More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice Mac users.

It's so easy to take Address Book for granted, and yet that simple utility has two absolutely killer features: big phone numbers and simple envelope printing. These features do exactly what their descriptions suggest: display phone numbers in Very, Large, Type -- and print envelopes, complete with your personal return address.

To zoom a phone number, control-click or right-click the number you want to see and choose Large Type from the contextual pop-up. Address Book zooms that number way out, allowing you to see it while dialing, even if you're not standing right next to the computer. I find that it's a lot easier just to show the number to my husband than try to read it out to him. Your spousal success rate may vary.

To print a properly formatted envelope, just insert a standard envelope into your printer. Make sure the address side (and not the flap side) faces the toner cartridge. For me, that is flap side down. My printer, which is pretty darn standard, has an envelope feeding clamp in the single sheet feed. I pop open the single sheet access, adjust the clamp inward to match the envelop size and feed in the envelop flap side down.

In Address Book all I need to do is select a contact and print it. (File > Print). Make sure you've chosen Envelopes from the Style (it's my default), and that Print my address is selected so the return address is properly added to the envelope. If you're using an envelope that's not a standard business layout, choose the proper layout. Address Book supports most common envelope styles used in North America, Japan, and "International."

Address Book can also print out mailing labels, lists, and a pocket address book. See the Style pop-up for details. For the free contact manager that comes with the OS, it's got moxie.

More Mac 101, our tips and tricks for novice Mac users.

For some reason, I tend to come across times when my optical drive doesn't want to eject the CD or DVD that's in it. I found myself having to restart the computer and try again... in more serious instances, I have to restart and force-eject the disc by holding down the mouse button during the boot process.

At some point I thought to myself, "There's gotta be a better way to do this." Having to restart my computer when a disc doesn't want to eject is not exactly user-friendly. After pondering the possibilities for quite some time, I remembered that you could enable some menu extras (including an eject button) from the CoreServices folder.

Go to the root of your hard drive, either by choosing "Computer" from the Go menu or by clicking it in the sidebar of a Finder window (my hard drive is the icon labeled 'Server' in the screenshot), and follow this path:

System > Library > CoreServices > Menu Extras

Once in that folder, you'll see a lot of different extras that you can put into your menu bar. Just double-click the ones that look appealing to you and they will appear in your menu bar. Go ahead and give them a try. If you decide that you don't want something in the menu bar, just hold down the command key and drag it off the bar.

The eject button doesn't always fix a stuck CD, but it's one more option to try before restarting my computer.

More Mac 101, our series of tips and tricks for novice Mac users.

Now that the winter holidays are almost upon us, we're thinking about sharing stories, photos, and movies with far-flung relatives and friends. There's a slew of ways to get this done, and this post focuses on creating a simple site in iWeb '09 and publishing it not to Mobile Me, but to your own host via FTP.

If you're unfamiliar with iWeb '09, I'll say this: It does what it does well. If your goal is to share photos, movies and stories with minimal fuss and zero coding, iWeb will work. When I travel, I typically create an iWeb gallery and movie page. Yes, there are many other options, but this one works for me.

If you'd rather not publish your iWeb site to MobileMe and have access to FTP, you're in luck. The setup is simple. First, create your site. Next, click the title of your site in the iWeb '09 sidebar (this doesn't work with previous versions of iWeb) to reveal the publishing options. In the first drop-down menu, select "FTP Server." Give your site a name and enter a contact email.

Below that, enter your FTP settings. You'll need your server address, username, and password. Next, enter the path to the directory (http://mysite.com/paris, for example). Just make sure the directory already exists on your server or you'll get an error. It won't hurt to test the connection at this point by clicking the button that's available for just that purpose.

Finally, enter your site's URL and then click Publish. Off it goes! If you set it up correctly, your iWeb-powered site will be uploaded to the proper place on your site. Subsequent updates require re-publication, so just hit that Publish button again when you're done making changes

That's it! Have fun sharing your holiday experiences with iWeb '09.

Welcome back to Mac 101, our series of tips for new and novice Mac users.

