Sunday, November 4, 2007

16 little known, but cool, Leopard features

There have been so much talk about the shiny new features in Leopard like Time Machine, Quick Look, Mail, and iChat. However, there are some little improvements in Leopard that aren't getting any attention that they deserve. The Sitening blog has the 16 coolest features in 10.5 that you aren't aware of. Some of the ones I'm interested in are:
  • TextEdit now supports Word 2007 and OpenDocument formats. Most people don't know this but for basic word processing, you don't need to have MS Word installed in your Mac. TextEdit gets most of the job done less the bulk.
  • Scrolling non-active windows. This will probably leave some to go "Huh? What's that?" Imagine you have two Safari windows open and you have them side by side. You are researching something and you often need to switch from one window to another. Normally, in order for you to scroll up or down a page you have to select the window to make it active and then scroll. With this feature, you don't need to click, make active, scroll, click, make active, scroll, click, make active... Well, you get the idea. All you need to do is simply hover over the window and just use your scroll wheel to scroll up or down. Very nifty. Of course, you will need a scroll wheel mouse. If you don't have one, you can but one rather inexpensively.
  • Manipulate PDFs with Preview. You can now edit your PDF using preview. Move pages around, delete unnecessary pages and even add pages from another PDF.
Those are just three of the sixteen features that for me will give more value to Leopard. Check out the other 13 and see what else could make Leopard more worthwhile for you.

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