Drag and drop obviously feels like a natural way to do things, yet we don’t know every time when we can use it on a computer. This tutorial is therefore a detailed review on drag and drop, including many examples and showing what you can do in various applications. It will highlight what I consider to be one of the greatest strength of Mac OS while summarizing simpler principles linked to drag and drop in order to teach you new things about each subject covered.

Part 1 : Drag and drop in the Finder and the Dock

A detailed review about managing files in Finder and Dock. You will learn the basis of File management and some essential features found in the Finder and the Dock. This first part will end with more advanced tricks.

Part 2 : Uses for the icon in windows title bar (proxy icon)

We will see in this text the features offered by the proxy icons located in the windows’ title bar.

Part 3 : Text selection and edition using drag and drop

We will initially make a summary of text selection methods with the mouse and the keyboard, then we will see the various ways for creating and preserving text clippings. Lastly, we will see how to use drag and drop for text edition and to manage information (Internet forms, information fields in various applications).

The search field in Safari toolbar is a very direct way to seek information on the Internet using Google. Safari also makes it possible to launch a search on any selected text on a Web page (Control-click). But did you know that it can do more than just list pages corresponding to your search ? Safari search field also makes it possible to obtain numerical conversion and calculation result, words definition, numerical information (parcels numbers, area codes), along with many more options for your search (target this search on only one site or search for a type of document for example).

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Who never noticed this icon which appears at the top every document window, to the left of the window title, that we call “proxy” icon. Although these icons seem to be added almost as a decoration to the top of the windows, they are filled with somewhat hidden features that are very useful, particularly for drag and drop. Here is an example of proxy icon, on the left of the document’s (in TextEdit):

We will see in this text the features offered by the proxy icons located in the windows’ title-bar. It is recommended to know the bases of drag and drop with files before reading this text.

My first text about drag and drop will be related to files in the Finder and the Dock. Drag and drop obviously feels like a natural way to do things, yet we don’t know every time when we can use it on a computer. Some might think that drag and drop only is for beginners, but I bet you will be surprised by some tips you’ll find here (I hope at least !)

I’ll try to make an in depth review of the subject, and highlight what I consider to be one of the greatest strength of Mac OS. This review will also cover basis of File management and some essential features found in the Finder and the Dock, but ending with more advanced tips.

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Sometimes, when doing a report on a given subject, you need to quote an official text. This has to be done textually in many cases, but if you plan to make a nice graphical presentation for your paper or else if you decided to make a short documentary using iMovie, you’ll probably want to quote the source more visually, highlighting the sentence your reader should read. It helps focusing on a part of the text, while preserving the exact look of the original document, thus allowing to put the quotation in perspective from the rest of the document. The result should then look like this :

Continue reading to learn how to use Panther’s PDF capacities to do this.

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I was working recently on a text that my aunt had written to honor my lost grand-father. I wanted to add this text to my web site, and she wanted to make copies for our family. This text being so important to us, it sure deserved to look great. Using new features in TextEdit, I managed to make it appear really nicely.

I’ll go in detail with all those feature I found and showed to my aunt, but start by telling you how simple this was : I just opened the document with TextEdit, and it looked great ! Sure you’ll find plenty of details here, but these are options, with the default options being just perfect !

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