For as long as i am able will copy this to this thread for everyones use/information.


The Secret Screen Capture Shortcut

Okay, you probably already know the ol’ Command-Shift-3 shortcut for taking a screen capture of your entire screen, and you may even know about Command-Shift-4, which gives you a crosshair cursor so you can choose which area of the screen you want to capture. But perhaps the coolest, most-secret hidden capture shortcut is Control-Command-Shift-3 (or 4), which, instead of creating a file on your desktop, copies the capture into your Clipboard memory, so you can paste it where you want. (I use this to paste screen captures right into Photoshop.)


Smart Mailbox Idea:
Mail Older Than One Year

If you’ve got email that’s more than a year old just clogging up your Inbox (and taking up valuable space), you can use a Smart Mailbox to help you do some fast email house cleaning.

Just Control-click on the email account (or your Inbox if you don’t have multiple accounts) that you want to clean up, and then choose New Smart Mailbox from the contextual menu.

When the Smart Mailbox dialog appears, from the first criteria pop-up menu on the left, choose Date Received.

From the next pop-up menu over, choose “is before the date,” and in the final field, type a date that is approximately one year before today.

Click OK and all your email that is one year old (or older) will appear in that Smart Mailbox.

To delete that old email, just click on the Smart Mailbox, press Command-A to select all the email, then press the Delete key on your keyboard.

Now, the nice thing is that tomorrow more one-year-old email will appear in that Smart Mailbox (thanks to its live updating), and the next day, and the next day, and so on, so your mailbox never has more than one year of archived messages.

So, about once a month, click on that Smart Mailbox and easily delete all the old email.


Create Your Own Keyboard Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts are such huge timesavers, but sadly, not all Finder commands have them.

But they can, because you can create your own.
Here’s how: Go under the Apple menu, to System Preferences, and choose Keyboard & Mouse.

When the dialog appears, click on the Keyboard Shortcuts tab, then click the plus (+) sign at the bottom left of the dialog.

Another dialog will appear. Choose Finder from the Application pop-up menu, and then type the exact name of the menu command you want to add a shortcut for.

Now type the shortcut you want to use and click the Add button. It’s that simple.

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Stickies: Saving Your Text Colors

"You’ve been able to colorize text in Stickies since at least Mac OS 10.1, but did you know that you could save your favorite colors and apply them with just one click? (Obviously, I’m hoping you didn’t or it really kills this tip.)

To do so, just highlight a word, then go under the Font menu and choose Show Colors. When the Colors dialog appears, choose the color you’d like. Then, click-and-hold in the horizontal color bar up top (where the color you’ve created is displayed), and start dragging slowly — a tiny square will appear under your cursor. Just drag-and-drop this square onto one of the white square boxes at the bottom of the Colors dialog.

This saves that color for future use, so when you want it, all you have to do is click once on that square (no more messing with the color wheel). This is a great place to save commonly used colors like red, solid black, white, etc."

Kind Regards

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Sending Huge Attachments


"Most email servers have a limit to how large an attachment they’ll accept. Most limit an attachment size to 5MB (some even less), and if you email somebody a 6MB file, it’s probably going to get “kicked back” to you as undeliverable.

Want to get around that? Use iChat instead. Once you have an iChat session started with someone, you can go under the Buddies menu and choose Send File.

Navigate your way to the file you want to send, click OK, and the file will be sent to the person you’re chatting with (and a link to download your file will appear in their iChat window). No matter how big the file size is, it’ll get there."

Kind Regards

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Close all but current Finder window Mac OSX
(MacWorld)

"If you work with the Finder a lot, you probably already know that Option-clicking the close widget (the red dot in the window’s title bar) will close all open Finder windows. But what if you want to leave the frontmost window open, but close all the rest? Here are two answers to that question.


The easy way


In the window you wish to keep open, hit Shift-Command-G. This will drop down a “Go to Folder” dialog. Now hit Command-Option-W—this is the keyboard equivalent of Option-clicking the close widget. When you type this command, every window other than the frontmost one will close. Now just hit Escape to dismiss the dialog, and you’re set.


The fancy way


Using a simple AppleScript, you can create a tool for your toolbar or sidebar (or you could assign it to a hotkey using a third-party keyboard shortcut tool). Open Script Editor, in /Applications -> AppleScript, and paste in this simple script:



tell application "Finder" repeat while window 2 exists close window 2 end repeatend tell

Save this as an Application, and check the Run Only box. Now drag the application you just created onto your toolbar or sidebar, and just click it whenever you want to close all but the current window.

