I recently bought a MacBook for my fiancee. We've both been Windows only and wanted to try something different. She has a bunch of questions, but some answers aren't that easy to find via Google.

She's been learning the ins and outs of CSS in her spare time (what a woman!) and uses notepad to edit simple html files and then opens them in IE or Firefox to check out the results. When she tries this with TextEdit on the MacBook and opens the html file with Firefox or Safari all she gets is her code and not the website. Any suggestions?

Here's another simple question while you are at it, how does one minimize all windows and is there a way to put an icon in the dock to do the same?

Thanks!

Rene

The way to work on a Mac is not to bother minimising your open windows, just hit F11 (on my old Macbook, maybe another key on a new one) to Expose the windows away when you need something on the desktop.

Not used TextEdit, but I'm sure someone will be along to help you with that in a minute.

I can recommend TextWrangler over TextEdit any day.

TextEdit is the wrong tool for editing raw HTML or whatever, since it tries to do rich text markup and all of that itself. For raw text, you want a programmer's editor. If something like Emacs is too imposing, and something like Xcode is overkill, there are a variety of other options, some free, some costing dollars. Since I just use Emacs, I haven't really bothered to look into what else is out there.

Of course, if you've got the money, the way to go is to get something like Dreamweaver, which is meant for doing web things.

I've heard good things about Smultron.

BBEdit used to be the go-to app for text editing on Macs; I haven't heard much about it lately. (Oh, turns out TextWrangler is the free version of it.)

Personally, I use vim, which is included with MacOS, but runs inside a terminal. There is a GUI version available. But that would require that she learn how to use vi, which I would recommend, but which she probably doesn't want to do.

I'll second TextWrangler as a decent text editor.

For CSS, the MacBreak Weekly guys like CSSEdit (http://macrabbit.com/cssedit/)

The biggest thing to do during the switch is not to find how to do your same work the same way as you did on Windows. You instead need to find out how to do your work the Mac way. As others have pointed out, window management is very different between OS X and Windows. Expose is a handy way to do it, with newer macs shipping with this defaulted to F3. Thats only one expose mode, play around in system preferences to see all three and assign hot keys. You can also hide the front most app with Command-H, or hide all others with Command-Option-H. I use an app at work called Spirited Away (http://drikin.com/spiritedaway/) that auto hides apps I haven't used in the past 2 minutes. On top of all that, Leopard has spaces to allow a virtual desktop environment to be used on the Mac.

Oh, might as well toss these here too, some handy apps I install on pretty much every Mac I use now:

Adium (IM application)
http://adiumx.com

Quicksilver (Quick program launcher. Use it initially by doing Ctrl-Space, and typing an application name to launch. Does much more, search for Quicksilver tips video when ready to learn more)
http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/

Unarchiver (Unzips rar, 7z and other less commonly found archives, and stuffit. Works like the built in OS X unzipper):
http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/apps/unarchiver.html

Perian (Quicktime codec to play most videos, including divx/xvid and so on):
http://perian.org/

Flip4Mac, (plays WMVs in Quicktime)
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/wmcomponents.mspx

Burn (Handy disc burning app for when disk utility/finder don't do what you need):
http://burn-osx.sourceforge.net/

Handbrake: (DVD to MP4 video ripper)
http://handbrake.m0k.org/

Butler's nice, too.

Text Editors:

Smultron - free
TextWrangler - free (essentially the same as BBEdit and a slight throwback to Mac OS9)
ForgEdit - free for now
SubEthaEdit - $ - supports collaboration
TextMate - $

None of them, IMO, hold a candle to TextPad for Windows unfortunately. I use TextWrangler right now - if I had an Intel Mac, I'd run TextPad under Windows virtualization.

A fairly cool product that includes the SubEthaEdit core and a very nice CSS editor plus of course a lot of other feaures for managing web projects, is Coda from Panic. It bills itself as "one window web development"

The best archive utility for Mac OS is BetterZip - it costs a little $ but has a nice GUI. It can open, create and modify archives of pretty much any format.

TextWrangler is downloaded. I'll also have a look at Coda.

The MacBook is interesting and different. We both like it. It's funny though that she couldn't take to Ubuntu for some reason but she really seems to like OS X.

Anybody experience a bad A key on their MacBook? It works, but you have to hit it dead on and fairly hard. I took the key off and blew all kinds of air in it to see if there was something stuck there but no luck. I also found some others on Apple's support forum with similar (and worse) problems with their keyboards. Unfortunately, none of the firmware updates work for us. Looks like a trip to the closest Apple service center might be needed. Too bad it's about 6 hours away from here.

Thanks for the suggestions and help so far!

Coda is awesome. I just used it to toss up a quick website (www.snowkitemasters.com) and it simplifies the workflow a ton... I'm buying it for sure. Definitely download it and try the 14 day trial out. And be sure and read the help, it has some really killer features that are somewhat hidden.

CSS Edit is also indispensable if you work with CSS on a mac. The XRay and override feature is brilliant.It allows you to open any website in the built in browser, mouse over to see the DOM structure, and then you can edit the style sheets and see live updates. It's awesome to see how a site that you like did a specific layout.

And as a sidenote... it really seems like there is an underground changeover going on to the mac platform. I have at LEAST 10 friends who have always been windows only that have bought macs in the past MONTH. Maybe it's not so underground, but it feels like macs are finally starting to mainstream.

