More meaningful icons!

A great tip submitted by Anthony Grzina: More meaningful icons! Thanks for the tip Anthony! (All the following text was composed by Anthony)

We all know that stored documents produced by all applications can be viewed on the Desktop, or in Folders, by columns, lists or icons. Here we consider only documents that are viewed as icons.

Some well known applications use only one standard, default icon for every one of their documents. A few of the most prominent and most used applications among these are: MS Word, MS PowerPoint, MS Excel, Adobe Acrobat and Apple QuickTime.

Most other applications produce for each document a different and individual icon, which is simply a standard size miniature of the first (or only) page of the particular document.

This second method allows, in general, for a quicker and easier search for a particular document. Admittedly, Word documents consisting of text only, or Excel document with stacks of numbers only, would not be very recognisable when of icon size. However, if a Word or Excel document contained some identifiable part anywhere within it and if this part was then converted to its identifying icon, that particular document would become more easily recognisable.

I recently re-read a “QuickTime Pro Users Guide” and rediscovered the fact that it is possible to create a picture out of any part of a QT movie. This set me thinking and I came up with the following method for producing individual icons for most documents of practically all applications.

Look at the side-by-side icons in the picture at right. In the left column are the immediately recognisable default icons of documents produced by Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Acrobat and QuickTime respectively. They tell us nothing about the contents of the document. In the right column are the same documents, but each with its own individual icon.
Note that for the purpose of this exercise, I added an asterisk (*) at the end of all copies of the documents at right.
Note also that the new icons are not necessarily miniature copies of the very first (or only) page of the particular document, but rather that they are any part of any page in the document, which would make it more visually recognisable and more easily searchable.

Here is how I produced the top-right icon:
1. In my files, I found and opened the MS Word document “The EURO area.doc” by double-clicking its icon.
2. I opened page 2 of this document, where there was a map of all European countries, which currently use the Euro currency.
3. With fingers of both hands I clicked Command, Shift, Control and 4, all together. This temporarily replaced the arrow on the screen with a 2mm grey circle with short cross-hairs.
4. I moved the circle to the top-left corner of the map, pressed the mouse and dragged to the bottom-right corner of the map and let go. This action placed a copy of this selection onto the Clipboard.
5. I closed the document and clicked on this document’s icon in my files, to select it.
6. I clicked Command-I to open the Get Info window of this document.
7. I clicked the Word default icon in the top-left corner of the Get Info window to select it.
8. I clicked Command-V to paste the map picture from the Clipboard on top of the default Word icon and replace it.
9. I closed the Info window. Job done: the document in my file now had the new map icon as shown above.

I used exactly the same steps to produce all other icons on the right.

Getting any videos in Front Row!

A great tip submitted by Laurent Lenert: Getting any videos in Front Row! Apple did a very good job with Front Row especially with its simplicity. The only thing with something that simple is that it is there, but there isn't much information about how to use it at its best. I have a lot of videos on my hard drive in a wide variety of formats. I don't want to have to import them all into iTunes just to get them in Front Row. On top of that, there are some great video formats that iTunes doesn't work too well with (such as DivX). Well it seems there is an easy way of getting that content into Front Row without changing much. In the Front Row "Videos" section, there is a sub-menu called "Movies". This brings you every video stored in the "Movies" folder, located in you Home folder, into Front Row. The only thing with that is that I like to keep that folder organized by iMovie by keeping other videos stored elsewhere. You can easily solve that problem with an Alias. Just create an Alias of the folder containing all the videos you want in Front Row and paste it in the "Movies" folder. What is great is that it works with every video format I tried (including DivX). Thanks for the great tip Laurent!

Publishing your calendars without .Mac!

I have to admit that being able to share calendars between Macs was really one of the features that convinced me to get .Mac. .Mac is great, but it is pricey for what it offers especially if you are not interested in every features included in the package. There is a pretty cool website that offers the service of web published and shared calendars free. It is called iCal Exchange. To publish and share your calendars from iCal:

1. Go to http://www.icalx.com/
2. Choose "Create an account" in the right sidebar.
3. Follow the instructions to open a free account.
4. Once your account is created, you can login to get the URL to publish to. The URL should be http://icalx.com/private/accountname/ for private calendars or http://icalx.com/public/accountname/ for public calendars.
5. Now you are ready to go to iCal.
6. In iCal, select the calendar you want to publish at the left.
7. Go to "Calendar" and choose "Publish".
8. For "Publish on", choose "a Private Server".
9. Paste the URL in the "Base URL" field.
10. Enter you login and password for iCal Exchange.
11. Check "Publish changes automatically".
12. Click on "Publish".
13. It will display "Calendar Published".


