via Laughing Squid

This time it’s for those fortunate enough to have a widescreen. Always looking for ways to declutterize my life, I try to find solutions to make best use of the space around me. This includes my frequented physical space such as desk and office area, but as a UI designer, maximizing my computer’s screen real estate is part and parcel to the job. Unfortunately for me, I’m much better at the latter, but for you, someone looking to squeak a little more user-friendliness out of your feed-reading experience, I can impart this tip to help you make better use of that additional lateral screen space.

When It’s A Bad Time for the Horizontal-Split Screen

Many programs work in a three-pane layout where there is a side bar with a horizontal split-view next to it.

Example:

Now in a widescreen scenario, these layouts don’t always make sense. Especially when you have two levels of vertical lists that control a vertical content area. That’s three vertical regions and so a horizontal split has no real business being there when you can expand out laterally. (Think Mail.app)

NetNewsWire is an exemplary app for this scenario and here are three ways to get into “Widescreen Layout”:

1. Cmd-2
2. From the Menu Bar under View > Layout > “Widescreen Layout”
3. Customizing the toolbar by adding the “Layout” module

Customize Layouts with the Toolbar Module

The third approach was the little surprise. After poking around the menu bar, I couldn’t find what I was looking for easily so I checked the contextual menu from the toolbar area; that is, right click or ctrl-click in the top area of the main NNW window. Then just drag-and-drop the layout module from array of custom options. (It’s awesome that customizing applications can be this easy.)

Some may argue that making this module visible would not be the best option because the need to change the layout is likely a fringe case. However, there is plenty of horizontal space and actually, I’ve found that switching between two of three layouts may be useful for some research writers.

Three-Panes – Ideal for Scanning Feed Collections or Many Entries

The middle option, 3-panes, is good for scanning high-level collections (folders, custom searches, smart lists, etc.) where there could be hundreds of headings. Scrolling and scanning then selecting an item would take place in the middle pane. The item would then open in the right-hand pane leaving the middle pane open for further scanning.

Two-Panes – Ideal for Scanning Entries in Single Feed

The third option, 2-panes, is good for starting on a specific feed then scanning its entries. I probably won’t make much use of the first option (horizontal split) on a widescreen monitor, but for a standard monitor –or if I connect to an external, standard monitor–that layout would be appropriate.

Isn’t Having a 100+ Feeds a Bit Much?

From a bit literacy perspective, having this many feeds may be an overload, but I’m thinking about research writers; that is, people who would most benefit from an app like NNW. The Layout Switcher is an advanced feature, but worth using when you need to browse through mad amounts of subscriptions frequently.

Incidentally, many Macs these days are widescreen so the experience designers at Newsgator Technologies may want to take that extra step in detecting resolution and setting a default accordingly. It’s an advanced feature, for advanced users, but is certainly a time-saver no doubt.

Hope tip helps out!

Linkage

1. In case you’re not using NetNewsWire and want to check it out: NetNewsWire Free Download – NewsGator Technologies

Similar to QuickSilver, there is a system-wide keystroke that invokes the persistently hovering (modal) to-do entry form. Very quickly, one can enter to-dos from any app, tag it, and add it to an in-bin. Not sure if the tagging is necessary, but that’s for a different post.

Essentially though, you can drag-and-drop any actionable item (document, application, email, text clip, Web site URL, photograph, music file, etc.) to the “Notes” field and Things will automagically create a link to it enabling you to quickly get to the item you need to act on.

This is especially useful for email because it allows me to get the email out of my inbox and into my archive; thus, helping me get to inbox:zero. As an added bonus, you can move the item after creating the to-do and the link doesn’t break. Nice.

Here’s an example, I need to act on an email later on. So, after invoking the to-do item entry window (with a customized keystroke; see Things’ preferences) I just drag-and-drop the email from my mail app and a shortcut is created.

Drag Email onto Notes Field:

Link Created in Notes Field

Now, when I go in to Things to either manage or complete my to-dos, there is a link to the email I need to act on. This is better than having the actual email in my to-do box because it won’t clutter my workspace. And no clutter is a good thing, right? Right.

