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Mac Tricks and Tips, Wallpapers and Applications for Mac Users
Mac Applications for Video Recording
Nowadays, I have been hunting for good mac applications to record screen of my Mac. And I found these five applications are good enough to do the task: ScreenFlow, SnapzProX, ScreenMimic, iShowU and Jing.
Their prices are varying. They also have their own uniqueness. Here are what I thought of them.
Jing
Price : $0.00 alias Free
Let's start from Jing.
With Jing, you can record video of your screen up to 5 minutes. The recorded video is in the swf format. The file size of the result is quite big so that it's not compatible for recording long video.
Change Safari Default Search Engine
Nowadays, we depend on search engine to get information from around the web. I myself depend very much on search engine. Currently, Safari is using Google as its default search engine.
But here comes the issue, a setting will never satisfy the mind of several millions people surfing the web. Some of us maybe want to use Google UK as our default search engine, some maybe prefer using Yahoo!
With Inquisitor 3 installed on your Safari, you will be able to change your Safari default search engine easily.
Here are the steps you need to do :
- Download Inquisitor and follow the installation instruction
- After you've finished installing Inquisitor, relaunch your Safari for the change to take effect
- Go to Safari ▸ Preferences
- Click on Search section to modify settings for Inquisitor
- In the last option box, you should be able to choose your default search engine
Back Button in Firefox 3
Few days ago, we got the new Firefox 3 running smartly and happily. Overall it's quite good and I've encountered no crash up to this point. But there is a thing that maybe will make you feel unhappy: The Big Back Button.
There is a way to make it smaller or even split it with forward button. Here are the things that you should do to achieve that:
- Open Firefox
- Choose View ▸ Toolbars ▸ Customize..
- Look for checkbox labelled Use Small Icons and tick it
- If you want to split Back and Forward buttons, choose the option box: Show Icons and Text
Take Screenshot of Entire Webpage
There are times when you want to take screenshot of webpages, but obviously you can't use simple print screen which can only take part of the webpage as big as your screen display. So what should you do to capture the whole webpage?
Saft Safari Plugin
Recently, I've found this nice Safari plugin called Saft, which is a Shareware. Saft gives you ability to have a screenshot of entire webpage and save it as a PDF file with a single click.
Set Default Web Browser
You can use Safari to set your default browser. This can be done by following several steps:
- Open Safari
- Go to Safari ▸ Preferences.. or Using Keystrokes Command-Comma
- Choose General Section
- Select Default Web Browser and Done
Preview Tutorial - Reading PDF Files
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 :
- Highlight one of your collection of PDF Files
- Right click on it to show up the contextual menu
- Mouse over on
Open Withwith modifier keys Option pressed. You should notice that the name is now changed to Always Open With - Choose and Click on Preview
- Now, you've done setting up Preview as your default opening PDF Files as well as opening that highlighted file with Preview
Skype - Get Hidden Emoticons
Playing around with Skype recently drawing out my curiosity to discover more and more of its emoticons.
Visible Emoticons
At first, I think Skype's emoticons are limited only to 72 default emoticons. Who knows that Skype actually has more hidden in depth.
Shown above : 72 Skype default visible emoticons.
Font Book - Handling Fonts
Eventually, you will find that you've so many fonts installed on your Mac. Some of them might share the same name. How to handle them?
Disabling Fonts
Let's assume that you've many fonts stored inside your Font Book. It's good news, but sometimes it will become bad news. Why? Whenever you want to search for a particular font, you need to trace all of them; What a tedious task.
Why don't you just remove unused fonts? It's not recommended. If you totally remove the font, if it happens that in the future you need that particular font, you'll need to go to the source site and re-download it.
Fortunately in Mac, you can temporarily turn off some fonts. These turned off fonts won't be displayed on other applications and inside your font book next to these turned off fonts, OFF will be displayed.
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.
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.
Leopard : Essential Applications for Blogger
I've become a blogger for quite a long time. During the process of compiling my article, these applications are essentials for me.
Editing Images
Adobe Photoshop CS2
This is my basic image editor. For blogging purpose, CS2 is more than enough but if you've quite a money on hand, you can purchase CS3. I love it especially when I can give effects on images with Photoshop.
Automator : Automate Your Tasks
A brief information regarding to Automator on Wikipedia :
Automator is an application developed by Apple for Mac OS X that implements point-and-click (or drag-and-drop) creation of workflows for automating repetitive tasks. Automator enables the repetition of tasks.. (source : Wikipedia - Automator)
If you are looking for several examples of Automator workflows, you can look inside my other articles here and here.
Also there is a very nice detailed information from TUAW regarding to the basic of Automator.
Free HTML Editors for Mac OS X
- Komodo Edit
-
Multi-language editor for creating quality code.
- Nvu [read: N-view]
-
Free web pages editor that definitely help you manage a website easily even without
technical knowledge of HTML.
Best Offer of the Week
Macintosh Applications in Bundle
From image above, you could say that now is the time to equip your Mac with powerful applications. They come in bundle and much cheaper price. Therefore, you can improve your productivity while save your pocket money. What a great deal here. If you're interested, you can check out Mac Update Promo.
Leopard - 40+ Helpful Automator Applications
File Processing
Simple automator applications that can be helpful for your file processing.
For these automator applications, you need to specify your files by dragging those files to the automator application icon.
Adium New Features
Should I, as a former Windows user that only have MSN messenger and YM! accounts, change to Adium instead of using iChat that cannot support both of them for free?
MeBeam Integration
Thanks to anlumno for submitting this MeBeam Integration to Adium Xtras. And here is the good news, with MeBeam Integration we can now initiate video chat with our friends on Adium. This fact strengthen my desire to switch to Adium.
Note : This is just a temporary solution for Adium Video Chat. I am currently waiting for Adium itself to provide video chat.
Sapiens the Application Launchers
The question is "Will Sapiens beat Quicksilver?"
Surprising? Yes it is. Sapiens has, according to me, more familiar user interface than other application launcher. More interesting, Sapiens can detect your mouse circle movement. This mouse gesture will launch Sapiens.
Unlimited Icon Storage, RapidoStart
What a rescue, RapidoStart can store as much as launching icon preferred instead of limited Dock storage. After experiencing RapidoStart, it's fully recommended to drop as many as icons instead of dropping them one by one.
Fun with Font Book
Introduction
Mac can support multi language. This can be seen in its Font Book. Mac provides us many fonts for language other than English, and also adding font can easily be done.
Collecting a mountain of cool font styles will be very easy.
Accessing Font Book Library
- This action can be done in two ways: fast and slow.
- The fast way is using Quicksilver.
- Invoke your Quicksilver using keyboard shortcut Option-Space.
- The targeted Application is Font Book. Therefore, typing font will perfectly do the Quicksilver searching.
- Pressing Return and the Font Book Library will appear.
- The slow way is by tracing pile of folders with mouse.
- The main destination here is located under Application folder. And it's just clicking around and around until reach the Font Book Library. It's easy, but it's bloody slow.
A Glance of Font Book Library