You calendar is now on the Web. To get it on another Mac:

1. Copy the URL iCal gave you when it displayed "Calendar Published".
2. In iCal (on your other Mac), go to "Calendar" and choose "Subscribe".
3. Paste the URL of your published calendar.


You are done! You now have a .Mac like way of sharing your calendars between Macs and accessing them on the Web!

Editing photos in a separate application!

iPhoto is a great application for managing a relatively large photo library as well as for importing from your digital camera. When it comes to editing however, even with the super secret advanced editing mode (see previous tip), it is still lacking many features. This is where applications such as the Gimp (the Gimp is a free open-source photo editing application requiring X11) or Photoshop comes into play. Unfortunately, neither of these applications offer a quick and easy way of bringing the photos from iPhoto and returning them to your library once the editing is done. Well it seems like Apple didn't forget this issue and included a very well implemented solution.

First, go to "iPhoto" and "Preferences...". In the "General" tab, there is an option called "Edit photo:". From there, choose "In application...". A dialog window will pop up where you can choose any editing application (Photoshop, the Gimp, Seashore). The only downside now is that every time you double-click on a picture, that application will launch. If you would rather have the iPhoto editing by default and be able to choose when to send the picture to Photoshop, switch the "Edit photo:" back to "In main window" (or the other options if you prefer).


Basically what you did was you told iPhoto which application you want to use as your "external editor". Now, you will still be brought to iPhoto editing mode when double-clicking on a photo, but when you right-click on a picture, the option "Edit in external editor" is no longer grayed out.


It basically adds an "on demand" separate editing application from within iPhoto! What is really awesome about that is when you hit "Save" in the editing application, the photo will change automatically in iPhoto.

Saving Ram without dashboard!

A great tip submitted by Hunter Evans (Hunter's website): Saving Ram without dashboard! I find widgets very efficient and I count widgets as better for productivity. Many people find widgets a waste of system resources however. It is true that many computers might not take as much advantage of widgets than personal computers. It is especially true on a video editing or production workstation and also on older Macs. You can really see the effect of widgets on Ram and processors when watching "Activity Monitor". There is a useful feature in OnyX that comes to the rescue by entirely disabling the dashboard to avoid having all these extra applications running in the background. OnyX is a free application for maintenance and customization that can be downloaded for free here on MacUpdate. This is the "Dashboard and Exposé" tab within the "Parameters" of OnyX where you can choose to enable or not dashboard:

Front Row with Internet Radio!

This is a great tip submitted by Laurent Lenert (tip from entertainmac.com): Front Row with Internet Radio! iTunes has the option of listening to radio stations over the internet since a long time. Even though Front Row is now a year and a half old and has been updated many times, this option never popped up. Well it seems Front Row and iTunes already have everything needed to take advantage of that and only a little bit of tweaking will solve everything. To do it:

1. From iTunes, choose the internet radio stations you want to have in Front Row.
2. Add these stations to your library.
3. Finding these stations in Front Row is tricky, especially if your library is very large. The best way of grouping all the stations in a single place in Front Row is with a smart playlist. So you only have to create a smart playlist based on "Kind" and looking for "MPEG audio stream".
4. You're done! Now, in Front Row, you only have to search for that smart playlist and you can play your favorite internet radio stations in Front Row and using your Apple Remote.

Thanks for the great tip Laurent and EntertainMac.com

Capturing from your iSight with QuickTime!

This is a very useful tip to use QuickTime Pro as a quick and easy capture application. It can be used to capture from any camcorder hooked up to your computer with Firewire. What is even better is that if there is no camera hooked up to your computer, you'll automatically
get the video from the built-in iSight. Even though I often edit movies in Final Cut Pro, I think the QuickTime interface is so much simpler for capturing. To use it, you simply have to go to "File" and choose "New Movie Recording". A window pops up where you are ready to
hit "Record" and capture the video from any camcorder or from your iSight.

