Folders to Add to Your Dock
(APPLEPRO)

"Adding folders to the right side of your dock can be a real timesaver, and two of the most popular folders to add to the dock are your home folder and your Applications folder. Another thing you might consider, rather than putting your entire Applications folder on your dock, is to create a new folder and put in aliases of just the applications and system add-ons (such as the Calculator, etc.) that you really use. Then you can access these by Control-clicking on the folder in the dock and a pop-up menu will appear that looks a lot like the Apple menu from OS 9."



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Delete stubborn files
(MACWORLD)

"Have you ever had a stubborn file stuck in the trash which seems to defy all attempts at deletion? There are third-party apps you can use, such as Super Empty Trash, which might do the trick. Or you could dive into Terminal and use the power of rm -rf to try to remove the file—of course, if you mess up doing that, you might remove everything on your hard drive. But say you’ve tried the other solutions, and yet you’re still stuck with the troublesome file. Here’s one more thing you can try.


Start by creating a new user in the Accounts System Preferences panel. It doesn’t really matter what name or access level you give the new account; it’s going to have a very short existence. Once the account is created, move the troublesome file from the trash into the /Users/Shared folder. Now (via Fast User Switching or a traditional logout/login), log in as the new user. Open the /Users/Shared folder, and move the troublesome file into the new user’s trash.


Now logout of the new account and log back into your main account. Return to the Accounts pane in System Preferences, select the account you just created, and click the minus sign (or just hit Delete). The system will put up a dialog box asking if you’re sure you want to do this, with three options: Cancel, OK, and Delete Immediately. Select Delete Immediately, and the troublesome file (along with the new user and the disk space they used) will disappear. (If you just press OK, the files from the deleted user will still reside on your drive.)


It may seem a bit time consuming to delete a file in this manner, but it’s very safe (much safer than the Unix solution), and will work on files that seem immune to all other solutions."

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Peek into zip archives

(MACWORLD)

"Do you download lots of stuff from MacUpdate and VersionTracker? Or do you receive collections of files from far-flung coworkers? In many cases, the files you receive will be compressed with the zip compression algorithm—especially as this is the what OS X 10.4’s Finder uses when you choose the Create Archive contextual menu item. Sometimes it’d be nice to look into these archives before you expand them. Perhaps a coworker accidentally sent you 1,500 files instead of 150, or you’d like to see the structure of an archive before you choose to expand it.


You can do this using third party tools, such as Stuffit Deluxe or Springy. These programs install tools to peek inside zip (and other) archives without expanding them. But you can also create your own solution for free, using nothing more than programs included with 10.4.


Start by launching Automator, in /Applications. We’re going to create a fairly simple four-step Automator workflow that will list the contents of zip archives without actually expanding them. The Automator window is split into three main sections—a Library column, an Action column, and a blank work area to the right. To build actions in Automator, you first select a Library, then you drag an entry from the Action column into the work area. Here are the four steps you need to create for this workflow. Drag each specified Action to the work area, in the order shown:


Finder Library, Get Selected Finder Items Action.


Automator Library, Run Shell Script Action. Set the Shell pop-up to /bin/bash, the Pass input pop-up to as arguments, and then enter this command in the blank work area within the action:


Feel free to replace the path and filename with your own preferences, but don’t change anything to the left of that section. What you’ve just done is enter a Unix command, unzip, which will examine the contents of the selected Finder item. Here’s how it works. The -l bit tells unzip to just list the archive’s contents, not actually extract them. The ”$@” piece passes the name of the Finder item, surrounded by quotes (in case the filename includes spaces). The > sign simply routes the output of the previous command to the specified file, instead of routing it to the default output device (the screen, typically). Finally, the path to the file itself is provided (the ~ is a shortcut for /Users/your_username).


Finder Library, Get Specified Finder Items Action. Now things get a bit tricky. In order to specify the file that the previous step creates, we need to be able to point to it in a File Open dialog. However, since we haven’t run the script yet, it doesn’t yet exist. To solve that, switch to Terminal and type touch ~/Desktop/zip_peek.txt. (Alternatively, you could use TextEdit to create a file with a few characters in it, then save it as specified.) This will create an empty file in the proper location. Now switch back to Automator, click the + sign on the Get Specified Items window in the workflow area, and navigate to the file you just created.


