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Mac Tricks and Tips, Wallpapers and Applications for Mac Users
Mac Screen Savers for Special Effects
Nowadays, screen savers are created with stunning effects combined with all possible movement enhancements. However, from all those screen savers, only few to provide screen savers with different functionality.
"Screen saver for showing movie, is such exist?" ask one of our readers. Indeed, there is such a screen saver and you will find many other screen savers with interesting ideas.
Before proceeding, you may look at other screen saver collections:
Let's proceed to special screen savers.
Elegant Apple Mockups 2: Mythical MacTouch
"If MacTouch is to be built by the big family of Apple, what will it look like", this question seems to be vibrating near my ears all of sudden. Out of my curiosity, I go Google-ing for MacTouch.
Some remarkably interesting MacTouch/MacBook Touch mockups, possibly made by Apple fans, are found.
Create Booklet with Mac Preview
One of the missing yet necessary utility from our Mac Preview, though we've gotten many other extra features, is the ability to print document as booklet.
Unlike normal printing option, to print a document (or maybe, eBook) as booklet the order of the page is extremely important, e.g. order of the page for printing 8-Page document should be 8-1 2-7 6-3 4-5, which will consume up most of the time in the process of ordering.
Therefore, to create booklets of our documents, we will need…
Highlights of 2008
Before starting the new year, we will take a brief look at UsingMac resources during year 2008, including remarkable Mac applications, killer tips and tricks, awesome wallpapers collection, time saver keyboard shortcuts and other interesting stuffs.
Mac Screen Capture Tricks
Capturing screen of Mac is not just limited to keystrokes Command-Shift-3 alone to capture the whole screen. Some may feel unnecessary to know many screen capture tricks. Some feel the urge to explore more of this nifty screen capture features.
As I've experienced, I found out many practical screen capture tricks, such as Screen Capture Part of Screen, Screen Capture the Screen Saver and many others.
If you've followed UsingMac for quite a time, you will find that I've mentioned some of the screen capture tricks in my previous articles. Here, I will add more tricks, along with the old tricks, to provide more complete and useful resource.
Before going further, you can take a look of other resources related to Screen Capture:
Let's get started!
Mac Resources for Your Christmas
Christmas is coming and it's the right time to start decorating your house, as well as your Mac.
Maybe there are already a lot of free Christmas resources around the net, but I'd like to make one special list for Mac.
Though this is not a huge list, but I've tried to cover the most interesting things on your Mac, such as screen saver, wallpaper, and many other fun stuffs. So, what are you waiting for now?
Wallpapers of the Month: December 2008
We're back again with the stunning wallpapers collection! Though we just started two months ago, we feel joyful to receive overhelming response from our readers.
Our eyes are just as sharp as last time to filter out the best wallpapers from huge selection of wallpapers around the world. As usual, we prefer to present you wallpapers with distraction level as low as possible in order to maintain your productivity level at its highest.
Before proceeding further, we would like to suggest you other great wallpapers compilation that we've made:
- Remarkable Apple Wallpapers
- 200 Mind-Blowing Nature Wallpapers
- Beautiful, Inspiring Firefox Wallpapers
- Wallpapers of the Month: October 2008 & November 2008
Here you go, our wallpapers selection for this month!
Mail Keyboard Shortcuts
Without any doubt, Mail is the most welcomed Email Client. It's also the most essential Mac application. In my daily Mac usage, Mail has never been absent from my workflow.
There are lots of features provided by Mail which will take us dozens of hours to read through all of them. I, as a lazy reader myself, would gladly suggest some of these keyboard shortcuts to help you utilize most of Mail features.
Before proceeding to the list of keyboard shortcuts, these are several previous articles for your reference to get the most out of your Mail:
- 10 Nifty Mail Tricks that You Definitely Want to Know
- Ten Useful Mail Plugins
- Change Mail Alert Sound
- Change Flag Icon of Mail
- Mail Tips: Marking Messages
Continue reading and you will see a list of more than 60 Mail shortcuts!