Set a screen saver as a background!

It would be awesome sometimes to be able to use a screen saver as an animated background. Another thing that would be cool with that is using the RSS Visualizer to transform your background into an RSS reader. OnyX lets you do that very efficiently. OnyX is a great free software for customization and maintenance. It can be downloaded here from MacUpdate.

Once it is installed and loaded, you simply have to go to the "Parameters" tab. Within the "General" tab, there is an option called "Animated Desktop Background". This will let you choose any screen saver and apply it as the background. It unfortunately doesn't seem to work with downloaded screen saver such as Fenêtres Volantes.

Alphabetizing Safari's bookmarks!

A great tip submitted by Barbara MacLeod (tip from macosxhints.com): Alphabetizing Safari's bookmarks! The bookmarks menu and folders can get pretty messy with time and sometimes, it would just look better in alphabetical order. There is no option for that included with Safari, but there is something you can do to easily solve that issue. So you simply have to go to the bookmarks management (click on the little open book at the left of the bookmark bar. Then, you can drag a folder of bookmarks to a new folder in the Finder. Sort the bookmarks by name and you are ready to drag them back to Safari. For the bookmarks to stay in alphabetical order, you cannot drag a list of bookmarks but a folder containing those bookmarks. The bookmarks will now be sorted in alphabetical order. You might end up with a duplicate folder, but it is easy to get rid of that duplicate. Thanks Barbara for the great tip!

More specific Spotlight searches!

A great tip submitted by Kush Patel: More specific Spotlight searches! Spotlight searches are sometimes not as good as they should, especially if you have a lot of files with similar names. It is possible to narrow the results down by specifying the type of file you are looking for by adding "kind:type of file". Here is an example showing a search of all the applications that contain "itu":


Thanks for the great tip Kush!

Lock your screen!

A great tip submitted by Diego Carmona: Lock your screen! This is another great way of enhancing security when you leave your computer for a few minutes. It works a lot better than using fast user switching if you only have one account. This works by adding the "Keychain" menu to your menu bar:

1. Go to Applications, Utilities.
2. Open "Keychain Access".
3. Go to the Preferences and check "Show Status in Menu Bar":


A padlock will appear in your menu bar. It will bring up this menu:


Selecting "Lock Screen" will start your screensaver and when you come back on your computer, it will ask you for a password even if you don't have a passworded screensaver. It is basically an "On Demand" passworded screensaver"! Thanks for the tip Diego!

More info on the weather in iCal!

Many readers found the solution to avoid downloading the weather every week to get it in iCal and consequently on your portable devices. This is concerning last Tuesday's tip "Weather in iCal". Instead of clicking on "iCal", you can right-click on it and select "Copy Link Location". After that, you just have to go in iCal and choose "Subscribe" from the "Calendar" menu. Paste the link, press "Subscribe" and you now have the weather in iCal and it will be updated just like an RSS feed. Thanks everyone for helping find this solution!

Don't forget to take a look at the tip posted earlier today.

Pasting as a quotation!

When you reply to an email, the email you are replying to always appear as a quotation with the bar at the left. It is not easy to add the quotation look to a text without hitting "Reply" to a specific email. It can be especially problematic if you want to answer an email you got on your cell phone or maybe through instant messaging. What I am saying is that sometimes, an email reply is not necessarily a reply to another email! Apple didn't overlook this problem of course. There is this cool feature hidden in Mail's Edit menu called "Paste as Quotation". With this, you can get the text from any location and add it to a reply as though it came from the email you are replying too! There is even a keyboard shortcut: Shift-Command-V.

Create a DVD from the Finder!

This is a pretty cool Automator script that will let you choose photos and movies from the desktop and create in a single click a complete DVD with a very nice menu. So you'll first have to download a new Automator action from automator.us. It is the "Download 22: Create Magic DVD". Once this action is installed, open Automator:

1. Add "Create Magic DVD" from the iDVD actions.
2. Choose the iDVD theme you want applied when the "magic dvd" is created.
3. You can also preset a project name.
4. Go to "File", "Save as plug-in...".
5. Choose Plug-In for "Finder".
6. Name the project.
7. That's it!


