Re: Floating Toolbar Frustration

In article <1hal9k7.13vb8xl1s7t1kqN%steves.inbox@xxxxxxxxx>, Steve Hyde
<steves.inbox@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I've been a Mac user (15" PB, 10.4) for about 18 months and wouldn't
dream of going back to a PC (who would?).

The one thing that I still haven't really got the hang of, though, are
floating toolbars which either keep getting in the way when I don't want
them, or are hidden by something when I do. The best way would seem to
be to arrange them all so that nothing overlaps anything else but this
isn't always possible, for example when working on larger documents that
need a lot of screen space.

I have been a Mac user since the first one. And I still have not got
the hang of toobars. They are an abomination from the dark side.

As far as I can see they bring another abomination along for the ride -
non-uniform shortcuts for everything in them.
Even products from the same company have different shorcuts for the
same things in sister products.

<snip>
Another frustration is Word which just seems to splay toolbars all over
the place willy nilly. Why is it possible to inadvertently move the
title bar of a document behind a toolbar and leave it there thus
prohibiting you being able to select it again to move it (or minimise
it) without first having to close the toolbar???

Yep, that's Word for you. You can set your toolbars up the way you
want. For a very detailed recipe for managing Word's toolbars I
recommend
"Bend Word to Your Will"
http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/Bend/BendWord.htm
The Microsoft MVP site is a bit fragile for Safari use. Bang refresh a
few times till it looks as busy and overdecorated as it is going to
get.

Its author, Clive Huggan, has raised toolbar customising to an art form.

Word has a few foibles on toolbars and windows getting jammed
underneath one another, or even spearing off screen when looked at
sideways. Google groups for the topic on
microsoft.public.mac.office.word

I'm a big keyboard shortcut user. If there was a way (is there a way?)
of toggling between toolbars the way there is with documents (i.e. Cmd
~) then I'd be interested to know. Otherwise I'm interested to know how
other people handle toolbars without having to continually move them out
of the way. Or is this just one of those things you have to live with?

Like you, I prefer to use the keyboard whenever I can. The only time I
open a toolbar is when I have not yet learned to keyboard shortcuts and
I can't get to the same place via the main menu bar (with keyboard of
course).
I normally run Word with absolutely zero decoration, no scrollbars, no
toolbars or palettes, nothing, except for one pixel of the formatting
palette which is still needed to make keyboard style selection
shortcuts work after all these years.

The fact there is no universal shortcut for closing the snivellers
makes me more reluctant to give them screen space in the first place.

There is one almost universal shortcut for toggling the toolbars that
appear on the top of the active window. I have customised mine to ^B,
but the default is something involving a function key. see system
preferences » keyboard and mouse.

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