A Bag of Tricks and Tips I Can't Live Without
(some people know these, some people don't...)

Windows Hate having to minimize everything to get to your desktop? You could use the little desktop icon or...hold down the Windows key + M, and everything minimizes. Very handy.

Try Windows + E, too, that will pop open "my computer".

Windows The Print Screen button is way underrated. Just click it whenever you want to take a snapshot of your screen, and it puts a bitmap image in your clipboard. This is great when you're trying to explain in writing, "my computer is doing this weird thing..."

Web Browsers (IE and Firefox) Having to type "http://www.somewebsite.com" into your browser is a lot of work - i say don't do it. Just type "somewebsite" then press Ctrl + Enter and it will fill in all the syntax for you.

Illustrator and Photoshop Use the Tab key to hide the floating palettes, and hit it again to show them. Ctrl + 0 fits your document to the screen.

Macs Just kidding. Get a PC, occultist.


Illustrator and Photoshop The eyedropper is a pretty cool tool for matching colors, but what if you want to match the color of a webpage or an image in another program? First, make sure PS or Illustrator doesn't take up the whole screen and that your target is visible in the background. Now, when you place the dropper in your work area, simply hold it down and drag it wherever you want, even outside the program! Whenever you're over the color you want, let go of the mouse.

Photoshop The "edge" trick. Sometimes you'd like to zoom in and edit the edge or corner of an image, but PS doesn't allow you pan the image freely so you can center the area of focus on your screen. Maddening. To regain your sanity, go to

View-->Screen Mode-->Full Screen Mode

(I like to set this mode and standard screen mode to keyboard shortcuts, like F11 and F12 or something...huge time-saver)

Know a cool trick? Email William here.

Want to tell me about how awesome your Mac is?
Email me here.