UsingMac.com
Mac Tricks and Tips, Wallpapers and Applications for Mac Users
Time Saver QuickLook Plugins
I love to use Quick Look and I believe other Mac users also love this nifty Leopard feature. Not only you can save your time previewing your documents with simple Space button but by installing several more QuickLook plugins, you can peek inside your ZIP files.
It's not limited to that, developers nowadays are still under high spirit to create even more powerful plugins to enhance QuickLook feature. Eventually, I hope we can QuickLook every type of files, including DMG files.
Installing QuickLook Plugin
However, you will need to drag and drop your new QuickLook plugin, which comes in bundle *.qlgenerator, into folder Macintosh HD → Library → QuickLook to make it works.
Let's see what are the interesting QuickLook plugins we have here.
Preview: Handy Color Picker [Leopard]
As a huge fan of Leopard Preview, I always try to do my image editing process with Preview. And I guess today is my lucky day, I discovered how to pick color from anywhere of your Mac screen with only Preview in hex format.
You could see the benefits here: Preview is fast, rarely crash and most importantly: it's free.
Setting Up
Here is the step by step tutorial on how to set up the color picker:
- Open Preview without opening any images file. This way, only the menubar of Preview will be shown on your Mac
- While the menubar is showing Preview, hit keystrokes Shift Command C to reveal one of Preview tools: Show Colors
- Inside Colors Pane, choose Color Palettes which is the third pane from the list of tools
- There you will see the palette chooser. In order to display the hex format of the color, you need to choose palette named Web Safe Colors
- Now, you've done the setting
Grayscale Display [AppleScript]
Inside Apple ▸ System Preferences under Universal Access, you can set your display to grayscale mode. But you cannot find any keystrokes to trigger grayscale display.
In my opinion, grayscale display is more important than good for nothing white-on-black display. You will need to make your display grayscale to your needs, such as printing files or designing web that can also be used by color-blind society.
I wrote a simple AppleScript Application and will share it with you. Here is what it looks like:
Batch Resize Images
While resizing all my images, photos and wallpapers, I came into this great trick to easily batch resize images that I've never read somewhere else before; You can simply use Preview to batch resize images.
Wanna know more?
90 More Nice Apple Wallpapers
Here again, UsingMac.com presents great stumble of Apple wallpapers for you to enjoy. I hope these Apple wallpapers can help you enhance your experience in using Mac. Maybe, just maybe, these great Apple wallpapers can impress your PC friends and turn them into Mac users. *evil smile*
What Do You Expect from Snow Leopard?
Reading article from ArsTechnica about next Apple plan: Mac OS X Code Named Snow Leopard, May be Pure Cocoa shocks me. It's only for Intel which means in the very near future, my beloved PowerPC cannot be upgraded.
Sort Images with Leopard Preview
Unlike in Tiger where you can do image sorting with simple Control-Click anywhere on the sidebar - as discussed in my earlier post Meet the Preview Ultimate Sort Ability, in order to perform images sorting in Leopard Preview you need to click on the gear button (to the left of the slider), expand the menu and choose Sort By.
7 Tricks for Stack You Must Know
Stack has been really useful for Leopard users in organizing and keeping their stuffs clean and well-arranged. Now, there are something in the stack that will definitely enhance your experience.
7. Slow Motion Effect
Maybe you've already heard about this before, by pressing modifier key Shift and clicking on the stacked folders, you can see your Stack opened in Slow Motion. It's worth a try.
6. Open Multiple Folders from Stack
Perhaps, when you want to open multiple files from Stack, you usually open your Stack and then open one file at a time. But with the help of Option, you can click on as many folders as you want and all enclosing folders will be opened in separate Finder windows.
5. Stack in Tiger
Folks from Creative Bits pointed out that Stack can be used in Tiger by simply dragging the folder to your Dock and holding down mouse for like 2 seconds will be needed when you want to open the list of files inside that folder.
But I personally haven't tested this neat trick. So it would be great if some Tiger users can give me useful inputs on this.
4. Drag Stack Out of Dock
By pressing Command while dragging your Stack folder out of Dock, you will make a duplicate of that folder instead of making that particular folder vanish.
