Easy Mac OS X Lion - Kate Binder [27]
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Tip: Using Your Own Picture
If you’re concerned about privacy, it might not be wise to use your own photo as a login icon. If people you don’t know will see the photo—as an iChat icon, for instance—you might want to substitute a personal logo of some type.
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Tip: I’m Ready for My Close-Up, Mr. Jobs
If you have an iSight camera, either standalone or built into your Mac, you can use it to take a picture right from the Edit Picture dialog and turn that photo into an icon on the spot.
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Changing Your Mac’s Language
You might have thought that you would need to buy a special version of Mac OS X if you want your Mac’s interface to use a language other than English. Actually, Mac OS X ships with the capability to display menus, dialog boxes, and other interface elements in a couple dozen languages, including those with non-Roman alphabets.
Choose Apple menu, System Preferences.
Click the Language & Text button to see your choices.
Click the Language button.
Click and drag your preferred language to the top of the pick list.
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Tip: Making a Menu
When you switch languages, you should also switch keyboard layouts to activate each language’s special characters. In the International preferences’ Input Menu tab, you can create a menu of the languages you use, and then click the Show input menu in menu bar box so you can switch keyboard layouts quickly.
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Adding Login Items
If, like many, you’re a creature of habit, you’ll love this feature. By designating login items for your user account, you can make any documents and apps you like open up automatically any time you login to your Mac. You might want to start up your email and calendar programs every time you login, for example.
Choose Apple menu, System Preferences.
Click Users & Groups in the System Preferences window.
Click Add.
Navigate to the application or file you want to open automatically; then click Add.
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Note: Login Versus Startup
Don’t get confused: Login items are things that start up automatically when you login to your account on the Mac; startup items are those that start up automatically when you turn on the Mac.
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Tip: Quick Login
If you’re in a hurry and don’t need the programs you’ve specified as login items, you can disable them at login time by pressing Shift from the time you press Enter in the login window until you see your desktop picture appear.
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Increasing Your Mac’s Security
Whether these settings are important to you depends on how vulnerable your Mac is to snoopy intruders. If your computer is in a dorm room or an open office, or if it’s a laptop, you’ll probably want to put at least some of these measures in place to ensure that un-authorized people can’t use it.
Choose Apple menu, System Preferences.
Click the Security & Privacy button to see your choices.
Click the General button, and then click the Require password check box to make sure that only you can wake up the computer when it’s sleeping.
Click the check boxes next to the other options to turn them on or off.
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Note: Learning to Live Together
To learn about ways to get along when you share your Mac with other users, turn to Chapter 11, “Sharing Your Mac with Multiple Users.”
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Making Your Own Widgets
Dashboard is great—if you haven’t tried it, click on its Dock icon and take a look at the cool widgets you can add. And you can even make your own widgets; it’s very simple to turn your favorite web pages into Dashboard widgets, and you do it right from Safari.
In Safari, type the URL of the web page you want to turn into a widget.
Choose File, Open in Dashboard.
Select the area on the web page that you want to include in your widget.
Click Add; the new widget opens in Dashboard.
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Tip: Make It Your Very Own
To customize the appearance of your widget, click the i button in its lower-right corner. The widget flips neatly over and presents you with a choice