http://lifehacker.com/software/mac-tip/display-the-date-on-the-menubar-316029.php

Drag the file to the dock icon of TextEdit to have the application open it. I use it constantly.

In Leopard, there’s a much better option though. Try hitting cmd-shift-/

That will bring you to the “help” search box. If you start typing the name of a menu command it will actually search through all of the menus for that command and show you where it exists in the menus. It’s much quicker than it sounds, and is really great for finding a hidden menu item that you know exists somewhere in a complex app.

http://benh57.com/mousezoom.html

and regarding file paths: I always have a terminal window open – dragging and dropping a finder item onto that, pastes the complete path into the window.

also: in the finder hit Command-Shift-G to paste a path directly into a window.

I also made a system-wide shortcut for “Zoom” (with me it’s command-shift-m), since that was the main function I use the mouse for when I wanted to resize a window.

pro tip: I recommend putting expose’s “show all windows of front application” onto the middle mouse button

I second the dragging of a file into a file open dialogue. In a similar manner you can also drag folders/files into terminal instead of typing the path. And the icon in the titlebar will also work too, (unless you have unsaved changes).

The historical perspective on the menu bar at the top of the screen is (if I recall correctly) that Windows copied it, got sued and had to change to what they have now. See Question 5 here for other interesting details: http://www.asktog.com/columns/022DesignedToGiveFitts.html

It’s harsh but it’s true. The same advice applies to people going from Windows to Linux or Mac to Windows etc, you’re changing for a reason, so stop trying to make everything the same.

Why, when I copy a folder named abc onto a separate volume and there’s already a folder called abc there, it deletes the old as it replaces it with the new? What if I’d just removed most of the contents of my local abc to make room, and my external abc folder is supposed to be a bigger backup going a long distance back in time? Now I’ve lost all the old stuff, and only have a copy of the new stuff. If I copy an empty abc folder I end up with an empty abc folder in both places. This is just ridiculous and dangerous.

As for your menu-bar irk, you’re wrong, the Mac way is better from a UI point of view, as you a] know where apple, application, file, edit, etc is all the time (always in the same place) but more importantly, you don’t have to unconsciously slow down as you near the menubar for fear of overshooting it – it’s always at the top, where your mouse will hit even if you just whack it up there.

Instead of copy&pasting the path into a File Open dialog, you can actually drag any folder or file from Finder into the dialog box, and it will automatically browse there or select it. This is a bit scary at first, since you might think this would actually move your folder, but that’s not the case. I personally love this ability and find myself missing it in Windows.

Instead of dragging a file into a window, have you tried dragging it to the icon in the Dock? That’s generally how you would tell an app to open a file. Again, this is something that I prefer to the windows method, since you can’t drag files to anything in the taskbar.

Here’s another tip which I really love about OSX (I think it was introduced in 10.5, maybe 10.4), in most applications, the title bar has the name of the currently opened file, together with its icon. You can right-click on this, and it’ll popup a menu showing the parent folders of that file. Selecting one will open a Finder window at this location. This is a great way to access files that are in the same folder as the currently opened file.