As a consultant, I'm often asked some pretty bizarre questions. One that I frequently hear is 'How do I type on my Mac?' A good example of this is people who want to type fractions that look like this -- ½ -- rather than like 1/2, or plop a character like an umbrella -- ☂ -- or a skull and crossbones -- ☠ -- in the middle of a sentence. It's actually quite easy to do this, although finding these uncommon characters isn't something that's readily apparent, especially to new Mac users. Follow along as I show you how to insert or type characters that won't be found on your keyboard. Scrolling through the list of different categories of characters on the left side of the viewer, you can choose from math, arrows, different types of parentheses, currency symbols, crosses, digits, Greek letters, ornamental punctuation, and even Braille patterns. If I click on the Miscellaneous category as seen above, a large group of symbols appears.

In the screenshot above, I've chosen the 'White Left Pointing Index' image. I can simply insert that character at my current insertion point in a document by clicking the insert button.

All of those bizarre symbols in the image at the top of this Mac 101 post were just inserted into a Pages document in this manner. Going through the process of inserting a symbol is fine if you're only going to be typing it once, but what if you need to re-use a specific character many times in a document? You can either do a copy and paste for each occurrence, or you can type the character using a unique hexadecimal code that is assigned to each character. To determine what that code is for any character, just click on the character in the viewer, then 'hover' your cursor above it until a yellow tooltip appears near it as in the screenshot above). Make a note of the code number for the character; for the pointing finger, it's 261C.

Jan 19, 2013  Greek Letter Shortcuts in Microsoft Word When typing up notes, worksheets, and assignments, I often find myself needing to type some special mathematical symbols, such as π. Other Greek letters are useful too, such as Δ for change in. Almost nearly all *nixes include a form of this layout already — even Mac OS X (despite not being the /exact/ version of the layout)!! Please, if Microsoft does this, I will be happy camper for the rest of Windows 8.

To type the special characters, go back to the Input menu in the menu bar and select 'Unicode Hex Input.' Press and hold the Option key on your keyboard, and then type the hexadecimal code. In this case, you'd type Option-261C to make the left pointing index finger magically appear in your document. You can also use the popular application for Mac OS X ($34.95 from Smile Software) to create shortcut snippets that you can type to display a character. The company uses an example on their website of typing eeuro to enter a Euro symbol (€) -- you could set up a snippet named 'lfinger' to enter the left pointing index finger symbol without every needing to bring up the Input menu or Character Viewer. This tip is not only fun, but extremely useful in those cases where you want to use a specific non-standard character or symbol to call attention to something in a document.

Be sure to visit our earlier articles for other time-saving tips.

The importance of typography in design can’t be overestimated. The accuracy, precision and balance of geometric forms can give letters the elegance and sharpness they deserve. Besides, elegant fonts can help to convey the message in a more convenient way.

Should i install macos virtualbox or buy a mac for short period. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. If you're on Windows, need to use OS X, but don't want to buy or build a new computer, reader Bobby Patton shows us how to run Snow Leopard in a virtual machine on Windows with just a few tweaks. However installing MAC OS X on non- Apple hardware is a bit tiresome and complicated. This is an easy guidebook, Install OS X El Capitan on VirtualBox on PC. What is a VirtualBox? VirtualBox is basically a program, over which you can install and eventually run OS X with Intel-based and AMD processor. If that doesn’t sit well with you, you can head over to the Mac App Store and buy a legit copy for yourself. Step Two: Install OS X in VirtualBox. Complete Guide to Fix VirtualBox Errors While Installing Mac OS X. If not it could just be that your system may not support the Mac operating system. But recently during the boot up period I get the following message. IOConsoleUsers: gIOScreenLockState 3, hs 0, bs 0, now 0, sm 0x0.

In fact, while there are many excellent professional fonts there are literally thousands of free low-quality fonts which you would never use for professional designs. Quality costs. The price of “bulletproof” fonts usually reflects their quality and starts at 50$ per typeface. However, before purchasing a font you will probably use only once in your designs you might want to take a glance at outstanding free alternatives first.

Over the last year we’ve been observing typo-designers and their works; we’ve regularly collected high-quality fonts available for free download and free to use for personal or/and commercial projects. In this article we’d like to present an overview of over 40 excellent free fonts you might use for your professional designs. What is your favourite? Further Reading on SmashingMag: • • • • • Please notice.