Mac Resources: November 2008
Happy new month, and hope this last month will be this year best month to close the year. For those who have been following usingMac up for quite a while, we are really thankful for all the watching, comments and suggestions. We have done our to bring the best stuffs, tips and tricks for all current and soon-to-be Mac users.
We compiled couple of important, useful and mostly interesting roundups that has happened in the past month alone. Hope you will enjoy them.
Mac Apps that Stand Out from the Crowd
There are too many Mac applications readily available which, either directly or indirectly, confuse most Mac users, making them hard to find the best application. On the other side, most application developers also feel really itch-scratching to think of fresh and unique application.
To my surprise, some developers have amazed me with their applications that came out different than others, such as application to set different Docks on different Spaces, to set different wallpaper on different Spaces, to bring you to cleaning room, and many other creative yet useful functionality.
There are many of them, but here I will mention some that I am currently using.
Mac Image Viewers
Most Mac users will like to use Preview as their image viewer. Most users will also use iPhoto. But few of us, feeling not satisfied with these built-in applications, seeks for better image viewers.
As a matter of fact, there are many Mac image viewers built by developers, such as Xee, CocoViewX and Sequential, just to name a few. After having fun with some of them, I've come up with this list of Mac image viewers to share with you.
Let's see what are these Mac image viewers.
Spotlight Tweaks
Though there are large selection of Mac Application Launchers, many still don't intend to switch from the blazing Spotlight.
To satisfy the demand of many Spotlight fans, I will discuss several Spotlight tweaks that I usually play around with. I hope you can use these tweaks wisely.
Several UsingMac resources that will be helpful for you to improve your Spotlight experience:
- Leopard - Optimizing Spotlight Search
- Spotlight - Indexing
- Leopard Spotlight - Calculator Functions
- Change Shortcut for Spotlight
But before we started the tweaks…
Disclaimer
We won't take any responsibilities for damages or data loss due to practicing the content of this article. Please kindly backup your files involved in the tweaking before you proceed.
Now let's begin the tweaking process!
100+ Free Applications for Mac OS X
Most of the time, Windows users are reluctant to switch to a Mac. One amongst many reasons is that they found it hard to search for free softwares/applications for the Mac. Some of them have already switched to a Mac, but they're still running Windows OS on a Mac.
It's such an irony that actually there are mountains of free Mac applications available for us. After days of working on this, I've come out with list of free and useful Mac applications.
I've categorized and arranged the order of applications so that it will be extremely easy for you to find applications you need for your Mac.
Continue reading and you will see fabulous list of 100+ Free Mac OS X Applications!
Tricks for Mac Stickies
Stickies, as the name suggests, is an application readily available on your Mac to let you stick your thoughts - in a form of small notes - on your Desktop.
Stickies reside inside Applications → Stickies.
Not only limited to making notes, but with Stickies you can also perform several tricks, such as embedding picture, scrolling down notes, making stickies translucent, and many other tricks.
Upon continuing reading this article, you will see several tricks for using Mac Stickies.
Social Networking Gets Easier with EventBox
DIGG, Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter are my daily visits. However, have you even imagine having all of the benefits of these sites nicely packaged in your Mac Desktop?
EventBox!
This is the solution, EventBox packs all of those online services into a sleek and simple box and - as the name suggests - the box is called event box.
Quicksilver Tricks
Many have tasted the increase in productivity by using Quicksilver as their Application launcher. Some even built more Quicksilver skins to make it look nicer. But only a few realized that there are still more Quicksilver actions available for them to use.
As one of the Quicksilver's big fans, here I am with full enthusiastic, presenting default actions and cool tricks that you can do with Quicksilver.
Funtastic iTunes Visualizers
Hearing music alone isn't enough; Hearing music and seeing the amazing visualizer are most satisfying. Not only we can throw our stress away but we can also kick off our boredom.
Apart from latest iTunes 8 Visualizer, there are still many others interesting iTunes visualizer that can be plugged in easily to enhance your iTunes. To run your iTunes visualizer, you can use keystrokes Command-T and keystrokes Command-F to toggle full screen mode.
