Kindly Póg Mo Thóin

17 Responses to “Dear Right-clicking,”

1. 1 Sarah in Chicago
   May 11th, 2008 at 4:49 pm

   Welcome to the Cult of Mac (one of us!). You have just become more cool

   Do what I do on my iBook (yes, I still have one of those, but I’m a grad student though, so I can only afford to merely upgrade, not buy new) and that’s hook up a mouse, and you get back right-clicking.

   If you don’t want spoil the ‘mac-ness’ of your computer, you can get one of these:
   http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB112LL/A?fnode=home/shop_mac/mac_accessories/mice_keyboards&mco=NzUwOTc
   Which only appears to be one-button, but actually senses where your finger is when you press the button, to determine if you are right-clicking or left-clicking.

   And yes, ‘mac-ness’ is a word, and it’s important

   And they’ve changed the keyboard? On my older iMac as well as my iBook, they’re both ‘Delete’ and not ‘Backspace’ … weird.

   Btw, I wanted to say, I love the pic you have as your avatar on shakesville! I wish I photographed that well!

2. 2 TA
   May 11th, 2008 at 4:59 pm

   It’s gonna be OK. I’ve had a Mac for 4 years and I’m still figuring shit out, but that’s because there’s more than one way to do everything.

   Apple-key plus regular click does different things than regular clicking. Like opening up a link in another tab. Option plus click seems to download a link (just found that out now). Ctrl plus click opens up a menu of choices.

   So it sounds like Ctrl is the closest thing to right-clicking, yes?

3. 3 Sarah in Chicago
   May 11th, 2008 at 5:03 pm

   Oh, and btw, soon you will totally get into the habit of control-clicking that you’ll do it automatically … so much so that you’ll find yourself, embarrassingly enough, doing it on PC’s as well ..

   But you’re still cooler

4. 4 Brenda
   May 11th, 2008 at 5:22 pm

   On a Macbook (but I don’t know about older Macs), you can set it up so that you can right-clcik by holding two fingers on the trackbad and clicking. (If it doesn’t work, go to system preferences and go into the “Keyboard and Mouse” section and the trackpad tab, check the “For secondary clicks…” thingie). (Or, TA says, Ctrl+Click works the exact same way)

   You can get deleting by Function (fn) + Delete.

   …It took me months to figure this stuff out.

5. 5 Jay
   May 11th, 2008 at 6:03 pm

   As everyone has said, context menus haven’t vanished; you can still find them. ctrl+click works just fine.

   I’m not even sure what the “delete” issue is. I have a delete key right next to the += key. I use it to backspace and to delete highlighted sections of text. Maybe I’m missing something…

6. 6 julia
   May 11th, 2008 at 6:13 pm

   fortunately, there’s a babelfish installed under the apple which will translate all the commands you’re used to into, um, functional.

   We aim to please. Welcome.

7. 7 melissa
   May 11th, 2008 at 6:15 pm

   Try Function-delete for the forward0delete funcitonality.

8. 8 Zuzu
   May 11th, 2008 at 6:22 pm

   It’s amazing how many Mac fans these posts draw out of the woodwork.

   There will be other content soon; I just need to charge up the battery on my camera.

   And I discovered that my camera actually takes short video clips! So maybe I can capture how adorable Miss Junebug is in the morning, or when I get home at night, when she does the Happy Dance.

9. 9 Kate Harding
   May 11th, 2008 at 6:24 pm

   It’s amazing how many Mac fans these posts draw out of the woodwork.

   No kidding! I’ve been beaten to the control-click punch several times over!

10. 10 Zuzu
    May 11th, 2008 at 6:48 pm

    I’m not even sure what the “delete” issue is. I have a delete key right next to the += key. I use it to backspace and to delete highlighted sections of text. Maybe I’m missing something…

    PC keyboards have both a backspace key, which backspaces, and a delete key, which deletes going forward. So you can delete backwards and forwards.

    But I’m thrilled to find the control + click thing! I’d been very sad that I couldn’t open anything in new tab, or copy link location. And now I can!

11. 11 Zuzu
    May 11th, 2008 at 6:51 pm

    Oh, after some experimentation, it looks like fn + del will delete forward.

12. 12 bean
    May 11th, 2008 at 6:58 pm

    Also, I think that you can open in a new tab (at least in safari) by hitting apple + click. Welcome to the Mac World.

13. 13 TA
    May 11th, 2008 at 6:59 pm

    OK, see. I did not know that about the fn + del. Learn something new every day…

    Although I use my trackpad and click a lot, I find a lot of other Mac users are totally committed to keyboard shortcuts. (There are a lot of them, evidently). They claim it gives you entire years on your life, so I should really investigate that more.

14. 14 Tricia
    May 12th, 2008 at 8:58 am

    And I discovered that my camera actually takes short video clips! So maybe I can capture how adorable Miss Junebug is in the morning, or when I get home at night, when she does the Happy Dance.

    I was able to edit together an entire DVD (in iMovie, of course) of my nephew’s 3rd birthday party due to that feature. My mom’s friend had her (Mom’s) camera and kept hitting the 30 sec. movie button instead of the shutter button.

    It was awesome, as is almost any kid’s birthday party, when you can use the B52s as a soundtrack.

15. 15 Chris T
    May 12th, 2008 at 9:12 pm

    this is precisely why I am afraid to get a mac even though they were my first computer. I don’t think I could live without my right click!

16. 16 DJA
    May 12th, 2008 at 10:20 pm

    Oh, after some experimentation, it looks like fn + del will delete forward.

    I was gonna jump in with the answers, but you already figured ‘em out.

    Anyway, in the event you haven’t already done this, I recommend turning on the Trackpad Gestures in System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Trackpad: “Use two fingers to scroll” and “Allow horizontal scrolling” are both incredibly helpful. And, as others have pointed out, to get a right-click without having to hold down the control key, turn on “For secondary clicks, place two fingers on the trackpad then click the button.”

17. 17 DJA
    May 12th, 2008 at 10:25 pm

    Also:

    I’d been very sad that I couldn’t open anything in new tab

    You can get that via the secondary click context menu, but Apple-click is an even faster way to open new tabs. (Or, if you hook up a multi-button mouse, click with the middle button — that works too.)

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