Now, anywhere in the Finder, you can highlight photos or movies, right-click and choose "Automator", "Create DVD" (or the name you chose for this plug-in). iDVD will launch and create the DVD with the right menu and with the files you highlighted!

Better fast user switching!

Fast user switching is really a great feature as it lets us switch user without logging out. I know fast user switching doesn't come enabled by default so I'll go through that first:

1. Go to System preferences.
2. Choose "Accounts".
3. Click on "Login Options". (If Login Options is grayed, you have to unlock it by clicking on the padlock and entering your administrator password first).
4. Check "Enable fast user switching".

Fast user switching is now enabled. The name of the account you are in should now be displayed in the corner, close to Spotlight. What I didn't like about how this option comes by default is that the name of the account might take a huge part of your menu bar (especially on a laptop or a smaller screen). This can be solved in "View as" that is just under the "Enable fast user switching" checkbox. You have the option of: "Name", "Short name" or "Icon". I think the icon is the best as it really doesn't takes up much space but the feature is still on hand.

Another cool option that can be changed in the Login Options is whether you want to be logged in automatically when you start your computer. I guess that depends if you prefer a quick log in or more security.

Another thing that you can change is if you want to "Display the login window as" a "List of Users" or "Name and Password". This again depends on the level of security you are looking for. The list of users will be faster, but it is probably less likely that someone will guess both your username and password.

Another thing that you can do, once all this is done, is to use that "Fast User Switching" menu as an extra level of security. Before leaving your computer, go to that menu and choose "Login Window...". It'll display the dialog with the different accounts and anyone will have to enter a password before starting to use your computer. Doing this is nearly useless if you still have a quick passwordless login though!

Activity monitor in your Dock!

Activity Monitor is a pretty geeky app, but it is a truly amazing one as well! System slowdowns are usually caused by processes happening in the background that can occupy a lot of your ram or your processor. Even though there are no known virus for Macs, performance can still be affected by bugs or corrupted data. It is also really cool to watch Activity Monitor when pushing the processor to the limit with video encoding or another demanding task. Well, this can be done without having yet another window taking up precious screen real estate. In fact, it can be done right from the Dock. If you click the activity monitor icon in the dock and hold it for a few seconds, a menu will pop up. From there you can choose "Show CPU usage" in "Dock icon".


The icon will turn into bars that indicate the load of the CPU. Two cores:

Four cores:

Notification when you receive a new email!

This is a pretty cool Mail add-on that will display a semi-transparent fully customizable notification when you receive a new email. The program called Mail.appetizer is still in Beta but it works very well and I have only seen positive reviews. Once it is downloaded and installed, you can customize the notification in "Mail", "Preferences". There is not enough space in the Mail preferences for this add-on, so it's not in the top bar. There is a new arrow at the right, that is where you'll find it:


The settings are quite straightforward. You can adjust a lot according to your preferences: font size, transparency level, number of seconds it displays it, etc. The size of the notification is not adjusted in the preferences. You have to be in the preferences so you get the sample window, but you just have to resize that sample window. The changes to the sample window will remain.

Weather in iCal!

This is a great tip submitted by Tom: Weather in iCal! Getting the weather predictions right in your calendar can be useful especially if you are synching your calendars with your iPod, Palm, Cell Phone or any other portable device. There is a good weather website, http://www.wunderground.com/, that brings you the weather predictions right in your calendar. First, you have to find your location and click on the button that says "iCal". It will download the calendar and you can add it to iCal by loading the downloaded file. From what I can see, it is not working with a RSS feed. That is unfortunate, because it means you will have to redownload the weather for the week ahead every week. I think it is still worth it if you want to get that weather on a portable device. Thanks Tom for the great tip!

Pasting without formatting!

Copy and Paste are about the most useful features in any kind of word processing. There is only one annoyance with these features and it's that depending where you get your content, it might affect the formatting. It happens a lot, especially with content from websites. Well, there is an awesome function in both Microsoft Word and Pages that solves this very efficiently.

In Microsoft Word, you just have to go to "Edit" and choose "Paste Special...".