Let's see some funtastic iTunes visualizers.
Wallpapers of the Month: November 2008
Without even noticing, time flies by so fast and another month has come upon us. Deep inside my heart, I believe that all of us have already bored with the collection of wallpapers currently on hand and starting to go out seeking for fresh and new wallpapers.
After days of rumbling around the net, we on UsingMac are proud to present you collection of best wallpapers for this month, November 2008. These wallpapers are chosen by the eyes of us to make your widescreen display even more attractive yet still keeping the distraction level to its lowest.
Here you go, wallpapers of the month!
Mac Resources: October 2008
As I can say, this month is the most fascinating and historical month for UsingMac. We're launching new beautifully designed sleek template for UsingMac on this month.
Not limited to that, UsingMac has also compiled bunch of useful Mac resources for you. With these resources, some of you can be benefited by its productivity boosting nature while some of you can be proud of the power of the Mac customization that is exposed to you by our UsingMac team.
45 Mac Keyboard Shortcuts for Firefox
People are just getting more and more enthusiastic to set Firefox 3 as their default web browser - including Mac users. And you should be one of them, which most of the time spend your time surfing around the web.
This surfing activities could be really frustrating if you heavily depend on your mouse. I highly recommend you to get your hand away from your mouse and start to practice mouse-less browsing with your keyboard, i.e. using keyboard shortcuts.
It won't spend you more than an hour to have a glance and practice some of these Firefox shortcuts that I've compiled. I also include keyboard shortcuts for Windows Firefox to emphasize on the idea that it's not that hard to adapt yourself to new Mac environment, especially for new Mac switchers.
You will also want to see my previous keyboard shortcuts compilation :
- Mac OS X Leopard: 200+ Productivity Booster Keyboard Shortcuts
- 100 Mac Keyboard Shortcuts for Creating Symbols
- 25 Useful Shortcuts for Safari
- Modifier Keys and Their Impact on Keyboard Shortcuts
- 40 Mac Keyboard Shortcuts for Finder
Continue reading and you will see a list of 45 Firefox shortcuts!
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.
Mac Application Launchers
Most Mac users feel that Application launcher is the most essential Application for them to install. Application launcher can save our valuable Dock spaces and assist us in boosting our productivity.
There are several application launchers available on the net. They have their own uniqueness, advantages and disadvantages. I am sure you will stick to one Application launcher, just like other power Mac users.
But for the very first time, you need to choose amongst many Application launchers, which one you love the most.
Dock Tweaks for Mac OS X Leopard
We know that Dock is one of the most essential features on your Mac, without your Dock, I can say that you will lose roughly half of your productivity. Even folks at Windows are imitating the Dock, as can be seen here, here and here also.
As a big fan of tweaking, I love to play around with the system files of the Dock. And more importantly, I've found out several tweaks that I believe will give you an extra boost in productivity and self proud.
But before we started…
Disclaimer
We won't take any responsibilities for damages or data loss due to practicing the content of this article. Please kindly backup your files involved in the tweaking before you proceed.
Now, I've shouted it out, let's begin our tweaking!
Mac OS X Dock Pillows
Most fan clubs have their own mascots, accessories, uniforms, etc etc. So what do you think is the most possible special accessories for Mac fanboys?
It's the pillow! To keep you warm all the time and also to always remind you that you will never be able to turn back once you've join our Mac fanboy club - also called Mac Fanboyism.
Sorry guys, no killer tricks for today, you can only see killer pillow… :)
Ten Useful Mail Plugins
Mail has long become our daily visit, essential application; Whether it's for opening incoming messages or reading fresh RSS Feeds. Many have used Mail plugins to optimize their performance, how about you?
Here are some of the Mail tips and tricks that you may want to know.
- 10 Nifty Mail Tricks that You Definitely Want to Know
- Change Mail Alert Sound
- Change Flag Icon of Mail
- Mail Tips: Marking Messages
- Mailbox Archives
You can expect to see several great plugins upon reading this article. Feel like to continue reading?