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Forward one Mail attachment
(MacWorld)

After that long weekend, you’re probably just easing back into the week—seems like Tuesday’s the new Monday, right? To help with the transition, here’s a nice simple Mail tip.


You may occasionally receive a Mail message with more than one attachment—a number of pictures of your new niece or nephew, for example. If you want to forward this message to others, it’s simple. Just click the Forward button and you’re done. But what if you only want to forward one of the many pictures? You could save the attachments to the Finder, open a new Mail message, and attach the image you wish to forward to the new message. Or you could open a new message in Mail, and drag the attachment from the original message to the new message.


While both the above methods work, here’s a potentially simpler third option. In the original message, select (click once) the attachment you wish to forward, then hit the Forward button. A new message will open, with just the chosen attachment included. Presto! This trick only works for attachments that show in the body area of the message. If the attachments are only listed in the Attachments section of the header, you’ll have to save them locally first.


This trick works because Mail basically sees the attachment as text—and when you select text in a Mail message and click Forward, only the selected text is quoted in the forward. You can use this method to attach more than one object, but since you can’t selectively select objects in Mail messages (Shift-click will select everything between the current selection and the cursor), it’s not all that useful.

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Checking for Bad Fonts
(APPLE PRO TIP)


f there’s one thing that can bring a document (or your system) to its knees, it’s using a corrupt font (meaning a font that accepts bribes — sorry, that was lame).

Anyway, finding out which fonts on your system might be corrupt was no easy task, but in Tiger, it just got a whole lot easier. Here’s how to search for rampant font corruption:

Go to your Applications folder and launch Font Book.
You can either click directly on any font that you might think is suspect (look to see if the font is sweating),
or
Command-click on the fonts you want interrogated, then go under Font Book’s File menu and choose Validate Fonts.

This brings up a Font Validation window and if your fonts are on the up and up, you’ll get a little round checkbox beside them.

If there’s reason to believe something may be wrong, you’ll get a yellow warning icon beside a font.

If it’s corrupt, you’ll get a round icon with an X in it, telling you not to use this font. Click the checkbox beside that font, then click the Remove Checked button to remove this font from your system.

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Apply labels by application type
(MacWorld)

Kirk McElhearn published a hint here one Friday about how to find the Intel-native apps on your Mac. Today’s geeky entry is a follow-on to that hint, and it goes one step further. Using an AppleScript, we’ll actually apply color labels to each type of application.

The first step in using this hint is to get the script. That link should open Script Editor for you (you may see a warning about an external protocol handler first), and insert the code for the script. If it doesn’t, you can copy the source, open Script Editor, and paste it into a new script. I’m not going to try to explain every line of the script, but here’s how it works in general:

Run the System Profiler report for your machine.
Grab the Applications and Extensions section of the report.
Loop through the report, looking for applications.
Based on the value of certain found text, set a color label variable for the application.
Use the Finder to apply the calculated label.

The script will look for the three major types of applications: Intel, which is a program that will run only on an Intel-powered Mac; PowerPC, code that will run on both PowerPC and Intel (via Rosetta) Macs; and Universal, code which runs natively on either PowerPC or Intel Macs. You can assign a color (or lack of color) for any of these application types. As provided, the script will color Universal applications green (“green means go!”), PowerPC applications blue, Intel-only applications yellow, and any “other” application types will be orange. You can easily change this by editing each line this section of the code:

if the_line contains "Intel" then set app_type to 3else if the_line contains "Universal" then set app_type to 6 -- set app_type to 0else if the_line contains "PowerPC" then set app_type to 4else set app_type to 1end if

One suggested edit is already included—by uncommenting (remove the -- at the start of the line) the set app_type to 0 line, and commenting the line immediately above it (add the -- at the start), your Universal applications will have no labels. Why might you want to do this? On an Intel Mac, most of your apps may be Universal, as seen here (note also the blue PowerPC app and the two Intel-only apps):

That may be too much green for your eyeballs; using the above edit, those applications would have no label applied. Feel free to change any of the other colors as well—the code numbers for each color are included in the body of the script.

Once you’ve made your edits, save the modified script, and click Run in Script Editor’s toolbar. Now wait until you see the Run button become active again (this can take a couple minutes). That’s it, you’re done—switch to the Finder, and you’ll see all your labeled applications.

Finally, if you run this, then decide you’d rather not have any labels, change every set app_type to … line to read set app_type to 0, then run the script again. Zero means “no label,” so you’ll clear everything by setting all applications back to color zero.

Link Here:
http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/macosxhints/2006/06/apptypecolor/index.php


Kind Regards.

