Monthly Archives: August 2008

Windowing Productivity On The Mac

Posted on Sunday, August 31, 2008 by Robin Bloor

From an Interface perspective there are three kinds of Macs:

  1. The Mac with a small screen – less than the 17″ MacBook Pro screen, which means a laptop or a Mac Mini that’s got a small screen connected to it.
  2. All other single monitor Macs with screens 17″ or greater.
  3. Macs with dual monitors.

The difference between these three possible working environments is immense and it all has to do with the use of windows. On the the small screen Mac (less than 17″) it’s pretty much impossible to work with two Windows side-by-side on the desktop. With a larger screen, it’s the natural mode of working and it’s a great deal more productive than one-window-at-a-time. You can just about do two windows side-by-side with a 17″ laptop.

With dual monitors you can see and use three or more windows at a time. I’ve recently set up a dual monitor configuration, and it’s more than worth it, but there are so many possible ways to work that describing them here will only confuse. I’ll say nothing more about it here.

The defining principle about screen space is:

More screen space means higher productivity.

This isn’t a theory by the way, it’s been tested in various studies – although there are disputes and criticism surrounding how to measure productivity. However, you know this assertion has to be true in general. If, for example, you work between two applications regularly, then being able to see both at the same is clearly more productive than having to bring one forward to look at it when switching between the two.

I worked on a 20″ Mac for quite a while. When I bought the Mac Pro, I breathed in deeply and bought a 30″ screen. At first I felt lost in the big screen, but soon started to exploit the extra space. On the 20″ Mac I would bump into the Dock periodically, no matter where I put it and how small I made it. On the 30″ screen, that did happen much. All such activity is unproductive. (If I could eliminate the Dock completely I would, but it’s not advised.)

In 2 App mode.

The main point to understand is that some tasks involve having two applications work with each other (and very few involve three). These are some examples from my activities:

  • Mac Mail, with FireFox or Safari (when answering email)
  • Mac Mail, with iCal (planning)
  • Pages or Word, with FireFox or Safari (when writing a report)

You have to have a scheme that designates which Windows to put on the left and which to put on the right. I decided to put the “main app” I’m working with on the left and the “partner app” on the right. That made me divide apps into main apps and partner apps. It’s difficult to separate this from from how you organize Spaces. (See How To Be Productive Using Spaces on the Mac – I’m presuming you’ve read it). I organize Spaces in terms of assigning a Space to each main app.

I pretty soon discovered that, with me, the browser ends up partnering with many apps. It’s probably generally true, because the browser isn’t just a single application – its a workspace with a whole bunch of applications buried within it. Anyway, the point here is that you have to get your use of applications within Spaces organized, and you need to be mindful of screen space, when you do that.

Window Management

You need to manage windows so you don’t spend lots of time doing nothing more than moving them around, resizing them and getting distracted by the ones you’re not using. There’s not a great deal you can do to a window. Here are the possibilities:

  1. Hide it or Minimize it. If you hide it, you wont see the window in the Dock. If you minimize it, it moves into the dock. Command M minimizes and Command H hides.
  2. Make it Appear. If you launch an app that’s already running, it comes to the front. If it’s not already running it comes to the front when it launches. If it is designated to run in a Space that you are not currently in, OS X will automatically changes to the appropriate Space and bring it forward.
  3. Move it. You can only drag it with the mouse as far as I know.
  4. Resize it. In OS X you use the bottom right corner to change window size, but sometimes applications will allow you to “maximize” screen usage, which means “use it all” with a single command. Aperture does this, for example. It would be nice if you could pass parameters to such applications so you had some control over this, but I don’t know any apps let you do this is a simple way.
  5. Zoom in and Out. This only alters how information is displayed within the windows. But you need to think of zooming if you want to make best use of a work space.

Display or hide elements of the App. For example, you can show or hide various toolbars on most browsers.

Window Principles

The overriding principle is this:

Remove all distractions. Amplify the signal and minimize the noise.