We've had a few questions about a forward delete functionality on Mac laptops lately, but the question isn't new. We realized that we sometimes take our readers for granted... little tips like this are actually huge news for a lot of the switchers in the audience. So if you know this, awesome! If not, here's a quick way to duplicate the forward delete functionality on a Mac laptop.

It's really simple: find the function key (it is abbreviated as fn) on the bottom left side of the keyboard. Hold down function and hit the delete key (fn+delete).

Yes, we know -- it's an extra step over a PC but your days of using the arrow keys to delete are over. There are a lot of arguments about why there isn't a dedicated key for that function and most of them focus on the aesthetics of the keyboard by keeping it minimal. If that means I hold function to forward delete, well, I'm OK with that. I think my keyboard is sexy.

Thanks, Logan!

Welcome back to Mac 101, our series of tips for new and novice Mac users.

iTunes gets easier to use with every update. One feature, however, has gotten lost in the changes. Artist Alerts lets you receive email notifications of new releases from your favorite artists, which is great. The trouble is that the link to tag an artist isn't easy to find.

There are two ways receive alert updates from a given artist. First, navigate to that artist's page (for example, here's Paramore's page). On the right hand side, you'll see "Alert Me." Click it, enter your account password and then click "OK."

The other method is from an album page. Here's the page for Paramore's album Brand New Eyes. Scroll down a bit and you'll see "Artist Alerts" under "More Paramore."

To manage your alerts, click your account name in the upper right-hand corner. Once you've entered your password, a new window appears. Scroll down a bit and click "Manage My Alerts." From there you can de-select certain artists or clear the entire list.

Have fun and spend less time checking up on your favorites manually.

Welcome back to Mac 101, our series of tips for new and novice Mac users.

Earlier today we saw a tweet that inspired this post. Patrick Burleson asked how he can stop iChat from automatically joining chat rooms he visited during an earlier session. It's possible, but you won't find the fix in the preferences.

First, I'll describe how to join a room automatically whenever iChat is launched. From the File menu, select Go To Chat Room.... A window appears. From there, select the correct account and add your room to the Room Name field. Next, click the "+" in the lower left-hand corner to add it as a favorite and select the "Autojoin" check box. Now, iChat will join that room each time it's launched.

To disable the autojoin, simply de-select that box. Why would a person want to automatically join a chat room, you say? Some folks collaborate with far-flung coworkers via AIM all day.

There you have it, Patrick (and TUAW readers). I hope this helps.

More Mac 101, our ongoing series of tips for those new to Mac OS X. One of my favorite things to do when I see someone else's Mac is to see what "Menu Extras" they use.

Menu Extras live in the menu bar at the top of your screen, over on the far right-hand side. As you add more third-party software to your Mac, you will probably notice more and more items showing up there.

If you open System Preferences and type "menu bar" you can find 12 different Menu Extras you can "show" in the menu bar, but one of the most popular and useful is the AirPort Menu Extra. In Snow Leopard, the-already-quite-handy AirPort status icon became a lot more powerful and informative. Apple has posted a page explaining the various meanings behind AirPort status icons.

Generally speaking you ought to see only a few of these: an empty icon (AirPort is turned off), grey curved lines (AirPort is on but not connected), or 1-4 black lines indicating signal strength of the Wi-Fi connection. New in Snow Leopard is the "animated" AirPort icon which appears when AirPort is searching for wireless access points or waiting to be assigned an IP address. (If you are seeing a different icon, check out the page from Apple.)

Since we're looking at the menu bar, here's another tip: option-click everything. Several menu extras, especially ones from Apple, have additional features/information which you can access if you hold down the alt/option key while clicking on the icon. Here's what happens when you click vs option-click several menu extras from Apple (several of these are new and/or improved in Snow Leopard):

Volume: a regular click will reveal a slider to adjust the volume but an option-click will show a list of input and output devices to choose from (similar in function to Rogue Amoeba's SoundSource, which was recently updated for 10.6 compatibility).

