Safari and Firefox - Quick Google Search

Posted by Wendy

Usually, what will you do when you want to start new search with Google search bar on the top-right corner of your web browser? There are three ways to do that.

Type 1. Google Homepage

This is the least advanced way. However, most of my friends still use this way. First, you open new tab (shortcut : T), followed by typing in the url address "www.google.com", filling in the search term and Google will return you the result.

The advantage of using this way is that you can see Google homepage which in special occasion, the logo is changed.

Safari - Easy Private Browsing Toggling

Posted by Wendy

It's quite surprising that when I open my MacBook today, I saw a globe instead of Apple logo. Anyone knows why?

Safari Private Browsing

Ok. Let's talk about Private Browsing of Safari. We all know that with private browsing, whatever we browse won't come out at the History section of our Safari browser. It's quite a nice feature that Safari has.

Add spacers to Leopard OS X

Posted by Wendy

In Terminal.app, execute the command for number of times you want to create spacer.

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add '{"tile-type"="spacer-tile";}'

Then restart Dock. execute this command in Terminal.

killall Dock

Spacer can move with drag, can remove by context menu or drag outside. Another alternative, you also can download divider docks from Dock Dividers.

Display - Hot Corners

Posted by Wendy

In Tiger, Expose is very essential feature that most of Mac user need. Upgrading to Leopard, you also get the access to more Spaces. To use these great features easily, you could use Hot Corners.

Hot Corners

Hot corners help you activate one of those features whenever you move your mouse to the corner of the screen. And you can easily set up your hot corners. How to set up hot corners?

Setting Hot Corners

First of all, go inside ▸ System Preferences... Go to your search box, the one with magnifier at the left, and type in "hot corner" to look for this feature. You will see 2 items highlighted. Choosing either one has the same result.

Screensaver - Another Point of View

Posted by Wendy

Do you remember the most famous Mac Screensaver,
which is named Flurry?

Preview Tutorial - Reading PDF Files

Posted by Wendy

Brief Introduction

Somehow I feel it's quite difficult to read through many pages of PDF using my small display of MacBook. Fortunately, I come out with several ideas to improve the readability of reading PDF files with Preview which is our Mac default application to view PDF files.

Setting Default Application

Perhaps you haven't set up your default opening application for PDF file to Preview, you can do the following steps :

1. Highlight one of your collection of PDF Files
2. Right click on it to show up the contextual menu
3. Mouse over on Open With with modifier keys Option() pressed. You should notice that the name is now changed to Always Open With
4. Choose and Click on Preview
5. Now, you've done setting up Preview as your default opening PDF Files as well as opening that highlighted file with Preview

Developing Rails Application on Mac OS X Leopard

Posted by Wendy

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.

Mac Tablet Computing

Posted by Wendy

Axiotron ModBook

Axiotron Modbook is a tablet Mac which is retrieved by modifying MacBook. The ModBook is not designed for the masses, but that’s precisely why Apple hasn’t made a tablet Mac. Axiotron is authorized Apple solution provider. Apple is approving, even though it's not actually supporting. Maybe sooner or later, Apple will take part in the good market share for this kind of niche product solution, who knows?. You can read the forum to find out more about this cool device.

Calculator - Programmers' Best Friend

Posted by Wendy

Have you experienced yourself trying really hard to convert from hexadecimal to binary, or other common base for programming purpose? You won't experience that issue again after mastering Programmer Calculator.

Change View - Programmer Calculator

As its name, this calculator is designed for programmers with many logical operations and functions embedded, such as AND, OR, XOR, etc. To open the Programmer Calculator, you need to open your calculator and then go to ▸ View ▸ Programmer 3.

Opera - Installing User-Defined Script

Posted by Wendy

With Opera, you can do something similar to Firefox add-on called Greasemonkey.

Greasemonkey is used to customize webpage to be displayed as your own preference. However, if you're not Firefox user, you also can do this by using Opera.

How to do that? Let's explore those steps.