the title bar of a finder window, and you can move up one level, or up to any level on that drop-down.
5. The Green button is the one to click for window zoom (not usually an expand or maximize, Apple calls this function zoom, and it operates somewhat differently from Windows. The zoom does not usually go to full screen, but goes to some size set by that particular window, or set by you!
6. the Red button simply closes that window. The app normally stays open unless you choose to quit the app. The Mac can work just fine with large numbers of apps open, and no windows open. Most apps return most memory when the apps windows are not open. Many Mac users press Apple-Q when leaving an app, and the whole app simply quits with all its windows. If there is an open unsaved document, you will have the opportunity to save the document. The app will warn you about that.
7. Doesn't drag-n-drop do this? Your question here is a little 'fuzzy' Why would you move a file when you don't know where you are moving the file? Or, am I reading too much in your request?
11. Many processes that are started by the system may not be in use for that particular session, but may be needed for some service or app that are launched later on. Unused services generally do not hold on to resources unless the service is needed. This is not Windows, you know! So, the Mac OS X has a laundry list of startup items, and any could be called into use, otherwise, they mostly don't load unless called. (not the technical term, but an accurate description, I think) That being said, there may be some services that you can safely disable if you know what you are doing, but most here would say "don't mess with anything in the System". The System Preferences/Accounts pane shows Login items that are part of your user account. You can sometimes find items for software that you used for a while, then deleted. You might find some left-over items there that you can delete.
12. ? The dock does not show open documents unless you minimize a document. Again, your app is still running, and closing the app will tell you that you need to save a document. It's unlikely that you would lose a document (unsaved), unless you are not paying attention, or you shut your system off improperly (pulling the plug, shutting off the power strip, or otherwise forcing a shutdown). The system interface won't help you with that! :)
I hope this helps you with some of your questions (kind-of long for me!)
 
DelatMac: firstly, thank you for a quick and concise response. I'll elaborate a little on some of the more unclear items I listed.

2. home & end keys - is there no key combo (alt+end etc) to just goto the end of a line?

3. quick shutdown - brilliant, just what i needed.

4. finder navigation - yep, exactly what i meant, but no key to do the same ala backspace in windows?

5. expand/zoom window - fair enough., good to know.

6. red button - i understand, but it would be nice to be able to quit an app with the mouse (menu notwithstanding).

7. moving files - this one was a little vague. if i have a 'downloads' folder and i want to move, sya, photoshop plugins to folder X or mp3s to folder Y then, as far as I can tell, I would need two automator actions one to move stuff to folder X and another to folder Y. I want to just right-click on a file and select 'move...' and then be asked where I want to put the file. Saves me from opening more finder windows and dragging files all over.

11. startup items - makes sense. I've had no performance problems, just wanted to have it running efficiently as possible. There seems to be a LOT of processes running and I have only 15mb free ram and am using 7gb of VM.

12. dock items - I wasn't too clear here so here goes... Example: Listening to an mp3 in VLC, I click the red button and the window drops to the dock (I have VLC 'always' docked, so the little black arrow below the icon appears).
Now if I want to skip to the next track I'd expect to click the dock icon (or apple-tab) to show the app window, but it NEVER returns. All I get is the menu change to the regular VLC menu. I tried the 'hide' & 'show' menu items with no joy. BTW, VLC was just an example, this happens a lot and is VERY annoying.

Again, thanks for taking the time to help a lost newbie.

James
 
bobw: I'm a little reluctant to overload my system with plugins and apps which hace to run all the time. I know it's like cryptonite to windows so I was trying my best to keep my mac healthy.

Is it a resource hog in any way?

Any tips on keeping my mac healthy?

Thanks for the advice bobw.

James
 
for #2
CMD+right arrow = end of line

#4
CMD+ left or right square brackets, moves back-forward in finder, same in Safari.

#6
to close app with mouse, click app name in top menu bar, click "Quit".
 
jbarely: awesome, that should save me a lot of time. i hate text wrap in code editors so i have some looong lines to traverse.

many thanks

james
 
FruitMenu uses very little, not noticeable. I've been using it almost since OS X came out.

You can also use this script;

tell application "Finder"
shut down
end tell

Save it as an application and put it in your Dock, or if you decide to use Fruit Menu you can add it to the Apple Menu. It will shut down the machine with any warning.

These are some apps to keep the machine in good condition;

Cocktail

Onyx

Yasu

For Backups, I'd recommend Chronosync


You can also quit an app by right clicking on it's Dock icon.
 
