Secret Finder Shortcuts in Mac OS X Panther
Well - they’re not really secret - but you’d have to do a lot of googling to find them.
Get KeyCaps Back:
KeyCaps was an application from the Classic OS that showed what characters you get if you use various different key chords (especially useful for option-key-chords where the resulting character isn’t printed on the keyboard anywhere - e.g. the TradeMark)
In Panther the application has been consumed by the ‘Input’ Menu, but this isn’t obvious since you need to enable it in the ‘International’ System Preference Pane.
(p.s. a quick way to launch System Prefs for keyboard junkies is to press Option and one of the ‘media keys’ (i.e. mute, sound up/down, brightness up/down))
Add to Favourites in Finder
In Panther the Favourites folder has been replaced by the Sidebar - it’s an improvement, but the Favourites folder can be useful because it actually is a folder. The ‘Add to Favourites’ menu item in the Finder (and shortcut: command-T) have been replaced by an ‘add to Sidebar’ item.
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They haven’t disappeared however - you just have to hold shift to get them back:
Alas it looks like the Command-Shift-F shortcut to jump to the Favourites folder has disappeared for good though 
(strangely the shortcut still works in Open/Save panels, but in Carbon Applications only.)
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Drag Icon Proxies from the Dock (in Panther)
OK - not really a finder hint - but useful and not obvious:
I think that the Dock is great - it has a very simple UI and does many different things. (Tog thinks otherwise - but that’s another discussion.)
The icons in the dock are ‘proxies’ - this means that you can do things to the file that the icon represents - by doing it to the proxy icon. So you can drag a file out of the dock and on to a folder - and the original file will be moved to that folder. However - it’s not obvious that this is true - because when you drag a file (or application) from the dock it ‘poofs’. You can stop them poofing by holding down the Command button while dragging them.
Jump straight to the Search Box in Panther
The built-in search box in the Finder’s Toolbar in Panther is very useful - but it may not be entirely obvious how to get keyboard focus to it quickly- pressing tab may be your first thought (like tabbing up to Safari’s location and google boxes) - but this doesn’t work, because Tab in the Finder selects the next file (by alphabetical order).
There is a way to jump to the search box quickly though, just press Command-Option-F.
For loads of useful hints: MacOSXHints.com
Joseph Lamoree says:
Sweet tip. Thanks!
March 12th, 2004 at 5:59 pm
drauh says:
Cool! I’m a monkey, too….
March 19th, 2004 at 10:57 pm
Monkey says:
I’m a monkey also. Eeek eeek.
April 13th, 2004 at 6:11 am
jean gonella says:
I don’t found the finder’s alphabetical order for Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther).
Thank you
jean gonella
August 2nd, 2004 at 9:11 pm
Raul says:
Find Secrets.
January 26th, 2005 at 12:33 pm
DC says:
Any chance you know where keycaps lives in Tiger?
May 12th, 2005 at 8:18 am
Diggory says:
DC: you can use the method above to get Keyboard Viewer - which has replaced keycaps
May 12th, 2005 at 10:49 am
Chris says:
Keyboard viewer is a lame substitute for Keycaps. It doesn’t show the real character for all fonts, and the display is too small. Zapf Dingbats doesn’t render to the keyboard viewer (shows up as Arial/Helvetica). Apple should have let well enough alone.
August 22nd, 2005 at 4:32 am
Woolnough says:
Keyboard viewer too small? Click the expand button and you get a bigger display! I don’t know why, but that was initially completely not obvious to me.
October 16th, 2006 at 10:44 am