November 27th, 2007
With iChat 4.0, you now have the ability to share screens with your friends, add Photo Booth effects to your video chats, send SMS messages to cell-phones, record video chats, “present” your files with iChat theater, and much more. The other day, I stumbled across a neat feature where you can customize how your chat message windows look. Here’s how:
- Open up iChat.
- Once it’s open, start a chat with someone.
- Right-click on the message window, and you can now change how your messages look.
- You can change the message “bubbles” to boxes, compact, or text.
- You can change the buddy icon so it shows their name, picture, or have both.
- You can also change the background to any image/color you want.
screenshots: 3 4 5 6
November 24th, 2007
In Leopard, the new way of using dock folders is Stacks or Grid view. I must admit, they are most appealing to the eye, but not efficient as far as using them goes. In Mac OS X Tiger, you had the ability to browse through a folder in the dock, just by right-clicking on it. Sure, there are many developers out there who have already made applications that recreate the Tiger-style dock folders in Leopard, but why bother downloading it when you have Quicksilver? A lot of people may have misunderstood all of what Quicksilver is capable of. I use it daily as part of my workflow. I’ll share a neat trick to enable those “Tiger-style” folders with Quicksilver.
- If you don’t already own Quicksilver, download it here.
- Open it up by pressing the default hotkey, Control and Spacebar.
- Once it’s open, hold down ⌘ (Command) and the “,” keys to access Quicksilver’s preferences.
- Click on the “Triggers” section.
- On the bottom left corner of the Triggers window, click on the “+” symbol and select “HotKey”.
- In the drop-down window, type in “app” until the Applications folder icon appears.
- When it does, hit the “Tab” key.
- Type “con” until “Show Contents Menu” action appears.
- Click on the “Save” button to save the trigger.
- Now the final step is to add a keystroke to enable it.
- Click on the “i” icon on the bottom right-hand corner of the Triggers window.
- Click on the “Hot Key” field and hold down the keys you want to be the trigger.
- Click on the “i” icon to close the slide-out drawer.
- Now you’ve got drop-down “Tiger-style” windows anywhere!
screenshots: 2 3 4 5 6-9 11 12 14
November 17th, 2007
With Leopard, the Finder got an extreme makeover. Many new features are not so visible at first, so I’m going to teach some tricks to help you “relearn” the new Finder.
Spotlight Searches
In 10.4, you had the ability to search your entire hard-drive for files. With 10.5, you can’t search your entire drive for files, unless you make a few changes.
- Open a new Finder window by clicking on the Finder icon in the Dock.
- In the Finder window, hold down the ⌘ (Command) and the “F” keys to invoke a search.
- In Finder, change the menu titled “Kind” to “Other”.
- A drop-down menu now appears with many different search attributes.
- Scroll down to “System Files”.
- Check it off and click the “OK” button.
- Now when you search for something in Finder you can see all files related to the search query.
- After you have made these changes just make sure you switch to “System Files” in the “Kind” menu so it will work.
screenshots: 3-4 5-7 8
Quick Look and Slideshow Feature
With Leopard’s new Quick Look feature, you can now do a “quick preview” of just about any document.
- To do so, click on the document icon itself, then tap the spacebar and it should appear.
- One nice feature about Quick Look, is that you can switch to Slideshow mode if you want to view some pictures in fullscreen view.
- To enable that, hold down the Option, ⌘ (Command) and the “Y” keys.
screenshots: 1 2-3
Using The New Help Menu
The new Help menu has an amazingly helpful feature now which is like “Spotlight” for applications. In other-words, if you type something in it relating to the application you’re in, it will locate the item from the menubar. For instance, if I was in Photoshop and wanted to know where “Zoomify” was, all I need to do is type that in the Help menu and it will locate it for me. As well, the Help menu searches through documents to find something relating to your search query.
screenshots: Click here for a screenshot
November 14th, 2007
With the new release of Mac OS X Leopard, over 300 new features have been installed on your Mac. The most talked-about one would be Time Machine by far. Apple include Time Machine, because it will encourage people to backup their files on a more frequent basis. The only feature with Time Machine that bugs me, is that you can set a time to backup, it’s only by the hour. With a little bit of code, Automator, and iCal, I got Time Machine to work when I want it to.