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Copy customized color pickers
(MacWorld)

As THIS ARTICLE EXPLAINS, it’s possible to do many things with the color picker to help customize the colors you typically work with—for instance, you can drag color swatches into the empty bins at the bottom of the window for easy future use.


But what if you have multiple Macs, and you want them all to have the same customized color picker? It’s as simple as copying a file (or folder) from machine to machine. On the machine whose color picker you’d like to use, find the user’s Library/Colors folder. Inside of that, you’ll either see a single file named NSColorPanelSwatches.plist, or that file and any number of image files. If you see just the single file, copy it to the same location on the target Mac, and you’re done. If you see a number of files, then you’ll want to copy the entire folder—the images there are being used for custom color palettes within the color picker.


If you’d like to give all the users on your single Mac the same color picker, the process is essentially identical. The easiest way to copy the file or folder over is to user the target user’s Drop Box, which you’ll find under their user name, in the Public folder. Just copy the file (or folder) to that location from the source Mac, then use fast user switching to activate the other account. Move the file or folder out of the Drop Box and into its proper spot, and you’re done.


The truly ambitious out there could probably automate this process, using Automator or AppleScript, so that the color pickers always stay in sync."


Kind Regards.

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Your Buddy Doesn’t Need a Camera
(Apple Pro)

If your buddy doesn’t have a camera connected, but you do, you can still have a one-way video chat. That way, your buddy gets to see and hear you on his end. The only downside — you don’t get to see him.

Here’s how it works: Click on your buddy’s name in the Buddy List, and then go under the Buddy menu and choose Invite to One-Way Video Chat. Again, your buddy will see and hear you, but not the other way around. Well, technically, if he has a Mac with a built-in microphone (many Mac models fall in this category), then you’ll be able to hear your buddy, too.

Kind Regards

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Force spellcheck anywhere
(MacWorld)

"Within any text entry field, pressing Shift-Cmd-; (Command- will force that text field to be checked by OS X's built-in spell checker. I find this useful when I need to quickly figure out the spelling of a word. If I am in Safari, I just type it into the search field and hit Shift-Cmd-; and know instantly (without selecting and control-clicking) whether it is spelled correctly or not.

This is a documented keyboard shortcut (in the Edit menu), but the use of it within a text entry field makes it unique enough to publish as a hint. It should work by default in most any Cocoa application, and certain other applications that support OS X's text handling features."

Kind Regards.

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The many faces of Get Info
(MacWorld):

Most of you are probably familiar with the Get Info window, which you activate by selecting one or more items in the Finder and then pressing Command-I (or choosing File -> Get Info).

This window is useful for things such as checking permissions, file sizes, file counts for items in folders, changing the Open With application, and much more. But even if you do know about the Get Info window, you may not be aware of the fact that (as of OS X 10.4) that it actually has three variants. Which one to use depends on what type of information you’re looking for, and how many items you have selected.


The Get Info window

This is the traditional information window that’s existed in various versions of the Mac OS for many, many years. The Get Info window is a “static” window—once opened for a given Finder selection, the contents of the Get Info window won’t change.


In versions of OS X prior to 10.4, if you selected multiple items in the Finder and hit Get Info, you’d get a nice summary window showing the size of the items in the Finder selection. In 10.4, however, that behavior has changed, with (of course) an exception. If you select 10 or fewer items in the Finder and hit Command-I, you’ll get (up to) 10 distinct Get Info windows. This change is a welcome one, for it makes comparing more than one file or folder quite simple.


If you select 11 or more items in the Finder and hit Command-I, you’ll get the 10.3-style Multiple Item Info window—a single window containing summary information for the selected items. But what if you want to get this same summary info for a selection of 10 or fewer items? Then you’ll want to use one of the other style info windows…


The Summary Info Window


If you want to see the summary info window for any Finder selection, regardless of the number of items in that selection, hold down the Control key, and then pick File -> Get Summary Info. The Summary Info window, as seen at right, will open. Alternatively, just use the handy Control-Command-I keyboard shortcut. This will force OS X to create a summary info window for your selection, even if you have 10 or fewer items in that selection. (This window is new to 10.4; 10.3 users have a Get Info window that acts like the Summary Info window.)


Like the Get Info window, the Summary Info window is static—its contents will always reflect the Finder’s selection at the time the window was activated. Changing the selection in the Finder won’t change the contents of the Summary Info window. While this makes it great for comparing different Finder selections, it’s not so good for viewing the information on many different files, especially if you have more than 10 such files to examine (as you’d then get the Summary Info window). To make that process easier, you need a dynamic information window, one whose content changes as you change the selection in the Finder. In other words, you need the Inspector window.


