The Quality Without A Name

Option-⌦ (that’s option-forward-delete) is the standard Mac key sequence for deleting the word to the right of the text cursor.  For some reason, Mathematica doesn’t understand that by default.

To correct this problem, edit this file:

/Applications/Mathematica.app/SystemFiles/FrontEnd/TextResources/Macintosh/KeyEventTranslations.tr

Find the line that contains the word “ForwardDelete”, and add this line after it:

Item[KeyEvent["ForwardDelete", Modifiers->{Option}], "DeleteNextWord"],

Of course you might want to make a backup of KeyEventTranslations.tr first.

It turns out to be very easy to remove the Mathematica Home Edition banner ad from all existing and newly-created notebooks.  Just run this expression:

SetOptions[$FrontEnd,DockedCells->{}]

The effect of this command persists when you quit and restart Mathematica.

Something else you might find annoying is the “Welcome to Mathematica 7 Home Edition” window (the Mathematica Navigator), which appears every time you start Mathematica.  You can prevent Mathematica from opening that window by running this expression:

SetOptions[$FrontEnd,AutoOpenNotebooks->{}]