Newbie to MacOSX

simmorya

Registered
I have been a windows user all of my life, and suddenly decided to get a PowerBook G4. Since i dont have a clue about many of the MacOSX features, i was just wondering how I can save images and video content from safari without having to load the file(s) through the browser.

For example, if there is a link to
http://www.video.com/video.mpg or
http://www.image.com/image.jpg

how can I download this file to my hard drive without clicking on it and getting safari to load it.
Thanks in advance :)
 
Hold down Control and click on the link. You should get a context menu with an option for saving the target link, which will allow you to download the file without viewing through the browser. As for the graphics, I believe if you just click and drag it outside of the browser window to the desktop it will download the image right to your desktop. I remember this being possible in Classic Mac OS, so I imagine it's the same in OS X.
 
Or, just hold down the "Option" key and click the link. This makes Safari download the file instead of trying to open it -- works for any link.
 
On a side note, PC users who have gotten used to 2 and 3 button mice can rest assured that 2 and 3 button mice will also work in MacOS X. The Control-click mentioned is just another way of saying "right click" (or to put that another way, the right click under MacOS is a shortcut for Control-click).

But if you never got used to using the right mouse button in Windows (many people don't use it) then ignore what I've just said. :)
 
If a page contains a still picture, you can (generally) just drag
the pic to your desktop.

For a motion picture, wait until it has finished loading, then
control-click it. Works for most stuff. Nothing touches "flash."
 
thanks for your help guys. I love MacOS X and will never go back to windows again.
By the way, games run fine on my system, although at present I only have warcraft III.
Thanks again!
 
Another tip is that if you have already clicked a link to a .mov file and quicktime has opened it in the webpage, you can quickly save it to the hard drive by clicking 'file' and 'save as..' from the drop down menu in safari.
 
You can also, if you're comfortable in a terminal, use Curl.

curl http://www.image.com/image.jpg > /local/image/filename.jpg

if you're a long time Windows user, you've no doubt spent some time in a Dos box. The Terminal in OS/X is similar enough. It's Unix rather than DOS, but the idea is the same... get to the underpinnings and the ocassional tools under the GUI that give you a little more power with a "easy to use" trade off.
 
Yes, VLC is the program to get. Video LAN Client (0.8.1 just released) shows .AVI, .MOV, DVDs, VCD / SVCD, MPG, and others. MPlayer is also popular, though to me VLC's interface is better.

Doug
 
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