Normally I don’t post this kind of thing, but I couldn’t resist mentioning this t-shirt which brings my day job (Anglican priest and theology lecturer) together with my blog.

MacMerc has designed a t-shirt which combines the time-saving importance of keyboard shortcuts with other important saving things.

Stylish and witty, it will obviously appeal most to people who can be a little bit light-hearted about their faith. Or, conceivably, who just like clever t-shirts. And are not much troubled by the finer points of punctuation.

And it offers Anglicans/Episcopalians a way to witness without actually mentioning the J word. Can clothing get any better?

Get it from MacMerc for USD 16.95. I’m getting two.

[Via TUAW ]apple, Jesus, tshirt, keyboard shortcuts, productivity

Rixstep.com has posted a list of keyboard shortcuts, which will — in time — contain “every keyboard secret in OS X”.

It already lists some I never knew and many that I once knew but have forgotten.

Debate will probably continue forever on whether keyboard shortcuts are actually faster or just feel faster.

In the meantime, other useful lists include a list of Mail keyboard shortcuts, a list of Thunderbird shortcuts and another list for TextMate , including a pocket-sized foldable version. (TextMate is a top-notch text editor that won the Apple Design Award for Best Mac OS X Developer app last week. I use it to write Hawk Wings.)

Even Entourage has a cheatsheet .

[Via Lifehacker ]mail.app, apple mail, keyboard shortcuts, productivity, thunderbird, entourage, efficiency, email

Some people (notably John Gruber ) find one behaviour in Mail.app “both wrong and endlessly frustrating”.

The problem is this: If you use Shift-Arrow keys to select multiple messages in the Mail’s Message Viewer, hitting Shift-Up to deselect a message highlighted by mistake doesn’t deselect it. It selects the message immediately above the top selected email instead.

Try it. I had never even attempted this before, so it was news to me.

The fault is caused (I learn from John’s post) by the default list controls in Data Browser (Carbon apps like Finder and iTunes) and in NSTableView (Cocoa apps).

Jim Speth has written a plugin for Mail.app that makes the Shift-Arrow key combination behave as many believe it should.

If ⌘-Clicking the offending item selected by mistake doesn’t satisfy, this may be solution for you.

LiveJournal blogger Nevyn has taken the fix a step further by turning the plugin into an Input Manager that will correct the behaviour in all Cocoa apps. One small hitch; it crashes the Adium 1.0 beta.

[Via Daring Fireball ]mail.app, apple mail. Message selection, keyboard shortcuts, bug

Mark Stosberg has posted a list of five power tips for serious Thunderbird users.

When Mark switched from mutt, he was “skeptical that any graphical e-mail program could rival Mutt for performance and efficiency, not to mention the simplicity of accessing it anywhere through a text-based console.”

But Thunderbird surprised him. Not only does it rival mutt, it offers “a number of new workflow improvements, especially easier filtering and labels.”

He outlines how he makes the most of Thunderbird’s filtering and labels to increase his productivity and offers four keyboard-enhancing extensions for Thunderbird.

He rounds his list out with “Master keyboard shortcuts” and a tip on using Unison to sync his Thunderbird folder between multiple Macs.thunderbird, productivity, tips, extensions, keyboard shortcuts, labels, filtering, synching, mutt

Bruce Phillips and Qwerty Denzel have written an AppleScript that solves one of the most frequently emailed complaints about Mail.app that I receive—how to move by keyboard shortcut to the next unread message.

I usually tell them that the Spacebar is as good as it gets.

However, using this script combined with an app like FastScripts , you can cycle through your unread messages in the Preview pane more efficiently.

It won’t satisfy those who want to do this in the Message window like they once did in Eudora, but you can’t have everything.

[Via Daring Fireball ]applescript, mail.app, apple mail, unread messages, keyboard shortcuts, productivity, preview pane

A slightly esoteric tip, but very useful for the people who need it…

Jacob Rus has created a list of multi-stroke keybindings that allow for the quick insertion of Apple-centric glyphs like ⌥⇧⌘V or ⌥→ or ⌫ or, when all else fails, ⎋.

If you write documentation for applications or give advice on how to do things in Mail.app or any other Apple app or just prefer ⌥⇧⌘V to Option-Shift-Command-V, this collection of keybindings is for you.

After installation, it will work in any relaunched Cocoa app—ecto, Mail.app, TextMate, Yojimbo, WriteRoom, whatever.

Head over to the TextMate blog, where Allan Odgaard has posted instructions on how to install the keybindings in your ~/Library/KeyBindings folder.Apple, keyboard shortcuts, productivity, apple-centric glyphs, keybindings, tip, not apple mail

My very favourite app for integrating Mail with iCal has been updated.

Event Maker allows you to create normal and all-day events and To Dos from a selected message in Mail.app or from scratch. The quick launch scripts mean that the whole process can be accomplished without touching the mouse once.

Event Maker 0.4 sports a redesigned interface to allow for alternate methods of setting dates, including a pop-up calendar, and an alarm drawer which supports full keyboard access.

The interface is cleaner:

It also now has full undo and redo functions and improved error-checking when creating events. The internal update feature has also been improved.

The app’s preferences offer good control over the creation process, allowing you to set default durations, to tell the app how to create events and what to do next:

Mike emails to say that he hasn’t put the new version up on MacUpdate or VersionTracker yet, but if you already have it installed, the auto-update feature will fetch it.

If you don’t yet use it, but want to try it out, download version 0.3 from MacUpdate and then internally update to the newest version.

Event Maker is donation-ware.mail.app, apple mail, ical, events, messages, todos, keyboard shortcuts, productivity