MobileMe: a regular click shows time of last sync, option to sync now, and option to open the System Preferences panel for MobileMe. However option-click shows a wonderfully detailed list of every item MobileMe knows about, as well as when it last synchronized succesfully. It also offers Sync Diagnostics, Reset Sync Services (something I still have to use far too often, but less frequently than in the past) and a few other options.

Bluetooth: a regular click reveals basic settings and "paired" devices. An option-click adds a "Bluetooth Explorer" and "PacketLogger" (two "pro" options that you may never need, but are helpful for troubleshooting) as well as showing the version number.

AirPort: a regular click will show available networks and a few basic options, but an option-click shows several bits of information about your current Wi-Fi connection; however, most people will probably just be interested in the Channel and Security.

The basic point is this: feel free to option-click around. If the particular menu extra does not have any "hidden features" to show, it will still show the regular options even when you option-click. You won't hurt anything.

Final menu extra tip: if you want to remove a menu extra from the dock, you can try dragging it while holding down the command key. If that doesn't work, look in the application's preferences for an option to show or hide its menu bar item.

Once you have mastered the basics, you may want to explore some more powerful third-party menu bar items.

Welcome back to Mac 101, our series of tips for new and novice Mac users.

In the Mac operating system, the term "menu bar" refers to the the horizontal bar at the top of the screen that generally has a little picture of an apple on the left end, the time of day on the right and words like "File", "Edit", "Format" and so on in-between. Found it? Good, because understanding how this bar works is essential to getting the best out of your Mac.

In this bar, there are two constants: one is the apple, on the far left, and the other is Spotlight on the far right. Clicking the Apple logo on the left gives you access to all the vital functions of your computer, like Sleep, Restart, and Shut Down, as well as the "About This Mac" window and the option to check for software updates.

Save for the apple, the left side of this bar will change depending on which application you have selected. For you switchers, it's similar to the bar that is found at the top of each window in Windows, but cuts down on the space each window occupies by having all applications use the same menu bar. The drop down menus perform the same functions as Windows' menus, but like Windows, will be different depending on which application you currently have selected.

Welcome back to Mac 101, our series of tips for new and novice Mac users.

The Dock was introduced with Mac OS 10.0 in March of 2001. Switchers typically think of it as equivalent to the Windows Task Bar, and that's not an unfounded comparison. Both can launch applications, open directories and share information. But the Dock differs from the Task Bar in a number of ways. If you're new to the Mac, this post will get you acquainted with one of Mac OS X's prominent features.

First, let's look at the Dock's preference pane. Launch System Preferences and click (wait for it) Dock. Here, two sliders let you adjust the Dock's size and magnification level. That is to say, the degree to which docked icons "expand" as you mouse over them. They can get pretty darn large, so be sure that's what you want before dragging that slider all the way to the right.

You'll notice that you can adjust the Dock's position on the screen. The position of the Dock is the subject of great debate among Mac nerds, but I'll spare you the details by saying this: Some like it on the bottom, some like it on the left and some like it on the right. If you're running 10.5 or later, you'll notice that the Dock's appearance changes dramatically when moved from the bottom to the sides.

The so-called "Genie Effect" lets your windows appear to be rapidly "sucked" into the Dock when you click the yellow minimize button. That's strictly for looks, and you can disable it by selecting "Scale." If you're running an older Mac (like a PPC G4), selecting Scale will slightly reduce the graphics burden on your older machine. Fun tip: Hold down the Shift key while minimizing a window for some slow-mo action.

More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice users.

Every so often, stumbling around the Mac OS you find something clever and wish everyone knew it. As I was about to do a CD burn on my internal optical drive on my Mac Pro, I was wondering how fast that Apple stock drive was. Yes, I could have checked the specs on the Apple website, but while playing with System Profiler I found something interesting. (To get to System Profiler select the Apple logo at the top left of your screen, choose About This Mac, then click More Info. You can also find it in your Applications/Utilities folder.)

If you select Disc Burning in the left hand column you'll get a list of your internal and external drives. If you put a disc in (new or already burned) the profiler will tell you what write speeds are supported after you 'refresh' the data from the profiler View Menu or just by doing a 'command-R'.


