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The Genius Bar
Let this be the Mac help thread.
I pose a question to experienced Mac laptop users: knowing that holding the trackpad button for a second is right-click (or double-tap with a Macbook or Pro 17")...is there a nifty way of middle-clicking? That would certainly make Firefox easier to use.
Also, does anyone else have a MacbookPro (Intel Core Duo)? Is your trackpad ultra-sensitive to interference from your palms or other stressors? Mine sure is.
I yield to your wisdom and expertise, Mac users.
I pose a question to experienced Mac laptop users: knowing that holding the trackpad button for a second is right-click (or double-tap with a Macbook or Pro 17")...is there a nifty way of middle-clicking? That would certainly make Firefox easier to use.
Also, does anyone else have a MacbookPro (Intel Core Duo)? Is your trackpad ultra-sensitive to interference from your palms or other stressors? Mine sure is.
I yield to your wisdom and expertise, Mac users.
Comments
Being a Mac-user for the better part of my computer-using life, I'm not familiar with what functions a middle button could possibly have. Sorry I couldn't be of more help!
Left Click: Click
Right Click: Ctrl Click
Wheel: Scroll and activate expose. You set the button to be mouse button 3 in logitech and then mouse button 3 as an alternate activation for expose.
Thumb button: Command-Click, open in new tab.
Ken, I think the command click is what you where looking for, right? Opening up a link in a new tab? Simple tip for anybody just joining us on a mac, if you use command (the little apple key) as a modifier to entering a web address or a link, it will open up in a new tab.
The option key is used to automatically download.
http://pfuca-store.stores.yahoo.net/
As for the location of the command key, I have found that the combination of control in the capslock position, and command key by the spacebar is much more comfortable. Both of these keys positions are much easier to hit in combinations, the pinky doesn't need to stretch to hit the control and the thumb doesn't move far to hit the command key.
Definitely HHK for the win on the PC, as it also puts the control key where capslock usually is.
Best you can get is the keyboard shortcuts for expose, which will allow me to quickly show all windows for one app, or for all apps, but then I have to move to the mouse to actually select a different window.
Command-Tilde to switch windows within an application.
That way if you're in a Firefox mindset you don't actually cmd-tab into iTunes or Terminal even though you may have selected a new playlist or run a script right before you went back to your surfing.
The only thing I'd really like is a cmd-*something* to switch between tabs on Firefox/Safari
Another option is to move the library itself to a shared drive, and I do not know how to do that, because it involves the creation of some kind of funky link.
I've got my BSG that I bought stored on a USB drive, and given the way the OS handles drives and file shares, I think it would work the exact same way.
As for iTunes music, I thought you could just use the advanced preferences to set the location of the music folder. Though, I haven't tried to do this to a shared drive. This is because on a laptop I don't want to have my itunes unusable when I take it on the road ;p.
IMO, this is one feature where itunes really lacks. Actually there is two features that it lacks that piss me off. I turned off the automatic consolidate so that I can manage where different music is. What I don't like is that:
1) You can tell it to consolidate the library, but I don't know a way to have it consolidate only selected songs in the library (IE, have a music library on a server, add some songs from it, then choose a subset and have it import those locally, perhaps even with a way to undo this action later since the songs are still on the server).
2) It does not have a way to have playlists be limited by where the files are located, so your playlist might have a lot of songs that are non-local. While it will happily try to play those and skip over them if it can't, it can be annoying to try to figure out which songs are local and which aren't.
I haven't tried this yet, but I do believe if you have a part of your library residing on a server connection, and you have any passwords/etc saved for that connection, iTunes will auto-mount that drive (or at least attempt to) when playing the songs.
The solution may lie in a new piece of software I learned about yesterday. It's called SlingShot and it keeps track and syncronizes folders and playlists across multiple machines. That way my desktop with the mass storage can have everything I own but my notebook would only pull playlists for new podcasts and highly rated music. I don't know if it'll work for your situation since it sounds like it requires two machines but it might.
PS-Kept thinking on the problem while I wrote that post and I realized something. As long as you can mount a drive on your desktop you can point iTunes at it for your library location. Like I said earlier you'll have to make sure it's always attached or else you'll have to reimport but if you can swing that there's no reason you shouldn't be able to keep everything on a NAS.