This should lead you to do the following things as a matter of course:

  1. Actively determine the most productive size ad location for the windows for each app – and standardize. You want to fix the windows at that size and location. You can do this on the Mac in most apps by launching the app, setting the window size and then quitting the app. The next time you open the app the window will be where it was when you closed it and the exact size it was. (Sadly, this does not work with all apps.)
  2. Hide or Minimize windows when not using them. They only distract if they’re on the screen and you’re not using them. When you need them you should be able to get them back with a keystroke or two using a launcher. Use the keyboard to hide or reveal windows. This is very important when you have a small screen.
  3. Organize your workspace so you rarely have to move windows. If you can do this, it helps productivity in another way, because you always know exactly where to look on the screen for specific information.
  4. Remove unwanted “noise” from each app. Most apps allow some level of customization so you can hide icons, toolbars, etc. Be ruthless and get rid of anything that serves no useful purpose.
  5. Use the Zoom. Most Apps have a zoom capability. The point is that there is a best zoom level for you to work at, which depends to some extent on how good your eyesight is and the screen space you have. For example, I use FireFox with one level of zoom up from normal. It find it easier to read. I use pages or Word with a higher than normal level of zoom too. I’m more productive like that.

Click on this link: PDQ Mac to see a list of other postings on Apple Mac productivity.

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New Orleans: The Accidental Monument

Posted on Saturday, August 30, 2008 by Robin Bloor
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New Orleans, The Accidental Monument (from the series: The Accidental Pilgrim)

This is New Orleans, as it was about a year ago when I discovered it – perhaps the most beautiful city in the USA – but still partly in ruins, from the ravages of Katrina. The picture was taken on Basin St just outside the French Quarter, where I found this strange monument to je-ne-sais-quoi. It could easily be a monument to the hurricane that knocked News Orleans off its feet, were it not for the fact that it’s been there for a lot longer than 3 years. I have no idea what it symbolizes.

I bought a T-Shirt in New Orleans that I sometimes wear. The slogan on it reads:

Drove My Chevy To The Levee, But The Levee Was Gone

As I write this posting, the news services inform me that yet another hurricane is barreling across the Gulf of Mexico in the direction of New Orleans. I hope hurricane Gustav does not have the name of The Big Easy written all over it. Right now, New Orleans has no defense against another hurricane…

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Barack Obama and The Flag

Posted on Saturday, August 30, 2008 by Robin Bloor
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Barack Obama and The Flag (from the series: Still Lives)

Among the topics that Barack Obama touched on in his acceptance speech this week, and he did it lightly without pointing fingers, was the fact that the party of Franklin Roosevelt and John F Kennedy had no need to defend its patriotism.

Samuel Johnson famously described patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel. This seems about right, since it has been the whip that the worst administration in American history used to subdue its opponents – for a while.

The refreshing reality of Barack Obama is that he doesn’t reduce debate to simple misleading slogans. For better or worse, he’s doing what he can to restore sanity to American politics. I’ve depicted him here in company with the American Flag – a flag that he clearly serves and honors.

As regards patriotism, which of the following acts can be considered patriotic?

  • Lying to coerce America into a disastrous war that it could not afford.
  • Leaving the residents of New Orleans to drown.
  • Repudiating George Washington by legitimizing torture.
  • Burying and censoring evidence and scientific opinion on climate change.

Sadly, I could go on, but it would get tedious. And I guess that’s the point. Such things are part of a consistent and tedious pattern. In the circumstances, change is such a good idea.

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Improve Your Mac Productivity: Tame the Mouse

Posted on Friday, August 29, 2008 by Robin Bloor

In  the posting The Principles of Personal Productivity (on the Mac), I introduced the fact that: The keyboard is faster than the mouse. So let me repeat this: The keyboard is faster than the mouse. And just in case you missed it, here it is again: The keyboard is faster than the mouse.

There you are, I’ve said it thrice, and what I say three times is true.

We have developed bad mousing habits. For many of us, it happens in the following way. The mouse is a brilliant exploring device and it is necessary for many activities. That’s particularly the case for choosing items from menus. So when we begin using a new application, we get familiar with it by mousing through the menus and selecting commands.

Some of us are like those drivers (they tend to be male, I’m afraid) who refuse to use maps or even ask directions because they have a magical extrasensory radar, which will get them to their destination – you often see them reversing out of dead-end streets. “Hell, it’s only software – I’ll pick it up as I go.” So there’s no sense in reading the manual and no sense in going through the video training course. “If this software is any good, I’ll be able to work it out.”

Most of us don’t learn how to use software, we just dive in and start brawling with it. “Damn it! I paid good money for this app. Don’t expect me to put in learning time and effort as well!”

Doing the training and reading the manual is actually the key to being productive. But you do need to combine that with a genuine desire to be productive, so that you not only learn how to use the capabilities of an application, but how to fit them in with your particular style of being productive.

So if we learn to use an application by mousing about, which is possible to do, and which I tend to do with applications that I think are simple, then we will learn the way to make things happen with the mouse. And that is likely to be the slow boat to China.

