It happens a lot in the design business. You’re taking copy from one document and using it in another. The problem is that when you copy your text and paste it in your new document, the formatting comes with it. All the fonts, all the colors, all the special text treatments. You’re stuck “un-formatting” only to have to reformat it in the new style. Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be this way.

Mac OS X offers a simple way to paste text from any document into another document completely unformatted. Simply copy the original formatted text as you normally would using Command + C. Then, instead of pasting the text normally, paste it using Command + Shift + V.

Enter Palua, from Molowa. Palua allows you to customize WHEN and HOW the F-Keys are used. For instance, you can set Palua to use the standard F-Keys just the way Apple intended when you’re in the Finder, Safari, iTunes and iWork—but automatically switch to standard F-Keys when you’re working in certain apps. And it switches automatically.

For instance, I have Photoshop set up to perform a number of custom actions when F-Keys are pressed, but switch back to the regular controls when I switch back to the Finder or other apps. The beauty of Palua is that the F-Key mode is switched automatically for specific apps you set, or can be manually switched with a keyboard shortcut or clicking the menubar icon.

I’ve been using Palua for quite some time, and it’s one of my favorite utilities. Palua is available in the Mac App Store for 99¢.

Being the fan of keyboard shortcuts that I am, I rarely pass-up the opportunity to use them. Here are a few keyboard shortcuts for selecting text in virtually any Mac OS X application that allows text entry.

Placing your cursor at any point in a line of text, you can:

• Select text one letter at a time by hitting Shift + Left/Right Arrow
• Select text one word at a time by hitting Shift + Option + Left/Right Arrow
• Select all text to the beginning or end of a line (from wherever your cursor is currently located) by hitting Command + Shift + Left/Right Arrow

I knew there were other similar shortcuts, and a quick search brought up this great set of Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts for navigating and selecting text at OSXDaily.

Paul over at OSXDaily has put together a short list of essential iTunes 11 keyboard shortcuts.

• X = Swaps the active state of Fill and Stroke in the Tools panel
• / = Sets the Fill or Stroke (whichever is active) color to None
• , (comma) = Applies the selected object with the last color used
• Shift + X = Swaps the Fill and Stroke of the selected object in your document (if you have a box filled with red and no stroke, hitting Shift + X will fill the box with none and stroke the box with red).

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These are just my favorite shortcuts, but you can view a full searching for ‘shortcuts’ under Safari’s Help menu.

Having used the Mac since the mid 80s, and Adobe Creative Suite apps just as long, my brain is trained to use keyboard shortcuts. I can’t remember the last time I moused up to the menubar for something that has a keyboard shortcut available.

Learning keyboard shortcuts can take a long time, but a clever Swedish developer has created CheatSheet for the Mac OS X 10.7 that displays all the available keyboard shortcuts for the app you’re working in with the click of a button.

Learning keyboard shortcuts is made easy with CheatSheet

CheatSheet is a faceless application. There is no interface, no preferences to set. You simply hold the Command key down and a large white overlay appears which displays all the keyboard shortcuts. CheatSheet runs on Lion only, and is free.

Adjust the volume by quarter bars at a time

Instead, just hold down the Shift + Option keys while using the Volume keys on the keyboard. This will allow you to adjust the volume (up or down) by quarter bars at a time, instead of full bars at a time.