breeno | rand()

I have a web (Drupal) dev friend who recently switched to OS X so I wrote this streams-of-consciousness guide for him to help him during his “swimming in glue” transition period. Others have said I should toss it up as google fodder, so here it is in it’s unedited and gory detail.

Common keystrokes

• ⌘ ==> Command key, your main shortcut key used by everything.  The Windows or Super key on non-mac keyboards
• ⌥ ==> Option key, aka Alt
• ^  ==> Control
• ↑  ==> Shift
• ⌘⌥D toggles the Dock (I leave it pretty much dismissed at all times)
• ⌘↑Delete takes out the trash
• ^A, ^E emacs bindings are everywhere for Home/End of line love
• ^Up, ^Down for page up / page down
• ⌘Up, ⌘Down for Top / Bottom of ‘document’
• ⌘S Save file
• Great Apple article concerning Keyboard Shortcuts:  http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1343

Quicksilver is your friend.  This is an app launcher app that’s The Shiz.  You will know you have graduated to OS X power user when you have no apps in the dock and everything is started from Quicksilver
Grab it here:  http://www.blacktree.com/ (be sure to get the one for 10.6)  It’s been wonky in 10.6, so surf around if you have problems.

Editors

• If you are a VIM dude(tte) (of course the terminal version is part of the distro) check out MacVIM (GUI VIM) http://code.google.com/p/macvim/
• TextMate is well loved by the universe.  For good reason, it’s the über!  http://macromates.com/
• TextWrangler is free, and a nice do-it-all editor -http://www.barebones.com/products/TextWrangler/
• For doing large file binary edits, 0xed this is the bizomb: http://www.suavetech.com/0xed/0xed.html
• Xcode comes with OS X.  You may have to install it via Optional Installs on the DVD that came with the MBP.  The apps are all in the /Developer tree on disk.
• Adobe Photoshop Elements is decent and cheap, and smokes the Gimp,which is an X11 app on OS X, and nasty (but it does indeed work) You can buy elements from Amazon on the cheap.

Internet Utils

• Defacto FTP client is the venerable Cyberduck:  http://cyberduck.ch/ (grab the version for Snow Leopard)
• colloquy – Solid IRC client http://colloquy.info/

Misc Utils

• Caffeine – a handy util to keep the display from going to sleep (useful when reading stuff) http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/caffeine.html
• Growl – if you live in email / IM / twitter clients (esp if you like me like to keep the dock dismissed) Growl will centralize your notifications with nice customizable popups.  Grab it here: http://growl.info/

Misc OS X stuff (more keyboard friendly stuffs)

• Exposé.  Press F3 or 4 fingers down gesture on the trackpad.  Exposé rules for managing tons of windows.
• ⌘Tab – just like the Alt+Tab of windows.  You can also do an Exposé via ⌘Tab by pressing Down when you select the app you want.
• Spaces.  Virtual desktops, and this feature works well with Exposé. I bind both Spaces and Exposé to different (side) buttons on my mouse.
• Address Book can sync with Google. ⌘, to pull up preferences (this is an OS X standard keystroke for all app prefs, btw).
• ⌘H ==> Hide This Window  ⌘⌥H ==> Hide All Other Windows.  The biggest difference to using OS X effectively is going native with how it deals with windows in general (vs Gnome/MS Windows where the app == window).  It will feel “weird” for a while until this stuff becomes habitual.  The Hide thing is cool.  Hide + ⌘Tab is a fast way to manage windows.  Experiment to find your own groove…

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