If we never consider our personal productivity, the first way we learn to do anything will be the way that we always do it.

That’s why rats have such problems getting through mazes once they’ve learned a route and the experimenter changes the maze slightly. (See this posting if you want to know how to make monkeys behave insanely – it’s connected)

Improve your Mac productivity IMMEDIATELY, RIGHT NOW and AT ONCE.

Here’s how. Use the Command Key standards for using common commands. It’s not called the Command key for nothing. For just about every OS X application the following keyboard commands will do the following things:

  • Command A: Select All
  • Command C: Cut
  • Command F: Find
  • Command H: Hide Window
  • Command M: Minimize
  • Command O: Open File
  • Command P: Print
  • Command Q: Quit
  • Command S: Save File
  • Command V: Paste
  • Command W: Close Window (or Close Tab)
  • Command X: Cut
  • Command Z: Undo

There are a few exceptional circumstances for one or two of these, but none I know of are troubling. So start using these instructions. Don’t worry about any other commands, just these. If you never use Hide Window, forget about that one, but you’ve got to use the rest at some time or other.

These are not hard to memorize. With most of them, the letter is the first letter of the commands name. So memorize them. Any time you find yourself doing any of these things with a mouse, stop, slap yourself on the wrist and use the keyboard.

Good Mousing Habits

The personal computer was designed for human beings with three hands. You need two for the keyboard and one for the mouse. Those of us who were unlucky enough to be born with only two hands find ourselves going to and from the mouse pretty regularly. It’s really quite difficult to avoid doing that. However it is possible to have good mouse habits. Here’s a list:

  • Exploring an application with a mouse to see what it does, if you “click on this or click on that”, is a good idea.
  • Exploring drag and drop possibilities is a good idea, because drag and drop is often a very fast way to achieve something.
  • Don’t assume that because an application is fundamentally mousy, like PhotoShop or a drawing program, that the keyboard wont give you a faster route to doing some things in that program than the mouse.
  • The best mice have at least two buttons and a scroll wheel. It’s best to use them when you can in contexts where your hand is already on the mouse.
  • The scroll wheel can be particularly useful, so it’s best to become familiar with how an application uses it.
  • The right mouse button often has “unexpected commands” hiding beneath it, some of which you may find very useful. You’ll never find them if you don’t explore. No app I’m aware of documents them, because they are usually tied to the context of where the pointer actually is. Did you know this?

If you read this and don’t act on it, then you wasted your time reading it.

Click on this link: PDQ Mac to see a list of other postings on Apple Mac productivity.

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How to Improve Web Advertising

Posted on Thursday, August 28, 2008 by Robin Bloor

What’s wrong with the picture below?

“What’s wrong with this picture?” is a game that used to appear in the kids comics I read when I was a kid. It would be a cartoon drawing showing, say, a car with no wheels. In the snapshot below we have a picture of a different page of this web site. So why have I put it here?

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I’m going to spoil the fun by telling you immediately. As I’m sure you know Google examines the text of a page and selects adverts to place in the space you make available for it. Notice that here, Google has not put adverts for cremations next to the page. There’s a reason for that. If you try to find that web page using a Google search you’ll not have much luck finding it directly, but you can find a link to it from another page on this blog, because Google has indexed that link, but not the original page.

Why has Google not indexed this page?

That will probably be because the page is nearly a year old and no longer attracts traffic, except by accident. No other web site linked to it. Google once did index this page. When it did so, it did put cremation ads on the right side of the page. However, you will note that the article here is rather critical of the Neptune Society (Austin, Texas) for its contest to win a pre-paid cremation. However, Google’s advertising algorithm clearly had no inkling of that fact, so for a few weeks it happily placed a Google Ad for the Neptune Society (Austin, Texas) right next to the posting.

As you can see in the above snapshot, because Google’s advertising algorithm has no information at all on this page, it has done something very strange indeed. It has placed a mixture of adverts that mention vampires and adverts that mention SOA. Clearly, every service oriented vampire that visits this page is going to click obsessively on these ads.

But why has Google behaved like that?

Well I’m guessing, but here’s a credible theory: The page that I came to the cremation posting from was The Truth About Michael Phelps, which describes my encounter with an Eastern European, who believed that Michael Phelps was a vampire. So I suspect Google threw the vampire ads in because it was partly using its ad placement criteria from the previous page displayed and it was merging that with the general criterion that this site publishes articles on SOA related topics.

Click to continue reading “How to Improve Web Advertising”

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