There’s actually a real word that matches up closely: “twaddle”

twaddle |?twädl| informal
noun trivial or foolish speech or writing; nonsense : he dismissed the novel as self-indulgent twaddle.

Frankly, I still have yet to figure out what they’re doing with these feeds. They do have some followers, but they’re likely just other follow-bots like themselves.

Well, anyway, found a useful site if you want to see the stats of the folks following you. It has a great name for these… twerps: TwerpScan. That’s such a great name them.

It’s useful, but does take a little while to zap out your twerps because every block prompts you with an “are you sure?” back at your twitter site. That’s not a total deal breaker, though. Just have to come back to it chunks.

Hope that helps!
Update: Here’s a more helpful run-down of how it works.

Sadly, I began avoiding this great tool just because I felt so defeated every time I opened it. Fortunately there is way to turn it off. No tricks here, just simply turn off the feature in the preferences. Here:

That’s just one more way to reduce the digital-clutter that can pile up on you. Also, I’d recommend taking advantage of features like “SmartLists” or “Search Engine” which help you create your own feeds from the myriad feeds coming in:

This is great way to make reading lists for yourself.

It’s interesting that these preferences are not immediately apparent. Feature rich options that unfold as you go from novice to expert user is a basic tenet of well-crafted, considerate, {human} centered design. NetNewsWire could go one step further, though. It could suggest these changes at certain thresholds of usage. Like, once I was hitting 500 unread posts a day, it would offer suggestions, demonstrating effective use of the “expert” features. Just a thought.

Hope these tips help someone else.

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!Pressing ESC in TextEdit reveals an auto-complete

Tags: autocomplete, TextEdit, trick

Anybody who has changed platforms can relate to the annoyances of relearning keystroke combinations to compliment mouse functions. For example, option-click-drag to move and copy something in a graphics app on the Macintosh will translate to ctrl-click-drag in the same app on a PC. “Alt” on a PC is in the same place as “option” on a mac. So, “control” is typically one key to the left. It’s minor, but annoying.

When frequently hopping between the two platforms, it’s gets a little more than annoying, but still not too bad. It’s when Parallels kills the ability to shift-constrain a drag-copy. I’m talking about the ability to constrain the displacement of an object to just the Y or X axis by holding “shift” and “ctrl” as you click-and-drag to copy an object. You can ctrl-drag-copy, but you cannot shift-constrain. Parallels took an annoyance and brought to a full-blown frustration.

If you’re experiencing this and searching for the answer on how to remedy this – (I couldn’t find it anywhere, so I wrote this) you’ll be happy to know that you can get your shift-constrain-copy back.

Here are the settings you need to make your Parallels preferences pane. Open it from under the Parallels menu item then goto the keyboard tab:

The bugger is the Mouse Right Click setting. I’m really sorry, but I cannot remember what the default was exactly. (I think it was just “ctrl” because that is the typical contextual-menu click shortcut. Can someone confirm, please?) This setting needs to change, I choose the above. The drawback: you need two keys to get your contextual menu up. For me, this is okay because I generally use a two-finger tap on my trackpad. The bonus to this is, though: I can now get my contextual menu in Axure (it didn’t work before).

Also note that I changed the Release Input to ctrl-option-R. That’s because there will be a conflict with the new Mouse-Right-Click setting. If you’re working in Coherence mode (in which OS X treats the windows and apps in Windows as brothers for drag-n-drop, copy-and-paste, etc.), you don’t need this anyway. That’s the keystroke to give you back your mouse in OS Window mode.

Another recommendation: Change Toggle Coherence Mode By default, ctrl-option-shift will release Parallels from Coherence mode. That can be really annoying to your workflow because inevitably you will press the three together and get a surprise sliding animation of all your windows. It’s a cool animation, but obnoxious when you’re racing against the clock on a deadline.

Okay. So, go back into Visio or Axure and give it a whirl. Ahhhh, see? Sweet shift-constrain-copy is back.

Oh and if you’re looking for a way to completely keep your Mac-style shortcuts to minimize the aforementioned annoyances, there are utilities called “keymapping” that should help.