Font Panel: ACCESS SPECIAL CHARACTERS FROM THE MENU BAR

If you need a quick special character (such as é, or °, or ^) but don't know which keyboard combination you need to create it, you can have the Character Palette (a list of every character) added to your menu bar. Here's how: Go under the Apple menu and choose System Preferences. Click on the International icon. When its pane appears, click on the Input Menu tab, and turn on the checkbox for Character Palette. This adds a little icon (that looks like the flag of your chosen native language) to the far-right side of your menu bar, where you can quickly choose Show Character Palette without going through the Font panel.