Quite nifty. My Pioneer internal burns a CD at 32x and a DVD at 12x. Who knew? Try it, if you have a use for the info. Maybe I'm easily impressed, but I'm hoping this tip will be useful to some of our readers.

Welcome back to Mac 101, our series of posts aimed at novice Mac users and veterans who like the occasional refresher.

Many new Mac owners want to customize their Mac's look and feel. A simple place to begin is the desktop picture. It's easy to change and there are several options, from the images that come with the OS to freebies from the Internet and your own photos. Here's what to do (this post assumes you're using Mac OS X 10.5.x).

Open System Preferences from either the Apple Menu or the Dock and click Desktop & Screen Saver and then the Desktop tab. If you're in a hurry, you can also get there by right-clicking on an unoccupied area of the desktop, and choosing "Change Desktop Background." On the left you'll see several options. Click Apple Images to browse some of the images that shipped with your Mac. To set any as your Desktop picture, simply click it. The Nature, Plants, Black & White and Abstract folders also hold options from Apple. Personally, I like some of the black & whites.

If you've got iPhoto installed, you can browse your albums just as easily. Select the album on the left and click any image on the right to select it. Some of you may maintain your own folder of images. To access it from the Preference Pane, click the "+" and navigate to the photo that contains your images. Finally, you can simply drop an image into the well at the top of the Preference Pane window.

There are additional options at the bottom of the window, like changing the picture at regular intervals and disable the translucent menu bar (my personal favorite). Finally, if your image is too small, you can opt to tile or stretch it.

Now that you know how, go and grab some images. The Iconfactory, Pixlegirl Presents and Mac Desktops are good places to start looking.

More Mac 101, tips and tricks for new Mac users.

While this tip may be old news to tech-savvy folk, I think it might help a lot of recent Mac switchers who want to leverage their existing investment in their Windows-compatible peripherals.

I have a friend who has been on Windows forever. He finally had his fill, and after some incessant nagging on my part, he made the switch. What I expected to happen, did happen -- he's thrilled being on a Mac. He's yet to see a crash, and as most of us know, it generally 'just works.'

He did have one problem though. He had a Dell USB printer sitting on his desk. When he plugged it into his MacBook it wasn't recognized, and there was a scrolling list of lots of printers, but nothing from Dell.

A quick web search revealed the printer was actually a rebranded Samsung ML-1710. The Samsung driver page for this printer didn't show any Mac drivers. Searching a bit deeper on Google, we found that an unsupported Mac driver was hiding on the Australian Samsung website.

We downloaded and installed the driver, and what do you know? The printer came up, and printed just fine.

The reality is that there are a lot more printer brands than there are original equipment manufacturers, and it's pretty easy to find out who actually makes a particular printer. If it's a USB printer, chances are good you can find a driver and be quickly printing away. For a wide-ranging solution, the Gutenprint (formerly Gimp-Print) open source project provides drivers for hundreds of older or unsupported printers.

The moral: Don't give up on your PC printer if you feel like it still has life in it; a little bit of online research may turn up a way forward for your Mac. If you have similar happy endings, or unpleasant ones, let us know in the comments. Your fellow readers can learn from your experiences.

Updated to clarify that the media browser option is in the Open dialog, not in Finder windows.

More Mac 101, our series of tips for new and novice Mac OS X users. Here's a tip that I was recently reminded of while choosing photos from a web browser for upload. Mac OS X Leopard's Finder has a handy media browser built into the open dialog box, not entirely unlike that found in the iLife suite.

Let's say you're looking for a photo to upload to Flickr or similar service. With your browser open, select Open from the File menu to invoke the Open Dialog Box. On the left hand side, select Media. Now you can browse your iPhoto library and even scrub through Events if you have iLife '09 installed. From there, select the photo you want, click Open and you've got it.

There are also a couple of tricks available that aren't immediately obvious. First, control-click (or right-click on your mouse) any neutral space in the dialog box to bring up a contextual menu with the option to switch between icon view and list view. Once in list view, the contextual menu adds options to open a file in its parent app, reveal its location in the Finder and display information columns (name, size, kind, etc.).