- To start off, open up Automator.
- Select “Custom” in the drop-down menu that appears upon opening Automator.
- Find “Utilities” in the sidebar and then drag “Run AppleScript” to the blank space on the right side.
- Where it says “(* Your script goes here *)”, copy and paste the following code. Here’s the code:
do shell script
/System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/backupd-helper
>/dev/null 2>&1 &
- Go to the File menu in the menubar, and choose “Save as Plug-in”.
- Type in a name for the plug-in.
- Choose “iCal Alarm” under the drop-down menu below the title field.
- After clicking the “Save” button, iCal will open up.
- Switch to iCal, and double click on the application title you just made. It should appear on the day you made it.
- Click on the edit button to change the settings.
- In order for this script to work properly, you must have your hard-drive connected to your Mac at the time the plug-in runs.
- A trick to remind me to turn my hard-drive on is to add another alarm with the event that makes a pop-up message with sound.
- I have my alarm set up so the pop-up message reminds me to turn my hard-drive on, then 2 minutes later the script will run and backup all my data.
screenshots: 1 2 3 4 5 6-7 9-9_1 12
October 17th, 2007
When it comes to learning how to code, I’ll admit, it’s quite handy to have some sort of training book or access to online tutorials. The books tend to be on the pricey side, so I often times spend more time learning from online training sites. An application called Coda is a pretty basic text editor with an astonishing interface and many nice features included within, one being four books on HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP. Surprisingly, there is a similar feature inside of Dreamweaver which includes a wider variety of topics from ASP.NET to XML. The reason I use Dreamweaver over Coda, is that I have not yet mastered my coding skills to the point where I would be able to write everything by hand. Here’s how to locate the reference books inside of Dreamweaver.
- Once you’ve got Dreamweaver opened, go to the Help Menu.
- Click on Reference from the drop-down menu.
- A pop-up window should appear.
- Choose one of the many books from the Book menu and select an item from the two corresponding menus beside it.
- Hopefully this makes your coding experience a tad bit easier.
screenshots: 1-2 3-5
October 12th, 2007
A few weeks ago, Apple released its newest version of the iLife suite. Every time they come out with a new one, there are always nice “to-haves” that are included. With the new version of iPhoto a few new features include: new templates, viewing photo information, user-friendly print settings, and Events. Since the Events feature seems to be one of the most powerful ones, I’ll teach you more on how to get the full potential out of it.
Adding A Nice Reflection To The Photos In The Events Section
- With iPhoto open, go to Preferences under the iPhoto menu.
- Once you’re in the Preferences window, click on the “Events” section.
- You should notice an option labeled “Show Event reflections”, check it off.
screenshots: 1 2-3
Drag And Drop The Event Photos
- With any photo you see in the Events section, click and drag the photo into another location in the Events area.
screenshots: Before Dragging After Dropping
Editing Names
- Select a photo in Events of your choice.
- Now click on its title.
- Type in a new title.
screenshots: 1-3
Browsing Through A Selection
- With a few seconds you can rapidly browse through all of the photos in an album.
- To do so, just hover your mouse pointer over any of the photos in Events.
- Now use your arrow keys (← →) and you should be able to browse through that album.
screenshots: 2-3
Merging Events
- Lets say you took some pictures at different times, but they were pretty much of the same thing. Thankfully, with the Merge feature you can now put similar events together in iPhoto.
- Locate the Events that you want to be merged. To select multiple events, hold down the Shift key or the ⌘ (Command) key.
- Now click on the “Merge” button on the bottom toolbar of the Event window.
- Now the Events will be put together as one.
screenshots: 2-3
Making Key Photos For Events
- As you may have noticed each event shows a “key photo”, the main photo that you see on the event itself.