Regarding number 12, this is the correct behavior. The only confusion is because VLC doesn't doesn't make it obvious what to expect. The window that you are 'minimizing' is just the controller window, it's not actually representing an open file directly, such as the window in something like Quicktime does. It also doesn't help that you're not really 'minimizing' the window to begin with; the red widget is exclusively for closing a window, the green one is for minimizing. By clicking the red button, you are asking the program to close the window, and for it to be reopened when you reactivate the application is incorrect, in fact I find it annoying when apps do this without asking. It's somewhat poor design for VLC to continue playing a file when there is no open window, that's a big part of your confusion.

For number 9, you can do a great deal of shortcut customizing in System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Keyboard Shortcuts.

Also, how much RAM do you have in this machine? 15MB free means that OS X is completely choking. Whenever I get that low it means there's some errant process leaking RAM, and a restart is in order.
 
dlloyd: i think you are correct, maybe it's just vlc deciding to keep playing after quitting. however it does stop playing when i command+q or quit with the menu. a bug perhaps.
i thought it did the same with mail too but perhaps i was mistaken.


I have 1gb ram, 250gb hdd, 20" iMac. must have been a memory leak somewhere. will investigate.


thanks dlloyd
 
Hmmm...that amount ought to be far more than sufficient. OS X tends to scale its use to whatever is available, but 15MB free is still far too little. Do a restart and then keep an eye on the amount of free RAM. If it gets down that low, use Activity Viewer to sort all processes by RAM usage and see what's taking so much. If things don't seem to add up to the total, that's a sign there is a major leak somewhere.

About number 12 again; the red button is not supposed to quit an application, only close the window to which it is directly attached. This was often not the case in OS 9 and earlier, and is sometimes ignored in OS X (System Preferences, for example,) but in general it is not supposed to do the same thing as Apple+Q.
Also, now that I actually go through and test various apps, I notice that clicking their icons in the dock quite frequently will reopen the main window if that window has been previously closed. I think here you've hit on two different inconsistencies (action of the red X and action of the dock icon when all windows are closed), so there's probably no 'standard' behavior.
 
Control + A = beginning of line
Control + E = End of Line

Apple + Right/Left Arrow also work.
Holding down shift with the above combo will highlight.
 
purk155:

Welcome to MacOSX.com!

Two more that haven't been mentioned (at least I didn't see them and apologies if they were):

3) Press Control + Option + Command (a.k.a. the Apple key)+ Eject (upper right of keyboard) to shut down without a confirmation dialog.

4) Hold down the Command (Apple) key and click on the *icon* in the Finder window. You'll get a kind of contextual pop-up menu that will allow you to traverse the hierarchy. DeltaMac suggested this but didn't mention that you have to Command-click the icon.

7) I'm not sure if this is exactly what you want, but did you try (in Automator): Click "Use Finder Items" (in the Finder actions, of course). Then, click the little triangle next to Options in the "Use Finder Items" box.
Next, click "Show Action When Run". Finally, click on the "File" menu and select "Save As Plug-In" and make it a plug-in for Finder.

When you right-click (or control-click if you have only one button) a file, and click your plug-in, you should get a "Copy Finder Items" window on the screen that prompts you to select a "To:" location. After you've selected the location you want to send it, you click the Continue button and it will copy the file to your specified location.

Check out http://automator.us

For more Mac information, including some amazing Automator tips and ideas from one of Apple's main scripting / Automator guys, check out the MacBreak video podcast. In iTunes, click Podcasts on the left, click Podcast directory at the bottom and search for MacBreak.
 
Ok - I'm pretty sure this is the answer to '12':

First thing to make clear - there are three coloured buttons at the top left of any open window in OSX (not all are always available) the red one with the 'x' in it is to close the selected window, the yellow one with the '-' in it is to minimize the selected window into the dock & the green one with the '+' in it is to zoom the selected window.

The button you want to be using is the yellow one which will minimize the 'controller' into the dock - then when you want to change song or whatever in VLC simply click the minimized window or the VLC icon and it will zoom out of the dock ready for you to change songs to your heart's content :) (I downloaded VLC just to check this for you - ain't I nice!).

The other options I've discovered for you are to click the red 'x' when you don't want the 'controller' open then at any time you want to use the following options make sure VLC is selected in the dock and:
To show the 'controller' window again press 'shift-command-c'
To go to next or previous song even if the 'controller' window isn't open press 'command-(right or left arrow key)'

basically open VLC and check out the keyboard shortcuts in the menus :)

but I still reckon your easiest option is to use the yellow minimize button

All the best,

Greg
 
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