The Inspector Window

The Inspector window is always a summary window—regardless of how many or few items you have selected, you will always see only one window representing the summary of that selection. (Obviously, with one item selected, you see only that item’s info.) To activate hit, hold down Option and choose File -> Show Inspector, or use the Command-Option-I keyboard shortcut. The main benefit of the Inspector window is that it’s dynamic—as you select new items in the Finder, the contents of the Inspector window change to reflect the current selection. If you want to check a lot of files in a hurry, but don’t necessarily need to compare them to one another, the Inspector is a fast way to do just that. Some people have even used the Inspector as a simple media player, leaving it open and then playing movies and audio files directly in the Inspector. This saves a trip to QuickTime or iTunes, and if you’re just reviewing things, the small movie size won’t be an issue.


So there you have it; more than you might ever have wanted to know about the Get Info window and its close relatives, the Summary Info and Inspector windows.

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iTunes visualizer secrets
(MacWorld)

"If you’re an iTunes user, you’re probably familiar with its visualizer, those nifty visual effects that you enable via Command-T, the Visual Effects button in iTunes’ main window, or using the Visualizer -> Turn Visualizer On menu item.

As your music plays, colors, lines and images flow from your iTunes window in an oddly hynpotic manner. If you’ve played with the visualizer much, you’re probably aware you can control how it behaves—certain keystrokes control different behaviors.

For instance, press F to toggle the frame rate display on or off, or press O to enter overscan mode, which is useful if you’re watching the visualizer on a television set.

There are a number of other commands, and you can see them all by pressing H or / (the question mark key), (there are two screens of commands; press H to toggle through both of them).

As you can see, you can control quite a few variables—everything from seeing the current configuration’s name (press C) to choosing a configuration by number (0 through 9), or choosing a random configuration (R).

But what’s not apparent is that there are some other visualizer options available. These will be easier to use if you first press C, which puts the configuration information at the top left corner of the visualizer screen. Once it’s visible, try these keys:

Q and W will cycle the available configurations (the top row of the configuration display). As you change configurations, give iTunes a second or two to catch up, and you’ll then see a new shape on your screen.

A and S will change the waveform (the second row of the configuration display). Again, wait for iTunes to catch up after pressing either letter, and you’ll see a new wave shape overlayed on your chosen configuration.

Z and X will change the colors in use for the chosen configuration (the last row of the configuration display).

Finally, if you’re really keen on seeing the Apple logo in the middle of your visualizer, you can have it appear at any time by pressing B. Presto, instant Apple logo. (To make it go away again, press H—or any other ‘show something’—keystroke.)"

Kind Regards.

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Getting a Transcript of Your Chat
(APPLE PRO SITE)

"There are a dozen reasons why you might want a written log of your text chats; maybe someone gave you instructions, a recipe, or just typed a bunch of stuff that cracks you up.

Well, luckily, you can ask iChat to keep a running log of your text chats — go under the iChat menu, to Preferences, then click on the Messages icon, and turn on Automatically Save Chat Transcripts."


Kind Regards.

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Cycle Calculator's modes
(MacWorld)

Here’s a quick and handy tip for those of you who use OS X’s bundled Calculator program. As you may know, the calculator has three modes—Basic, Scientific, and Programmer, available under the View menu. You can switch between modes with the menu, or the listed keyboard shortcuts (Command-1, Command-2, and Command-3). But here’s another way to toggle modes: just click the green “maximize” button at the top left of the Calculator’s screen.

Each time you click, the calculator will cycle to a different view mode. Not a huge timesaver, but for those who like to keep their hands on the mouse, now you can control the Calculator in a keyboard-free manner.

Bonus hint: Another strangely-behaving maximize button can be found in the iTunes Equalizer (Window -> Equalizer). Just as with the main iTunes window, clicking the green maximize button on the Equalizer window will give you a “super small” window. Instead of seeing the adjustable sliders for each audio band, you’ll only see the on/off toggle, and a pop-up menu from which you can choose a pre-defined equalizer setting.

Once you have your equalizers set up, you can use this mini mode to easily switch between them without wasting a lot of screen real estate.


Kind Regards

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Where Does That File Live?
(APPLE PRO)

If you found the file you were looking for, and want to know where it is on your hard disk, just move your cursor over the result in the Spotlight menu, and in just a second or two, a tiny dialog will pop up showing the path to that file.

Kind Regards.

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