One of my favorite new features in Tiger is the Dictionary app. You can open the Dictionary application, access it from the Dictionary widget, or Control-click a highlighted word in any Cocoa application (Mail, Safari, etc.) and select “Look Up in Dictionary” from the contextual menu, but this shortcut cuts to the chase.
Just hover your mouse over a word and hit Command-Control-D. A mini-dictionary pops up, displaying the definition. You can select Oxford Thesaurus from the pop-up menu at the bottom of the pop-up window, or click More… to open the word in Dictionary. Continuing pressing Command-Control-D and you can hover your mouse over any word on the page; the pop-up window will follow the mouse, displaying the defintion for the underlying word.
Via: macosxhints
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2 Responses to “Tiger Tip: Command-Control-D for Dictionary”
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July 12th, 2005 at 11:04 pm
This feature doesn’t seem to be working with my tiger software. It worked once for a brief second, and hasn’t done so since. Any idea as to why it might not work? Thanks.
July 13th, 2005 at 3:14 pm
If you haven’t changed anything in your System Preferences (Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts), it should be working. Make sure the mouse is over a word before you invoke the shortcut keys and that you hold the keys down together (actually, the cursor doesn’t have to be over a word when you press the keys as long as you continue to hold them down when you move the cursor over a word; it may take a second to kick in). Also, remember that it only works with Cocoa applications. So, for example, it won’t work with Microsoft Word. Finally, make sure the application is in the Applications folder.
If you’re following the instructions above and it still doesn’t work, try repairing permissions.