Finder Library, Open Finder Items Action. Leave the Open With pop-up set to Default Application.




That’s it for the workflow. When it’s all set up, it should look about like this:



To put your new workflow to use, select File -> Save as Plug-in. In the dialog that appears, enter a name for your workflow (Show Zip Contents, perhaps), and make sure the Plug-in for pop-up is set to Finder, then click Save.


That’s it; you’re done. To use your new zip previewer, first select any zip archive in the Finder. Then control-click on it and choose Automator -> Show Zip Contents from the contextual menu. Note that this workflow can only be used on one file at a time—it won’t work if you have two or more zip archives selected. Also, feel free to delete the zip_peek.txt file when you’re done with it. It does not need to exist at all times (it just had to exist when we were creating the workflow). If it doesn’t exist when you run the workflow, it will be automatically created."

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Finding the Right Special Character
APPLEPRO:

"Okay, let’s say you’re in Mail, and you’re writing the word “résumé,” which used properly should have that little accent over the “é” like I have it here. You know it needs an accent, but you have no idea which keyboards combination will create an “e” with an accent above it.

Here’s a trick for finding any special character: When you’re typing, and you need that special character, stop typing and click the Fonts button at the top of the Mail window. When the Font dialog appears, go to the Actions pop-up menu (its icon looks like a gear near the bottom-left corner of the dialog) and choose Characters to bring up the Character Palette. At the bottom of the Character Palette dialog, you’ll see a small search fIeld. Type whatever you need, such as “acute accent” (without the quotes), and in just a moment a menu of different accents will appear. Double-click on the accent you want and the palette will jump to the mark you need. Close by you should see the character you need. Click on it and then click on the Insert button (or Insert with Font button if you’re searching in Glyph View) just to the right of the search fIeld. Now that letter “é” will appear in just the right place in your email message."



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Changing the Order of the Results
APPLEPRO:

"Let’s say you realize that most of the time you find yourself searching for music, movies, and photos (you’re a creative type). Well, by default those result categories appear farther down the list (with stuff like documents and email and contacts appearing near the top of the list). And because of that, you’ve been spending a lot of time scrolling. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Go to the Spotlight Preferences (found at the bottom of the Spotlight menu), and when it appears, all the categories are listed in the order they will appear. To change their order, just click-and-drag them into the order you want (in this case, you’d drag Music, Movies, and Images to the top)."



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Font Book: Get the Inside Scoop on Your Font
ApplePro:

Believe it or not, Font Book knows more than it’s letting on about your fonts. To find out the full inside info on a particular font, just press Command-I. This spills the beans about that font, including the name of the foundry that created it, when it was created, the font type (Postscript, Truetype, etc.), and more.



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Finding the Right Special Character
ApplePro:

Tip of the Week
Finding the Right Special Character
Okay, let’s say you’re in Mail, and you’re writing the word “résumé,” which used properly should have that little accent over the “é” like I have it here. You know it needs an accent, but you have no idea which keyboards combination will create an “e” with an accent above it.

Here’s a trick for finding any special character: When you’re typing, and you need that special character, stop typing and click the Fonts button at the top of the Mail window. When the Font dialog appears, go to the Actions pop-up menu (its icon looks like a gear near the bottom-left corner of the dialog) and choose Characters to bring up the Character Palette. At the bottom of the Character Palette dialog, you’ll see a small search fIeld. Type whatever you need, such as “acute accent” (without the quotes), and in just a moment a menu of different accents will appear. Double-click on the accent you want and the palette will jump to the mark you need. Close by you should see the character you need. Click on it and then click on the Insert button (or Insert with Font button if you’re searching in Glyph View) just to the right of the search fIeld. Now that letter “é” will appear in just the right place in your email message.



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APPLE PRO:

Tip of the Week
Super-Fast Way to Email a URL
If you run across a cool website and want to email that site to a friend, probably the fastest way is to press Command-Shift-I. This opens Mail, and inserts the Web URL into the body of your email. Now all you have to do is type the recipient’s name, enter “Check this site out” in the Subject line, and click Send.

