View automatic word completions in OS X
Written by: Scott Haneda on Wednesday April 02nd 2008, 3:17 am
Filed under: Little Smokies, OS X 10.4, OS X 10.5
Every now and then, you are writing and will get stumped on how to spell a word. Perhaps you know the beginning letters, and not the ending letters. Or perhaps you just want some hints.
OS X has a built in system for pulling words out of its dictionary, and showing you a list of those words. While not something I use all the time, it can be handy once you learn how to access it.
The best way to learn this tip is by trying it out. Since you are reading this in Safari, put your cursor in the Google search box in the upper right of Safari.
Type the beginning of a word, such as ‘auto’. Now press option-escape at the same time. You should see a list that looks similar to the image below.
How much utility this feature has is going to depend a lot on the type of things you personally use your computer for. I use it rarely; though on the occasion I do use it, I feel as if I have saved some time.
Do keep in mind; this feature does not work in all Applications. Most all-native OS X applications should be able to use auto completions. Certain third party applications may simply ignore the feature.
I hope some time soon you’ll do a segment explaining RSS. I finally figured out how to sign up with a reader (I chose Google Reader) but sometimes when I click on the RSS link to add a website to my reader, I get a screen that lets me select Google Reader as my reader (after which it appears in my reader), but sometimes I get a screen that just has a lot of options down the right side (Article Length, Sort By, Recent Articles, Source, and Actions) but I can’t figure out how to get it to show up in my RSS list (in other words, I can go to the specific website and click the RSS button and all of those posts will come up, but I thought the whole point of RSS was to have all selected websites show their updates on one specific reader.
Comment by Matt Nikos 04.05.08 @ 3:55 pm@Matt, yes, RSS is on my list. Safari has built in RSS support, so you need not use google or any other reader unless you want to. Look in your Safari prefs and you should see an RSS section.
So, if you want to add an RSS feed to Safari, instead of using the links the site provides, you can use the blue RSS box in the right of the url bar.
There are even great free apps just made for RSS.
Let’s see what I can do to make this the focus of a tutorial for this week, if you can hold out that long. Thanks for the comment, and thanks for reading the site.
Comment by Scott Haneda 04.05.08 @ 5:43 pmRSS leaves me shaking my head. I agree - a tutorial would be great. I have NO clue when it comes to RSS. 
Judie
Comment by Judie 04.09.08 @ 10:08 am@Judie, the RSS one is next, I have had the flu, which is why there have been no new posts, as soon as I am up for it, things will resume to normal.
Comment by Scott Haneda 04.09.08 @ 3:18 pm
RSS Feed