Additionally, hitting the space bar with an item selected highlights it, similar to Quick Look. A photo is brought to the forefront and music and movie previews are played.

It's handy, often overlooked and a great way to ensure that you've got exactly the file you want.

Welcome back to Mac 101, our series of posts aimed at novice Mac users and veterans who like the occasional refresher.

If you've owned a Mac portable for any length of time, chances are pretty high that you have had your Mac wake up while stowed away in a carrying case. You know the drill as well as I do. As soon as you open your bag of choice, a wave of heat rushes up to your face. And that's when you realize your Mac isn't sleeping and your battery is now mostly dead.

For our friends who are new to the Mac or who may have never used the sleep mode you might be asking yourself why it is important. For road warriors who office at Starbucks or just those that are energy conscientious, it is actually quite impressive functionality. Sleep mode is a low power, energy-saving mode that your Mac uses to extend the life of both batteries and displays. While it's more useful for mobile machines, Sleep mode is available on both portables and desktops.

Sleep mode on the Mac is very similar to system standby in Windows. It is is almost always successful at saving my battery life so when I'm on the road I don't have to worry about opening my Mac to a dead or dying battery.

How does one take advantage of all of this sleepy goodness? Well, there are several ways, some of which depend on your personal configuration. The most common method for putting your Mac portable to sleep (no, not like that) is simply by closing the lid.

Pressing the power button results in a dialog box with buttons for sleeping, restarting, or shutting down your Mac -- click Sleep, or press the S key to select the Sleep button. You can also change your system preferences to make the power button sleep your Mac with a single press.

Simply choosing "Sleep" from the Apple menu will also send your Mac to dream-town. Another neat trick: if your Mac has an infrared (IR) port you can use your Apple Remote to put your computer to sleep. Hold the Play/Pause button to put your Mac to sleep and push any button to wake it back up.

As it turns out, Sleep mode does not always work as expected. If you've had trouble with your Mac waking up without your being aware, you're not alone. In fact, there are several reasons why your Mac might wake up in transit without warning. Apple has even seen-fit to create a support article on the very subject. Three of the more common causes of sleep failure (besides Caffeine) are:

1. External hard drives not properly dismounted prior to sleeping
2. Bluetooth devices (such as a portable mouse) waking the Mac up
3. An active application preventing sleep such as iTunes or QuickTime

Regarding external hard drives, I have found that a drive needs to be unmounted & unplugged prior to putting your Mac to sleep. This prevents the majority of sleep issues caused by external hard drives. Another good idea is to disable the "Allow Bluetooth devices to wake this computer" checkbox in Bluetooth System Preferences. A simple step with a powerful outcome -- no longer will your portable Bluetooth mouse awaken your Mac from its slumber.

While some people may not find Sleep mode a key bit of functionality in their Mac, many have found that it is absolutely indispensable.

For other awesome beginner tips, visit our Mac 101 category.

Have you ever been playing one of your finely-tuned playlists, blissfully grooving to the music, only to connect your iPod or iPhone and lose your place? In other words, iTunes (if you've set it to automatically sync) will move your view from whatever playlist you're in to the sync window. That's handy, of course, but if you forgot which playlist you were in, it can be a pain. I have several playlists set to random, and when I try to go back, it re-shuffles the order. There are other multi-tasking issues with iTunes that largely stem from its one-window interface. If you want to browse the store and manage a playlist, for example, you're stuck doing a lot of scrolling. But iTunes isn't really one window!

If you double-click the title of a playlist, it allows you to edit the name of the playlist, right? But if you double-click the icon of a playlist (for a standard list it'll be a little blue note to the left of the title), iTunes will open an entirely new window, as seen above. You can open a bunch of these if you like and it works with TV, Movies, pretty much everything on the left side. It's much easier to drag and drop songs this way if you have a bunch of playlists. Plus, the window menu will give you quick access to whatever you opened, or you can switch through them with Exposé.

Note: yes, this has been in iTunes for a long time.