Do you give a lot of computer-based presentations or training? Do you need you audience members to be able to easily view and track your mouse, see when you click the mouse and see the keyboard shortcuts that you press? If so, Mousepose, could be your best friend. In previous Tech Tips I’ve talked about other ways to highlight the mouse and its clicks using MouseLocator and display keyboard shortcuts. using KeyCastr. Unlike Mouse Locator and KeyCastr which are both free, Mousepose costs money ($17), but it offers additional features. For example, it can be controlled and customized using AppleScript and it can dim the screen and put a spotlight on the area around the mouse pointer. If you give computer-based training you might really like Mousepose.

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I regularly provide small group training and I want audience members to be able to know when I use keyboard shortcuts. This way, they can see how I made something happen. For example, I might press the Command key and the P key to tell an application to print a document. Since the audience can see my screen, but not my hands, it’s very useful to have an application display my keystrokes on screen. KeyCastr lets me do this easily. KeyCastr is a free application, but donations are welcomed via PayPal. The developer of KeyCastr has not released a final version of the application. In other words, it’s still in beta-testing, but it’s been this way for a couple of years. In my use of it, I haven’t encountered any problems.

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Did you know that Apple’s Preview lets you easily annotate PDFs, merge PDFs as well as delete and re-order pages within a PDF? Preview is a free application which comes bundled with Mac OS X. Apple has been quietly updating over the years and it has become quite capable and user-friendly. Just a few years ago one would have needed to buy the relatively expensive Adobe Acrobat Standard or Professional PDF Editor to do many of these tasks.

I should note that there are slight differences in how certain tasks are done if you’re using OS X 10.5′s version of Preview. All of these demonstrations are done using OS X 10.6′s version of Preview.

It’s also important to know that the following techniques may not work on all PDFs. It’s possible for a person who creates a PDF to lock the file in such a way as to prevent others from manipulating it. Typically, locking a PDF like this requires use of an application like Adobe’s Acrobat.

I’ve created short video tutorials on how to do the following tasks. Read the brief text description and then click the link to watch the video.

If you need more extensive editing capabilities then what is offered by Preview then you should check out the relatively affordable PDFPen.

1. Reorder pages in a PDF – Open a PDF file, click the Sidebar button to view the thumbnail icons for each page. Click on one of the thumbnails and drag the page up or down. Look for the horizontal blue line that appears indicating the new location of the page. To remove a page you can simply click on the thumbnail icon for a page to select it and the press the Delete key on your keyboard.

2. Extract pages from a PDF – Open a PDF file, click the Sidebar button to view the thumbnail icons for each page. Click on the first page you want to extract. If you want to extract additional pages then hold down the Command key and click on additional thumbnail icons. Release the Command key and then drag the thumbnail icons to the Desktop. A new PDF file will be created on the Desktop. Rename the file as desired. Open this new file by double-clicking to verify that it contains the pages that you want. You can re-order the pages by following the tip listed above.

3. Move pages between PDFs (Merge PDFs) – Open a PDF file, click the Sidebar button to view the thumbnail icons for each page. Open a second PDF and click its Sidebar button too. Position the two PDFs so you can view both file’s Sidebars at the same time. Select one or more pages from one file’s Sidebar and drag them into the other file’s Sidebar. Look for the horizontal blue line that appears in the receiving file’s Sidebar. This blue line indicates where the new page appear. You can re-order the pages by following the tip listed above. Go to the File menu and select Save to save the changes.

4. Annotate text in a PDF -  Open a PDF file, click the Annotate button to review a row of tools at the bottom of the window. Use these tools to highlight text in a variety of colors, draw a line through the text, enclose text inside a rectangle or oval, add a note in the margin of the PDF.

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Did you know that Mac OS X has a built-in zoom feature? This feature lets you zoom in on your screen so everything on the screen is larger. Of course, when you zoom in you can only see part of the screen on your monitor. You need to scroll around to see the other parts of the screen.

I use the zoom feature frequently when I’m giving presentations especially when I provide Mac training. I project my Mac laptop’s image onto a wall or screen using a projector. Then, I want to show audience members something on the screen so I zoom the screen so I can ensure that everybody in the audience can see what I’m trying to highlight on one part of the screen.

Zoom is off be default. Follow these instructions to turn it on.

• Go to the Apple menu and select System Preferences.
• Click on the Universal Access icon
• Click on the Seeing button.
• In the Zoom section set the button to On.
• Optionally, click the Options button and make sure in the section titled “When zoomed in, the screen image moves:” that it is set to “Only when the pointer reaches an edge”. Click Done. The other options lead to too much screen movement which I find distracting or even annoying.

Once the zoom feature is enabled then you can invoke it at any time to zoom in on your Mac’s screen by simultaneously pressing these 3 keys: Command, Option and the Plus Sign (which is typically the same as the Equal Sign key). Each time you press these three keys your Mac will zoom in a little bit more.

To zoom out simultaneously press these 3 keys: Command, Option and the Minus Sign key which is typically to the left of the Plus Sign key.

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If you ever struggle to find your Mac’s cursor then I recommend that you use MouseLocator. This free application puts a halo around the cursor to help your eyes locate the cursor. You can configure how long the halo is displayed. It can be displayed for as little as half of a second or permanently or somewhere in between these two extremes. You can also control how long the cursor must be idle before the halo will re-appear.

I find that MouseLocator is popular with people who use very large monitors or whose eyes are tired. I do a lot of computer-based presentations and I consider MouseLocator to be an indispensable tool. When I’m projecting my laptop’s display onto a large wall, MouseLocator helps audience members locate and track the cursor as I move it around the computer screen.

Check out MouseLocator.

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