100+ Must Know Quick Leopard Tips
There are a lot of things out there that can be done to your Mac OS X. These 101 are just a small collection of those cool things. Since every single trick are too small to be compiled as single article, I decided to combine them all in a single post. Hope you can enjoy it.
Developing Rails Application on Mac OS X Leopard
With Ruby on Rails you can build powerful and dynamic web sites. Read this article to learn how to develop your application using Xcode 3.0 and the tools that come pre-installed in Leopard.
Ruby on Rails is a popular and powerful open source web framework for rapidly creating high-quality web applications. Rails is thriving on Mac OS X, and Leopard comes pre-installed with Ruby, Rails, Mongrel, Capistrano, Subversion, and other tools that help to streamline the development and deployment of Rails applications. We will use the Organizer feature of XCode 3.0 to demo the step of the development.
This article gives you a full tour of Ruby on Rails 2.0 on Mac OS X Leopard and building a web application using the latest Rails features with Xcode 3.0.
Leopard Finder - Smart Sidebar Items
Initially, Leopard Finder has 6 pre-defined smart folders on it sidebar. Actually, there are 11 of them provided. How to activate all 11 of them?
They are called CannedSearches
First of all, you should spot them first. If you follow these simple steps, spotting them won't be hard :
- Open Finder
- Go to Macintosh HD ▸ System ▸ Library ▸ CoreServices ▸ Finder
- Right-click on Finder icon and choose
Show Package Contents - Dig inside Contents ▸ Resources ▸ CannedSearches
Preview Tutorial - Resize at Ease
Why do you need to look for others when you've already had free, capable application shipped along with your Leopard?
As Usual, Find Image First
Some of the readers might have known that I like to find an image before starting my tutorial. Here is the chosen one :
Leopard Spotlight - Calculator Functions
Besides doing logical expression, Leopard Spotlight can also do some mathematical calculations. Are you curious what are those functions?
I know a little bit about Java Programming Language, so I try to use the Math library, which contains some functions to do scientific calculations, on Spotlight. To my surprise, some of these functions work.
Here are some examples :
Leopard - Activate 26 Menu Extras
There are 26 items come along with your Mac OS X that can be attached onto your menu bar. Here is the shortcut to show them all on your menu bar.
Perhaps you have read the new book by David Pogue, The Missing Manual : Mac OS X - Leopard Edition. There is inside written the complete list of all Leopard menu bar items and how to attach them onto your menu bar.
Leopard Mod Tools
Probably some of you guys like to use leopard default features, but some of you may want to do some modification to the current look and feel, theme, the way it works, so that we can increase our productivity, fun and also mood. There is one software that can do most of the stuffs as what I have posted earlier here by using some terminal command line. LeopardMod is the name of this software. It has functionality to tweak finder, dock, dashboard, safari, menu bar, and also expose.
Leopard - Change Default Icon
I've found several interesting icons, but how can I change all icons in just one shot?
Preview Tutorial - Embed Icon into Stack Drawer
It's Something Like This..
You Only Need Preview..
The drawer above can be easily made with only your Mac OS X Leopard little humble Preview.
Leopard - Fast User Switching
You will probably share your Mac with other people. Sometimes, it happens that the person with whom you share your Mac wants to use his/her account for a while. So, what should you do?
Stop All Your Activities and Log Off Your Account?
I thought we're talking about Leopard now. This old-fashioned, troublesome way to switch user is no longer of our interest, I believe.
Fast User Switching
Fast User Switching will be the right choice. Using this, whenever you want to switch to another user, you can just click on one of the accounts, enter the correct password and after a nice switching animation, your view have been changed to another account. Is it cool?
Fluid - Convert Web into Applications
Everyday in your working days, you probably need to check all the same e-mail, news, website or maybe favorite blog site. You should try using Fluid.
Distinguishable Icons
With Fluid, you can convert all of them into each separate applications, which are easily distinguishable. And you will find that you won't need to cycle all your opened web browser tabs in order to find particular site. The icon is customizable and you can put it on your Dock.