The "Paste Special..." dialog will appear and from there, you can choose "Unformatted Text" and click "OK". That's it, the text will be pasted while matching the existing formatting already in the text.


In Pages, it is even easier. You just have to go to "Edit" and choose "Paste and Match Style". You can also use the keyboard shortcut "Shift-Option-Command-V".


I like the way it is done in Pages much better. It is a lot simpler and there is a keyboard shortcut!

Searching sent emails!

It happens sometimes that I have to find a reply I sent to someone, but checking it out in the sent mail folder is usually a mess. Well, Mail has a pretty cool way of finding it quickly. When you reply to someone's email, Mail will add a small arrow at the left of the email you just replied to. That's very useful to quickly see which email you already answered. Well it turns out that this arrow has even more use than that. You can click on it and it'll bring up your reply. There's no need of searching through the "Sent Mail" folder to find it anymore! Take a look on the screenshot here:

Creating playlists in iTunes!

A great tip submitted by Jesse Lieman-Sifry: Creating playlists in iTunes! There is a very cool program called "The Filter" that selects a bunch of songs from your iTunes library and creates a playlist according to what you want to listen to. The way it works is that you select three songs that are in the style you are looking for and the app will generate the rest of the playlist according to that. I wasn't sure at first of how well a software could do this, but it really works great. Once it is installed, you simply have to create an account, choose three songs from your iTunes library and click on the "F" to generate the playlist. Download the Filter from Apple.com here! Thanks for the tip Jesse!

Screenshot:

Setting a chat background!

A great tip submitted by Dj Feld: Setting a chat background! You can set a background to the conversations in iChat. When you are chatting with someone, go to "View" and select "Set Chat Background". From there you simply have to choose the photo your want to set as the chat background and click "Open". That's it!


If you want to remove the chat background, you can use the option just under called "Clear Background". Thanks for the tip Dj Feld!

Applications switching within Exposé!

This is a great tip submitted by Christopher Whidden: Applications switching within Exposé! Exposé is very useful for switching applications or windows, but if you have too many windows open, it might not work that well. You can always use F10 instead of F9, but you'll only get the windows within a specific application without being able to switch applications. Well there is a really cool way of switching applications when using F10. First, press F10, then press "Tab" to switch applications. Using that extra "Tab", you can cycle through all the applications that have windows open. Without using the mouse, you can also choose which window you want to open by using the arrows then either "Enter" or "Space Bar" (this works with both F9 and F10). Thanks for the tip Chris!

Backing up is the key!

We might only realize it when we lose everything on our hard drive, but backing up is really the key in keeping our files safe and our system always up and running. There is a great free application that makes this process a lot easier. It is SuperDuper 2.1.4. They call it shareware but you can download the free version and there are only a few options that are locked. All the necessary functions for backing up are working in the free version. Once it is installed, you can choose to back up all your drive or only parts of it to either a disk image or another drive. The application is a universal binary and can be downloaded here from MacUpdate.

Moving photos and text when designing a website!

Moving stuff around in iWeb with the mouse while keeping it aligned with something else can be tricky. The keyboard is then the solution as you can choose whether you want to move it horizontally or vertically. The only problem with the keyboard is that it is slow, very slow. I found this neat little trick so that you can choose how fast the text or the picture will move. So you can use the arrows as usual for precision work, and when you want to move something a lot, you can press "Shift-arrows" (left arrow, right arrow, up arrow or down arrow). With this awesome way of moving things around, there's no more point of using the mouse for this!

Reveal in the Finder!

A great tip submitted by Kev: Reveal in the Finder! Anywhere in the Finder, you can "Command-Click" on an application in the Dock and it will show the folder where it is located in the Finder. It is most of the time the applications folder, but it is a quick way of bringing it up. In the same way, you can use the option "Reveal in the Finder" in the downloads window in your web browser. Downloads are usually saved to the desktop, but honestly, my desktop gets so cluttered that it's a hassle to find the file. Clicking "Reveal in the finder" show it in the Finder and even highlights it so that I am ready to press "Command-O" to open it. This useful feature is located in Safari at the right of the downloaded file (the little grey icon). You have to right click in Firefox and select it from the menu. In Camino, it is the "finder" icon at the right (it is written "Show" under). Thanks Kev for the great tip!

