Welcome2Mac: iTunes Visualizer, Spacebar Scrolling, and Private Browsing

Welcome2Mac is The MacTipper Blog's weekly tip where all the people new to Apple's latest operating system can get Mac tips to help them better use Mac OS X.

Today we'll be learning about the iTunes visualizer, scrolling with the spacebar, and private browsing.


The iTunes visualizer is a neat little feature in iTunes that gives a bit of flair to your music listening experience.



To activate the visualizer, go to the View menu and select "Show Visualizer" (Cmd-T). If you want to visualizer to be in full screen, hit Cmd-F or go to View > Full Screen.



When viewing the default iTunes visualizer, there are different keys you can hit to perform different actions. To see the different controls hit the question mark key.




If you're in Safari, Mail, Firefox, and some other applications, you can scroll down the page by hitting the spacebar. Just tapping the spacebar once will scroll the page about 15/16ths of the screen. (The bottom part of one screen is the top part of the next screenful.)

You can also use Shift-Space to scroll up a page.


If you are browsing the web -- and you do not want your tracks followed -- you can use Safari's built in "Private Browsing" feature. When you are using private browsing, all of the info that could be used to figure out what you've done -- google search terms, browser history, browsing cache, and more -- is erased when it is created.



To enable private browsing, go to the Safari menu and select "Private Browsing…", then hit return. To disable private browsing, go to the Safari menu and select "Private Browsing".