I bought a MacBook Pro less than 3 months ago. This was pretty-much my first Mac and I bought it after giving Vista 3 good attempts at sticking. Although Mac OS is vastly different than Windows, I found the switch a lot more easy/satisfying than XP to Vista. I can't say I'm 100% hooked, but there are many things to like as well as many thing that are just plain different and took some getting used to.

I bought VMware Fusion so I can run Picasa on this thing. I don't feel the need to run Windows otherwise. I like the build quality of the laptop itself a lot and I could see myself not buying another PC laptop for that reason alone.

Rob, you're in the same boat as my dad: giving up on Vista, seriously considering the Mac, but doesn't want to give up on Picasa. *sigh* Hopefully, Google will get off its duff and port Picasa natively.

They really should, iPhoto sucks big-time. It's not likely high on their list of priorities because of iPhoto's established market though.

Maybe Adobe will lower the price of Lightroom to $99 which is more in line with its capabilities/design. While not free, it might make a more attractive option than people have now.

Ok, time for me to come out.
I'm a switcher too, and i love it.
Bought the cheapest macbook and since upgraded it with a 200gb disk and 4gb memory (memory is crazy expensive straight from apple)

I have a Mac too, but only because I had to develop and test some software on one.

I'm interested to hear how you switchers cope with the basic annoying broken stuff on the Mac. Things like the fact that you can't resize windows on any edge/corner, the random behaviour of the maximise button in many apps or disappointing keyboard support in apps (even with the extra support turned on in the OS).

Even when I have used a Mac for long periods, little things like this have driven me spare and sent me scurrying back to my Windows boxes for day-to-day workstation usage (not that I'm saying that Windows doesn't have its own annoying features).

I didn't use MacOS much before getting Linux working on my Macintosh, but I found its oddities oddly fun in a sort of "steampunk" way. It felt a bit like visiting an alternate reality where RiscOS 3 won the OS war against Windows 95 (oh, and got a process model).

Peter

Minor annoyance, and there are many tools out there that can patch that behavior.

I virtually never use the maximize button on any GUI. Having it act slightly oddly isn't an issue. I do have to wonder what the idea behind the Mac's method is, though.

I don't know what you mean.

My biggest complaint is the lack of focus (but not raise) follows mouse. And maybe the fact that GUI elements are so large.

Overall, the benefits have outweighed the differences and quirks. Though I've been a switcher since 2001, so I can't comment on this from a recent standpoint. Resizing windows hasn't been a pain due to having only one spot to do it from. Generally I set a window size, and rarely adjust it. Maximize used to bother me when I was still in the full Windows mentality. But now that I work in a more windowed mode, I rarely use it, preferring to just size to what I want. I've found the Windows mode of maximizing the app to full screen really breaks down if you go to a multi monitor setup, or to a larger monitor (with 30 inch being on the extreme here). I find myself manually sizing windows and never maximizing them on Windows at work where I have a multimonitor setup, just to ensure I can always drag a window to the other monitor without first having to unmaximize.

Keyboard support, I find myself using it more on a Mac then I did on Windows. Instead of hitting some key combination to activate GUI elements and navigating via the keyboard, I just hit the hotkey associated with the action. Most apps are standardized in OS X, so I have less menu digging to do. Find is a perfect example. Command-F works to activate find in every app I use on OS X. Window, not so much. Outlook was different then notepad, and notepad was different then textpad default.

OS X is different, but I wouldn't say it is broken, anymore then Windows would appear broken to a long time Mac user.

Biggest problem i had in the beginning was the weird touchpad/mouse speed settings. Mousefix fixed that for me: http://www.knockknock.org.uk/mac

Now i already catch myself trying to use expose in windows xp

Recently discovered these, they make the dock look so much cooler: http://t.ecksdee.org/post/19001860

Some more stuff i installed:
http://www.getmiro.com/
http://cyberduck.ch/
http://www.chatelp.org/?page_id=6
http://www.inkscape.org/
http://www.neooffice.org/
http://seashore.sourceforge.net/
http://www.songbirdnest.com/

OK, I just started writing "One feature I would use, which I think RiscOS had, is the ability to maximise vertically only", but I just had a look, and KDE lets me do exactly that -- in fact, it lets me bind vertical, horizontal, or full-screen maximise to any of the three button-presses on the maximise icon. So that's pretty cool.

Peter

I'm pretty sure window managers back to at least twm allowed you to do that.

Yup. f.zoom.

Ultramon lets me do that. I just remapped F1 to switch display. In a fully maximized window, I just hit F1 and it's moved, fully maximized and resized since my second monitor is only running at 1024x768.

I prefer to have my windows maximized and use alt-tab to do the switching between apps. Most of what I do requires my full attention and I find having bits and pieces of other windows sticking out the side of my current app distracting.

Ultramon has 2 more killer features. When an app is on the secondary monitor, the minimized task bar icon moves with it. Second, when I terminal and log back in locally later, my icons are still where they are supposed to be, even if I was using a much smaller display resolution.

One app I find indispensable on the Mac, although nothing to do with text/HTML editing, is 'Max', a CD ripper and audio format transcoder, it handles a heap of formats!

(I must confess, I have been using a Mac (Intel Mac Mini and Macbook) for over a year now, and I love it!)