- If you would like to change this, hover your mouse pointer over an event and use the arrow keys (← →) and when you find a photo you like, right-click on it and choose “Make Key Photo” from the contextual menu.
screenshots: 2
September 21st, 2007
On occasion, I will make a DVD for my family and friends with pictures from past holidays and trips that were taken. Of course, I make my DVD’s in iDVD because it’s a joy to use for making those wonderful last-minute gifts. The one thing that tends to bug me is that Apple icon that appears in the bottom right corner on the DVD. My goal in making the DVD is to make it seem like I made it from scratch. That’s why I don’t like having the Apple logo in the DVD. Surprisingly, it’s fairly simple to fix this. Here’s how:
- Open up iDVD from your Applications folder in Finder.
- Select Create a New Project or Open an Existing Project (if you’ve already made the DVD) from the iDVD start-up window.
- Once you choose a location to save the project to, go to Preferences under the iDVD menu.
- In the preferences window that comes up, make sure you’re in the General tab.
- Check off “Show Apple logo watermark” and it won’t appear anymore in your DVD’s.
screenshots: 1 2 3 4-5
September 19th, 2007
When it comes to writing, I always like to be productive with my time. Thankfully, Microsoft Word makes that incredibly easy with the built-in AutoCorrect feature. AutoCorrect is very similar to TextExpander, in that it will complete your abbreviation into a word/phrase. Here’s how:
- Open up Microsoft Word from your Applications folder.
- Go up to Tools in the menubar and select “AutoCorrect” from the drop-down menu.
- A pop-up window will appear presenting you will the settings for AutoCorrect.
- In the middle of the window, look for an empty field titled “Replace” above it.
- Type in the abbreviation or word that you would like to use.
- In the empty field to the right of that, titled “With”, correctly type in what you want Microsoft Word to replace your abbreviation or word with.
- Once you’re finished up with that click on the “Add” button and choose OK to close the window.
- Hope that made your experience with Microsoft software on the Mac a better one!
screenshots: 1 2 3-7
September 8th, 2007
Whenever I have worked on a laptop, I usually type worse than I do on a desktop computer. The reason for this is that the keys on most laptop keyboards are crammed in tight, so your fingertips are very close to another key at all times. The most annoying key on the laptop keyboards for me is the Caps Lock key. When I attempt to hit the “a” key I hit the Caps Lock and then they following letters become capital letters. This can get really slow you down when it comes to writing long papers, so I found a nice and easy work-around.
- Open up System Preferences.
- Click on the Keyboard & Mouse preference pane.
- Make sure you’re in the Keyboard section.
- Click on the “Modifier Keys” button.
- A drop-down menu should appear with the modifier keys: Caps Lock, Control, Option, and Command.
- Click on the drop-down menu located beside Caps Lock and choose “No Action”.
screenshots: 1 2 3-4 5 6
August 16th, 2007
One of the most asked questions I get from new Mac users is, “How do I burn CD’s and DVD’s on a Mac?”. After personally showing some of those people how to burn CD’s and DVD’s, I decided it was time to show my readers as well. Here’s how to burn CD’s and DVD’s on a Mac.
- First, and foremost, insert your blank CD-R/CD-RW or DVD-R/DVD-RW/DVD-DL disc into the slot on your Mac.
- You should then see an icon on your Desktop that says “Untitled CD” or “Untitled DVD”.
- Click on the Finder icon in your dock.
- In the new Finder window that comes up, select the”Untitled CD” or “Untitled DVD” folder from the sidebar.
- Drag the files, folders, applications, or whatever you want into the CD or DVD folder in Finder.
- Then click on the Burn button located in the top right corner.
- In the pop-up window, type in a suitable Disc Name and select a Burn Speed.
- Once you’ve done that, click on the Burn button.
- Once the disc is done burning, it should eject from the computer.
screenshots: 2 3 4 5 6 7-8
