May 8, 2008: Issue 238
What do you do when you accidentally launch PowerPoint instead of Entourage? Grab a cup of coffee and a Zinger while you wait for the rainbow wheel to stop spinning and the icon to stop bouncing so you can quit PowerPoint? Well, OK—if you need the caffeine and sugar.
But you can quit an application while it’s still launching: Hold down the Control key while you click on the icon in your dock.
Control-click can get you out of other trouble, too. For one thing, it will let you force-quit a frozen application, or exit an application in the middle of a task. It will also give you access to recently opened documents in most programs. Give it a try next time you’re not sure what to do; the option you need might pop up.
The one that we want: After last week’s issue, we were accused of hating animals. (“I bet you cheered when Bambi’s mother died,” as Jeff Myers gently put it.) We adore animals, and we have the furry furniture and chewed-up shoes to prove it. But we apologize if our little pronoun rule offended any card-carrying members of the ASPCA. Here’s our peace offering.
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