From The Tips Box: Gaming Mousepads, Fonts, Finder Windows

Readers offer their best tips for better mousepad solutions, getting Apple’s font in Windows, and quickly opening new Finder windows in your current directory.

About the Tips Box: Every day we receive boatloads of great reader tips in our inbox, but for various reasons — maybe they’re a bit too niche, maybe we couldn’t find a good way to present it, or maybe we just couldn’t fit it in — the tip didn’t make the front page. From the Tips Box is where we round up some of our favourites for your buffet-style consumption. Email it to tips at lifehacker.com.au.

Use a Cutting Mat as a Mousepad

A3sthetix shares another alternative to the traditional mousepad:

Back in the day, I used to play a lot of Counter-Strike and was always frustrated with little mousepads that would slide all over my desk. They were too small, flimsy and inaccurate for my point-and-shoot needs. After purchasing a tabloid sized cutting mat, I realised I didn’t have much space to leave it out all the time unless I swap out my mousepad with it. This was my eureka moment. I’ve been doing this for years since it plays really nice with my optical mouse. I now use a trackball mouse primarily but still use a cutting mat underneath it.

Look for a cutting mat with the following features:

– Large enough for dual-monitor setups: Your mouse can move from one screen to another without sliding onto your desk

– Ruler printed: Allows for quick measurements without searching for a ruler

– Self-Healing: If you do cut material on it, it won’t leave any major kinks

Bonus tip: Use it to double as a place mat for when having snacks/meals at your desk.

Install Apple’s Corporate Font in Windows

Wunch shows us how to install Apple’s well-known font in Windows:

Apple’s corporate font is based on Myriad Pro from Adobe. It’s a commercial font (you can buy it from Adobe). You also get it along with some of their commercial products.

However, if you just want to have it for personal use for free, it is actually part of the free Adobe Reader installation (it just isn’t installed as a system font). Install Adobe Reader, then go to it’s program folder C:Program FilesAdobeReader 10.0ResourceFont. Right-click it and choose Install to install it to your system fonts so you can use it in Word or whatever you want.

Note that this is Apple’s corporate font — the one they use in their marketing and such, not something from the Mac OS X operating system. This doesn’t seem to work the same on OS X.

Quickly Open a New Finder Window in Your Current Directory

Snow Leopard Ninja Cinnamonster tells us the quickest way to open a new Finder window in the current folder:

I often find myself wanting to open a new Finder window in the same directory as my current window. Up until now, I’ve been manually navigating back to the same folder. This is a pain. Turning to the all-knowing Google, I find this.

Basically it boils down to two methods:

1. This is the easier way. Navigate up one folder (Cmd+Up or with mouse). Cmd+double click the folder. A new window will open in that exact location.

2. Open a new Finder window (Cmd+N if focus is on Finder). Shift+Cmd+G to jump to a directory. Drag the icon in the path at top of other Finder window to the input box and press Enter.

Pin Program Shortcuts to the Internet Explorer Favourites Bar

Intrepid Windows adventurer Java-Princess shares a handy IE shortcut:

Is it common knowledge that you can put shortcuts to your desktop apps in the internet explorer favourites bar? I just found out today when I lost a bet with a colleague on the possibility.