Safari:



Camino:



Firefox:

Browsing photos in the Finder!

A great tip submitted by Csaba Illes: Browsing photos in the Finder! If you have a huge library of photos, iPhoto can get slow and not be as responsive. Sometimes, you also want to have certain pictures in folders without having to import them into iPhoto. It can be done, but the folder might not be as aesthetic as on Windows where you have all the thumbnails. This problem can easily be solved by modifying the view options of certain folders. In the pictures folder, press "Command-J" to open the view options, choose "This window only" (if you don' t want this all around the Finder) and check "Show icon preview". This unfortunately only works in the pictures folder that comes with your OS. You can also change the size of the icons to get bigger thumbnails. Thanks Csaba for the tip!

Converting movies to an Apple TV compatible format!

A new version of Handbrake just came out and there is a whole lot of new features. One of the most interesting one is if you have an Apple TV. There is a quick preset at the right that set the right video settings to get the best quality possible while keeping the file size down. This will enable you to watch your DVDs on your all your networked computers as well as your Apple TV. This new version of Handbrake also adds chapter markers. If you check this option in your output settings, you will be able to skip through the chapters within QuickTime or your Apple TV. Screenshot of the new Handbrake:


Encoding the video will take quite a long time however. I tried a two hours movie on a Quad 2.66GHz Mac Pro and it took an hour (activity monitor was showing 300% usage of the processors). For a commercial encrypted DVD, you will have to use Mac the Ripper first to remove the encryption. Download Handbrake from MacUpdate here.

Searching from the address bar in Firefox!

A great tip submitted by Ryden Armstrong: Searching from the address bar in Firefox! You can easily search in Google or Wikipedia using the address bar by entering "wp " (for Wikipedia) and what you want to search. It is "wp" for Wikipedia and "google" for Google. Google is not really that useful because Firefox has a built Google search bar anyway, but it's really good for Wikipedia. What is even better is that you can create a keyword for the website of your choice. You simply have to browse to the site you want and right-click in the search bar:


You then choose "Add a Keyword for this Search...".


You now just have to name the bookmark, enter the shortcut you want to use in the address bar in "Keyword" and click Add. You are now ready to search the site by entering, in the address bar, the keyword you just chose as a shortcut followed by what you want to search. Thanks for the tip Ryden!

Unified Mac look!

The brushed metal look of the Apple applications has been around for a long time is not really unified anymore. Applications such as Mail or iTunes have somewhat abandoned this brushed metal look. Well, there is a pretty cool program that unifies the whole system around a new look (very similar to Mail or Camino). It is called UNO 1.5.1.

The install process is very simple. Once it is downloaded and installed in your applications folder:

1. Open UNO.
2. Click install in the upper left corner.
3. And now you just have to choose the options between "Uno" and "Uno Shade" as well as between "Blue" and "Graphite" and click Install in the lower right corner. Uno is similar to Mail while Uno Shade is more like iTunes 7.


The change is also not permanent. If you want to get rid of it, you don't have to "Archive and Install" as it comes with an uninstall function. Download UNO 1.5.1 from MacUpdate here.

Non-breaking space in Pages or Microsoft Word!

A great tip submitted by Dominic P. Tremblay: Non-breaking space in Pages or Microsoft Word! A non-breaking space is very useful when typing a document and the automatic formatting chooses to cut the sentence at an undesired place. For example, cutting a sentence with an "Enter" right between "Mr." and "Steve Jobs" looks weird:


This issue can be solved with a non-breaking space. In either Pages or Microsoft Word, you simply have to press "Option-Space". The result looks like this:


Thanks Dominic for the great tip!

Changing the minimize effect!

A great tip submitted by Mohammed Sabti: changing the minimize effect! There is a way in Terminal to change the "Genie Minimize Effect" to the "Suck Minimize Effect". It is actually even easier to do it with OnyX. Once OnyX is installed, you can change the Minimize Effect in the Dock Parameters. The options are "Genie Effect", "Scale Effect" and "Suck Effect". Once you choose the effect you want, it will reload the Dock so that the change be effective. Thanks Mohammed for the tip! Download OnyX here on MacUpdate.