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December 18, 2006
Mail | Auto-complete words
If you press the ESC key while typing in most OS X applications, a small window will pop up showing you a list of possible words for auto-completion. You can then double-click the word you want to type. Or you can use the up and down arrow keys to navigate through the list, and hit the RETURN key to choose the word you want.
This is a handy option if you're trying to type a longer word which you aren't exactly sure how to spell. You can type the start of the word, and then auto-complete the rest.
I put this in the Mail.app category because that's where I do most of my writing. I expect Mom would probably do most of her writing in Mail as well. It also works in TextEdit.app. However, it only works in applications written specifically for OS X. Thus, like system-wide spell check, it won't work in Microsoft Word, which is really an OS 9 application adapted to work in OS X.
UPDATE:
After trying to use auto-completion for a while, I see that it's quite buggy. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.
I've learned several ways to get it working again, or partially working again, but unless it works 100% of the time, it's not worth bothering with.
I'll post a note when it becomes dependable.
Posted by Brad at December 18, 2006 04:43 PM