Then all you have to worry about is their spam blocker stopping your email from getting through with such a generic subject in the title. (Note: If you want a super-slow way, highlight the website’s name, go under the Safari menu, under Services, under Mail, and choose Send Selection — it basically does the same thing.)




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Instant Slide Shows Wherever You Are
ApplePro:

"Let’s say you open a window and there are 20 photos in that window. Want to see a quick slide show of those photos? Just press Command-A to select all the photos, then Control-click on any photo and from the contextual menu that appears, choose slideshow. A full-screen slide show of those photos (complete with a nice smooth dissolve transition) will appear onscreen.

If you want to see only some of the photos in a slide show, instead of selecting all the images, just Command-click on the photos you want in your slide show before Control-clicking on one and choosing slideshow. To quit the slide show in progress, just press the escape key on your keyboard."



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(ApplePro)

"If you run across a web page you want to share with a friend, don’t send her a link to it — send her the page itself. Just press Command-I and a dialog will appear, asking for the email address of the person you want to send this web page to. Just enter her email address, along with your text message, and click send, and it will send the contents of that page (complete with graphics, formatting, links, etc.) to your friend. She’ll be able to see that page right within her email application."



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Converting to TIFF, JPG, or Photoshop
(APPLEPRO)

"Tip of the Week
Converting to TIFF, JPG, or Photoshop
Want to change most any graphic into a Photoshop file? Just open the file in Preview, go under the File menu, and choose Save As…, where you can export your graphic in Photoshop format. But you’re not limited to Photoshop format — Preview will also export your file as a JPEG, PICT, BMP (for sharing files with PC users), PICT, Targa (for video), and more. If the format you’re saving in has options (such as quality and compression settings for JPEG and TIFF images), they will appear near the bottom of the dialog."



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Can’t Remember the Password?
(APPLE PRO)

"If you can’t remember a password for a website (or anything else for that matter), all your passwords are saved in the Keychain Access utility (which probably isn’t news to you), but the cool thing is you can do a Spotlight search from right within Keychain to quickly find the password you’re looking for.

Start by looking inside your Applications folder for the Utilities folder, and inside of that double-click on Keychain Access. When it opens you’ll see a search field in the upper-right corner. Type the name of the site you’re looking for, and it will appear. Double-click on the result and an info dialog will appear, and to see your password, turn on the show Password checkbox."



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From EPS to PDF in No Time Flat
(APPLEPRO)

"This trick is pretty much just for graphic designers who work with EPS images from applications like Adobe illustrator, Coreldraw for Mac, Freehand, and Photoshop. If you want to convert your EPS image instantly into a PDF (ideal for emailing), just drag it onto Apple’s Preview application icon in your dock (or in your Applications folder) and Mac OS X automatically converts your Postscript file to a PDF on the fly. When you choose save from the File menu, it will save as a PDF."



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Where Did That Download Come From?
APPLEPRO:

"If you download a file from the web, you can usually find out exactly where that downloaded file came from (including the exact web address) by pressing Command-I when you have the file selected. Once the info dialog appears, click on the right-facing arrow beside More Info to expand that panel and it will display a Where from header, and to the right of that it will show the exact web address from which the file was originally downloaded."



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Go Directly From Your Video Camera Into QuickTime
(APPLEPRO):

"There’s a very cool feature that sneaked into QuickTime Pro 7 that has kind of flown below the radar so far. It’s the ability to record directly from your digital video camera (or a microphone) right into a QuickTime fIle, without having to go through iMovie, Final Cut Pro, or a third-party application.

Just connect your digital video camera (or even your iSight camera), launch the QuickTime Pro Player, then from the File menu choose New Movie Recording. A QuickTime window will open showing you a preview of what your camera is seeing. Now just click the round red record button at the bottom of the QuickTime window and it starts recording.

Click the stop button when you’re done and you’ve got an instant QuickTime movie. It works the same way for recording audio using your Mac’s built-in microphone (provided of course that your Mac actually does have a built-in mic), but instead of choosing New Movie Recording, you’ll choose New Audio Recording. Note: you have to upgrade from the standard QuickTime to QuickTime Pro to have access to this feature."



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