Hi Jean-Claude and Tammi, I'm retitling the subject line to cover Jean-Claude's question and a few more points.
>On Mar 16, 2008, at 11:53 AM, Jean-Claude Provost wrote: >> To me, the biggest thing for now is to get used to the way the >> cursor works. For instance, I don't know how to delete characters >> the way we do it in windows. IN WINDOWS, WHEN YOU PRESS THE DELETE >> KEY, IT DELETES THE CHARACTER IN FRONT OF THE CURSOR. I HAVE NOT >> FOUND HOW TO DO THIS YET ON THE MAC AND, TO BE CANDID, A 25 YEARS >> HABIT IS QUITE HARD TO BREAK. I'M HOPING SOMEONE WILL TELL ME HOW I >> CAN DO THIS BECAUSE, THE SOLE USE OF THE BACKSPACE KEY to delete >> characters behind the cursor IS DRIVING ME A LITTLE coucou BANANA >> WILD. AND BECAUSE OF THAT, I'M DEFINITELY NOT READY TO SWITCH MY >> WORD PROCESSING ACTIVITIES ACROSS THE FENCE FOR NOW. David, Tim, and Dan have covered most of these points, with the basic conceptual difference between Windows and the Mac being that the cursor is located between characters. This means that you can easily navigate either forwards or backwards by character, word, line, or paragraph -- and you can delete this way, too. Here's a short summary: 1. FN+delete works just like your "forward delete" on Windows, as David said 2. Instead of Home and End, use Command+Left Arrow and Command-Right Arrow to move to the beginning or end of a line (On a Mac, the "Home" and "End" keys move to the beginning and end of a document, so I'm referring to Home and End keys used in Windows) 3. Command-Up and Command-Down move the cursor to the top and bottom of a document 4. Option-Left Arrow and Option-Right Arrow move the cursor between words 5. Holding down the Shift key with navigation commands selects text, so you could also forward delete content, for example, by using Shift-Option-Right Arrow to move through text word by word, and then press the delete key when you reached the end of the section you wanted to delete. If you go too far, just hit the left arrow while still holding the shift key to unselect text before deleting. 6. The Mac has an "undo" key, so if you made a mistake in what you deleted, typing Command+z will put it back. 7. If you hold down the Option-Delete keys at the same time when you’re writing in most OS X-native applications (Text Edit, Safari, Mail), you can delete the entire last word you typed instead of only the last letter you typed. 8. Most of the editing sequences you are familiar with work the same way, with your Mac using the Command key in place of the Control key: Command+C to copy Command+V to paste Command+X to cut Some other differences going from Windows to Mac: 1. Force quit is Command-Option-Escape to force an application that is not responding to quit instead of Ctrl-Alt-Delete 2. Window and Application switching (analogous to Alt-tab in Windows) Command+tab switches between running applications (e.g., Safari, TextEdit, Mail, iTunes) Command+accent (the key below the escape key at the top left part of the U.S. keyboard) cycles between open windows in a single application (e.g., multiple edit windows) 3. Opening selected files Use Command+O instead of Return Double-clicking (VO-keys+shift held down and space bar pressed twice quickly) also works (just as in Windows) 4. Closing windows doesn't close the application on a Mac Command+W will close a window, but doesn't close the application on a Mac, even if this is the last open window. Use Command+Q if you want to quit the application (and close all windows) 5. Applications Installing applications in most cases generally amounts to downloading a compressed .dmg file, which mounts as a drive when you open it. It's usual to copy or move the application to the Applications folder, but that's it (it can really be run from anywhere). Uninstalling most applications is generally done by sending the application to the trash. In the few cases where a more complicated installation has to be done (for example, a plug-in that runs another application), there will be an installer and an un-installer, but this is generally not the rule. HTH Cheers, Esther And for those interested: Top 30 mistakes made by new Mac users: http://danwarne.com/mistakes-made-by-new-mac-users/
