Mac Tip: Navigate Text by Word

If you use a Mac, there are tons of text navigation tools at your disposal. One of the little known is navigating text by word:

• Move your cursor between words: alt + Left or Right Arrow Key. This lets you jump between words in a sentence. This is helpful when you find that you mistyped a word earlier in a sentence, and you don’t want to use your mouse to move your cursor to the right spot.
• Move your cursor between paragraphs: alt + Up or Down Arrow Key. This lets you jump to the beginnings and ends of paragraphs, and is very useful when navigating large amounts of text.
• Delete the previous word: alt+delete. If you want to delete the last word you typed, this combination is handy.
• Delete the next word: alt+forward delete (fn+delete on laptops). Similar to the previous tip, this deletes the word in front of your cursor.

Do you have any other text navigation tips?

Update: Added the paragraph navigation tip.

Easily Copy or Move Files to Dropbox

If you’re an avid Dropbox user like myself, you may find that getting files to your Dropbox folder isn’t always the easiest task. If you’re rooted deep into the filesystem, sometimes you want a quick way to send a file to your public folder without having leave your current location. Well, now there is an easy to use solution (Mac OS X only). Continue Reading…

That’ll Be a Cinch!

When it comes to window-management, Mac OS X wins hands-down. Exposé and Spaces are a great way to manage open windows and applications within your desktop environment. However, I’ll have to admit that there is one Windows 7 feature wish I had on my Mac: AeroSnap. Being able to drag a window to the top of the screen to have it maximized, or to the left or right of a screen to create a split-view is awesome. There was no easy Mac solution to incorporate this amazing UI feature, that is, until now. Continue Reading…

Make Google Notifier More “Push”-Like

I recently installed Prowl on my iPhone to receive push notification from, well, just about everything. One of the things that was excited was that I could setup a faux-Gmail Push System. After setting everything up, I noticed that the Google Notifier was only checking every 15 minutes (sometimes longer it seemed). After doing a little digging, I came across a forum post over at macosxhints. Luckily, it was quite easy to fix:

1. While holding Command and Option down on the keyboard, select the Google Notifier Gmail icon and select preferences. This will generate a pop-up dialog.
2. In the dialog box, enter AutocheckInterval as the key, and for the value enter 1 (for number of minutes to check).
3. Hit set and you’re done!

After applying this fix, it’s just like having push Gmail (as long as my computer is on)! Thank you jonnygozy!