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Mac Tricks and Tips, Wallpapers and Applications for Mac Users
Mac OS X 10.5.2 Update
There is an update for Mac OS X to 10.5.2 which they claim can improve the stability and performance of current version of Mac OS X 10.5.1. together with security update.
Macbook Paper!
Found this video from youtube, very creative idea, cool. Please go to this website to download the pdf to create your very own MacBook Paper! Enjoy!
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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.
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.
Adium - Change Default Font
Sometimes you want to change the look of your font, your font-style or even your font-color when you chat with your friends. You can set this easily inside your Font Settings Pane.
Show Fonts
If you click on Adium Menu Bar ▸ Show Fonts, your Font Setting Pane will pop-up right in front of your eyes, floating over all other opened windows. You can also open Font Setting Pane using keystrokes Command-T.
Open All Safari Bookmarks with a Click
Since the update to Leopard, I've become Safari addict because it not only accelerates faster than other browsers but also provides handy way to manage bookmarks and easy way of accessing them back.
Actually, I was used to be questioning myself how to open all my bookmarks in one category faster. I'd discovered the way, i.e. by clicking on Open in Tabs.
Set Custom Status Message with Adium
By default, Adium only provides five status message for you, i.e. Available, iTunes, Away, Invisible, and Offline. If you want, you can easily create new status message which will inhabit your Adium status message selection for eternal.
Here is how to set your new status message :
Photoshop Trick - Tiny Background Images
If you've ever noticed, you would find out that some of the Desktop Pictures provided inside your Mac have relatively small size and dimension that can fill the whole of your widescreen. This is because those background images can be tiled when it's being set as Desktop Background.
In Leopard, you can find some examples of background images inside folder Mac HD (which is your hard drive name) ▸ Library ▸ Desktop Pictures. Ripples Blue.jpg is one of the small sized repeatable background images I'm talking about.
However, this kind of background images can be easily created. Let's see how you can do it.
Ways to Open Finder Window
Finder is just like Explorer in Windows. There are several ways to open Finder. Switchers, as well as Mac users, will find this article useful.
Finder at Dock
The most common way to open new Finder window is by clicking on the Finder dock icon and this is also the way I use at the very first time using my Mac.
Mac Special Characters
There are bunch of symbols that can be created using keyboard shortcuts as I mentioned on my previous article : 100 Mac Keyboard Shortcuts for Creating Symbols. Unfortunately, not all of available symbols on your Mac can be called out with keystrokes. That's when Character Palette comes in handy here.
Character Palette
For all applications which are specially designed to run on Mac OS X, you can open the Character Palette. There are two ways to open it : navigating through the Flag or accessing via Edit Menu; The latter is easier.
The Flag is located on the right side of your menu bar. If you cannot see the Flag, you should activate it first from your International Preferences Pane (the bottom check box inside Input Menu tab). After you've got the Flag, you can click on it, choose Show Keyboard Viewer and your Character Palette will appear. You can refer back here to get to know more about Input Menu.
Productivity Tricks : Open Files
As far as I know, there are five effective ways to open our files with an application.
Open from Application
This way is usually used by not only Mac users but also Mac switchers where it helps you focusing on what you're aiming for and what kind of files you're going to process instead of pushing you down with pile of choices. Keystrokes used for this action is Command-O by default (yes, you can set it. Feel free to refer back here for reviewing on "How to Edit Existing Application Shortcuts").
Killer Leopard Trick - Finder Screen Sharing
Talking about Screen Sharing, the reflection of iChat shouldn't be far away from your mind. Actually, the Screen Sharing itself is provided in your Finder.
Screen Sharing Whereabouts
Just now I told you that Screen Sharing is separated from iChat. To prove that, you could go to Mac HD ▸ System ▸ Library ▸ CoreServices which Mac HD is your hard drive name. Inside there, you will definitely find Screen Sharing.
Finder Trick - Quickly Preview Files
Glancing at the title will definitely leave you impression like this "Ah, he will be talking about Quick Look.", which is not fully correct. Even though Quick Look glamorously brought along with Leopard, this single feature, which we called it Icon View, shouldn't be neglected.
The Benefit of Large Icons
By default, the icons for your files so small that you could hardly extract any information from it. Fortunately, it can be set up to the size of 128x128 which will clearly reflect what are inside the files.
Safari Trick : Dragging Tab
Import Tabs from Other Browsers
When I made a visit to MacTips, I stumbled upon the article entitled Drag Tabs Between 2 Browsers. To my disappointment, after some trials, I still cannot drag my Safari tab into other browsers but I succeed to do it oppositely from other browsers to Safari.
Editing Existing Application Shortcuts
Being quite of shortcuts geek here, it's very essential to know how to change those pre-defined shortcuts into more suitable shortcut. And to our surprise, Mac provides it for us.
There is one shortcut that makes me feel sick whenever I tried to use it, i.e. Select Next Tab on Safari. To perform this action, you will need at least two hands; Command-Shift-CloseBracket is the troublesome shortcut I mentioned above.
Leopard Preview Trick : Grab Icon
Responding my recent article Easiest Way to Grab Icon, Luke provides very nice trick that I believe putting it here will be helpful.
With a simple highlight and import, Preview can display exactly the displayed icon. Let's see how to do it.
Leopard Tricks : Dictionary
Adding Reference Libraries
By default, your dictionary's reference libraries shown are Wikipedia, Dictionary, Thesaurus and Apple. Obviously, you can add more references to it.
First, go to your Dictionary Preferences Pane by either using keystrokes Command-Comma or using menu bar Dictionary ▸ Preferences. Then you will see there are more than four default references which is available for your Dictionary.
Trick for Fun : iTunes Play Count
Being iTunes user, especially if you have a mountain of songs in hand, it's usual to filter out all of them by sorting the Play Count in descending order.
In this case, a song with the most Play Count will appear on the top of the lists. You can trick iTunes so that your favorite song will appear on the first rank which of course has the most counts.
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.