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thats a nice touch, thanks MDN!

oaky

AWESOME!

This feature seems to work in a whole load of applications including TextEdit, Mail and Stickies and iWork. Also if you use select the Thesaurus function, that works as well where appropriate.

Leave it to Apple to come up with a system-level dictionary/thesaurus that actually works, although I have a vague recollection that the Next dictionary/thesaurus function was quite good.

Fabulous little feature. It actually works with most mac apps that handle text, such as text edit and mail. What apple needs to do is to incorporate the dictionary into the contextual menu, so you can operate it without the hot keys, which are cumbersome

Butt eye hafnt upgraided two Tigger yett!!

HDL,

Mail and TextEdit do have "Look Up in Dictionary" in a highlighted word's contextual menu! Just highlight and Control-Click (right click for multi-button mouse users) on a word in Mail or textEdit to see it work.

I just read this hint over at MacOSXHints, and while selecting a word and pressing Control pops up the dictionary, the cursor hover thing with Command-Control-D doesn't work in Safari for me, but it works in TextEdit and other Cocoa apps. What gives?

Just put your mouse on a word (no need to select) and do "Ctrl + Cmd + D".

Then, if you continue to hold down the control and cmd keys and move the cursor to other words, you can see the dictionary in action on the other words as well.

Enjoy!

Uh, very cool!

IT guy,

Thanks, but that's exactly what I'm doing and it still doesn't work in Safari, but it works in TextEdit. I'm puzzled as to why it's not working.

This feature gets even better. If you go into your dictionary application and change the preferences of the contextual menu behavior, the same little "preview window" appears when you choose "Look Up In Dictionary"! No separate application launching anymore!

Viridian, was not working for me either but I am in Dvorak. Using instead Dvorak - Qwerty clover works. Maybe an issue with different keyboard layout?o

Thats amazing! Wow!

I have to say I'm a little disappointed that they haven't modified the results for looking up the word Tiger.

Cool, now all it needs to do is recognise the appropriate spelling of colour, centre etc etc in British localised machines...

chapmandu-
go to the preferences in dictionary. You can select british spelling. =) Hope that works.

MDN: As far as spelling goes, safari spellcheck works great and that has been in since panther (perhaps earlier). Still, I am absolutely blown away by this.

Seahawk,

Thanks pal, I use Dvorak as well, and that was my first thought, but simply quitting and restarting Safari solved the problem for me.

Yet another fabulous feature, that didn't get any press (so far). Gotta love the Tiger

woah.. damn!

Here's a good one... WTF

My kids will love it.

Absobloominlutely fantabulous!

Can someone tell me why doesn't the ctrl + cmd + d function works on mine?

Sean, I couldn't get it to work either until I realised I shouldn't be highlighting the word first.

I have now re-assigned this to the F13 key and also discovered that the information will update live as you move the cursor to different words.

chapmandu, if such a thing as a UK english .dict file exists to install in Library/Dictionaries you will solve your problem.

Dank, British English Pronunciation in the prefs does not help much, I must be missing something.

Type colour in american & english and try misspelling it like this 'colur' Then right click on each of them to see the problem.

So I gather that this is not localized as yet ... It's about time Apple stepped up the feature parity for non-US residents.

Sory, don't you mean localised.

It would be great if you could copy the word, and/or, the meaning of the word. I don't know how to copy and paste anything out of Dashboard. Does someone know how?

Ive been using it since Tiger came out .. catch up everyone

Yea, I'd like a British dictionary too (I'm an Aussie.) I'm hoping 10.4.3 will have one.

You American's </finger pointing> leave the "u" out of so many words such as colour and harbour for example (which are currently underlined in red.)

However, sometimes you add the U back in again:
Quantas (err, no, it's Qantas actually, coz it's really an acronym!)

Queensland And Northern Territories Air Service

QANTAS

The command-control-D thing absolutely DOES NOT work on my Mac, or any other Mac I have tried it on. Must be a Tiger bug.

The highlight text, then control-click does.

Just did this on a macdailynews page.

kk,

Make sure it's not highlighted, just mouse over it. You probably already knew that, but just pointing it out. I have a bad habit of highlighting things as I read. If I get further down the page and try to use the dictionary, it won't work. But you have to try this feature...easily one of the top 5 features of the new Tiger. Awesome

Nope. The hightlighted text works if I control-click on it, but with text that is not highlighted, the command-control-D does not work.

Ron said:

"It would be great if you could copy the word, and/or, the meaning of the word. I don't know how to copy and paste anything out of Dashboard. Does someone know how?"

Use the highlight, the right-click (or command click for the one-buttons). You can copy and paste it from there.

kk,

Make sure NO text is highlighted anywhere on the page. Probably still won't work..not sure what to do about that.

Just tried it in Mail and it did not work there either. Clean install of Tiger on both Macs in the house.

Weird. All I get is the sound effect coming from OS X telling me I am clicking keys that are doing nothing.

It's such a shame the way MDN is designed that valuable information cannot be retained for future reference.

Just think of all those who don't know....

Anyone know how to map this feature to the F13 button, as the guy did back in May?

fsckingM$,

Scroll to the bottom of ANY page of MDN, type "Dictionary" and click "Search MacDailyNews."

Let me know what happens.

Thanks g,

I activate Dashboard dictionary, type in any word. Cannot scroll over the description, the whole dictionary window moves, right click does nothing.

I think it's not me doing it incorrectly.

kk,

check your keyboard shortcut settings. Make sure it is checkmarked in there.

Ron,

Don't activate Dashboard dictionary. Use the dictionary that is integrated into Safari, not the widget. Then right click, then you can cut and paste from there.

Ron...

Sorry, I thought you were talking about Sarari. That is the way it is supposed to work...but if you use Safari, you won't have this problem.

Another option is to use the Dictionary application.

Wow... I probably should have known about this. Funny that the dictionary widgit is one of my favorite additions to 10.4.






http://www.tigercompatible.com

That was it. System Prefs, Keyboard, Shortcuts....

Somehow, perhaps I changed it to F5.

Now it works!

Thanks guys!

g,

To remap to another keystroke

Go into System Preferences
Go to 'Keyboard and Mouse' and then into 'Keyboard Shortcuts'
It should be self explanatory from there

For those who can't get it to work, go to keyboard preferences, in the shortcut section and activate the feature using the check box next to it (scroll down the list, you'll find it).