Archive for the 'Beginner OS X' Category
Don’t get me wrong, I think Preview is the best PDF viewer I have ever used. I typically forgo installing Adobe Acrobat even, since I find it loads slow and has too many features for me. But that being said, Preview is clean and simple to use, possibly a little too simple.
One feature Preview has always lacked is editing a PDF. For instance, one of my fellow grad students asked me to revise a paper. I asked for a PDF since DOC files do not always cooperate with OS X, formatting issues often arise. When I got it, I thought to myself, well how am I going to edit it now?
That’s where the free Application called Skim comes in. Skim has several features Preview just forgot about. One of them is an elegant Editing interface that allows me to mark up papers, including highlights, and notes. Some other nice features Skim has is support for the Apple remote, full screen reading, export notes to text, applescript support, the list goes on…
Download Skim from the official site to start editing PDFs.
There are several tweaks that you may want to make to OS X that are not available in System Preferences. Windows XP users may remember called TweakUI, a downloadable utility for changing different system attributes. There are a few freeware and shareware Applications that perform the same kind of actions in OS X.
Cocktail is perhaps the best Application I have found that will tweak certain aspects of OS X. This program is shareware. The Cocktail website explains the user agreement, “When unregistered, Cocktail (Leopard Edition) and Cocktail (Tiger Edition) runs in demo mode and will expire after the tenth launch. Cocktail (Panther Edition) is distributed as freeware and does not require a license.” I usually only use this Application once after installing OS X. But the $14.95 single user, $29.99 family license price tag isn’t bad, considering all the things you can manipulate with it. Without such an application, these tweaks require an extensive knowledge of Unix.
So what can Cocktail do?
- Toggle indexing and Spotlight searching for mounted drives
- Lock the Dock
- Expand the throughput of network connections
- Run periodic system maintenance
- Customize look and features of Finder, Mail, etc
- and much more…
I wouldn’t say Cocktail is essential, but it is a user friendly App for those who wish to tweak the look, feel, functionality, and behind the scenes operations of OS X. If all you are looking for are the maintenance functions of the program (repairing Permissions, cleaning the System Caches, and rebuilding indexes, then another free solution would be the application Maintenance.
Applications like Napster and Limewire are outdated by todays standards. Peer to Peer (P2P) applications of the past meant you could download a file from one source over the internet. Newer innovations like Bit Torrent allow you to download one file from many sources, while uploading parts of the file to others simultaneously.
But how does Bit Torrent work? Basically, there are Bit Torrent websites out there like PirateBay.org and IsoHunt.com where you can search for files. But these websites do not actually host the file itself, instead they provide a torrent file and the service of tracking. A torrent file coordinates the download of the actual file, while the tracker hosts the communication between people sharing the file. So, you download the torrent file from a website, then use a Bit Torrent application on your computer to open the torrent file and handle the download. When you download the file, you are called a leecher. After you are finished downloading the file, you are known as a seeder. It is important to seed the file to others for a period of time, so that the file can thrive. Bit Torrent depends on people seeding the file. The more seeders, the faster the download.
There are several Bit Torrent solutions for Mac OS X. The best application I’ve used is called Transmission. Transmission presents itself with a simple, yet powerful interface. This app is free and open source.
For sticklers of old school P2P, here is a directory of all the P2P Apps available for OS X.
iUseApple.com does not condone the theft of copywrited materials, nor does this site encourage the downloading of illegal files.
This is a neat little tip. Type the name of any Application into Spotlight, wait a moment, and the Application will appear as the top hit in a list of the search results. Just hit Return and the Application will open.
You can refine your search results in Spotlight to search for and display the Applications first. Open Spotlight in System Preferences by typing “Spotlight pref” in Spotlight and hit Return. This will take you directly to the Spotlight Preference Pane.
In the Spotlight Preference Pane you can customize how search results are displayed.
The typical Apple Keyboard Shortcut for Spotlight is Cmd+Space. This will direct typing on the keyboard to Spotlight. So just type in the search string and press Return.
Who doesn’t want to know the weather? WeatherUnderground.com has detailed weather reports and awesome Storm Tracking Doppler maps. Today I noticed a little iCal icon in my local Weather Report:
So I said to myself, “why not?”
Visit WeatherUndergound.com and type your zip code into the search box.
After the weather report for your region appears click the iCal icon. Save the .ics file to your Mac.
Open the .ics file. iCal will make the Add Events dialog appear. Select New Calendar from the menu. The Weather will now appear as an All-Day Event.
Want to impress your Mac Addict buddies or surprise the typical Mac user? I stumbled upon an Application called BootXChanger that will let you change the normal Apple boot logo.
There are a few restrictions: you must keep the background color the same grey (#BFBFBF in hexadecimal) and the image can only contain less than 100 colors. Save your image as a GIF or PNG-8 in Photoshop and you’ll be set. Further instructions are at the Official Site for BootXChanger. Did I mention this Application is free?
Can’t remember the name of a file you created or edited the other day, last week, or even in the past month?
The Finder makes searching for files really easy in OS X Leopard. Open a Finder window and look for The SEARCH FOR section of the Side Bar. Click “Past Week” and all the files you have edited in the past week will open chronologically, starting with the latest.
But what if the document you are looking for was created in the past month? The Spotlight in the Finder allows you to make searches using AND, OR, and NOT in OS X 10.5 Leopard. You can use the Finder window to add specifications to the search as well. Furthermore, you can Save Searches and then add them to the Side Bar.
In this short tutorial, I will show you how to set up a Saved Search for the Past Month in the Side Bar. The ideas in this tutorial can be expanded for other search criteria too.
Open the Finder, Select the Mac from the Side Bar, put a period (.) in the Spotlight Search Bar (you will erase this period later) and Hit Return.
Notice how a new Search Bar appears under the Tool Bar. It tells you where you are searching, and even gives the options to search the contents of files or just the file names. But look directly to the right and you will see a plus (+) sign. Click the plus sign. A new search criteria will appear, and it will say “Kind is Any”. Change these variables to say “Created date is within last 31 days”.
The following is not necessary for these steps but good to know when making customizable searches in the Finder.
If you hold down Option at this point the plus sign will become a … button. This will allow you to add further criteria to the search string using Any (OR), All (AND), or None (NOT).
Remove the . (period) from the Search bar you originally used to start the Search.
Click the Save Button. Name the new Search something meaningful like “Past Month”. Make sure Add to Sidebar is checked. Hit Save. A new Search called “Past Month” will now be available in the Search For section of the Sidebar.
For a more technical explanation and even a video, visit MacWorld: Max OS X Hints Article, “Add Conditions to Finder Searches.
The easiest method for Google Search in Safari or Firefox is to Press Tab when the Address Bar is Highlighted. This will highlight the Search Tab and you may begin typing your Search Query. Press Return to Search.
Now why doesn’t Apple, Inc. ever include Tab for Buttons? I find it so annoying not to be able to Tab through buttons on a website or in a Message Box. Hear my plea Apple!
Sometimes I find myself surfing to certain websites daily. Usually, there is only one part of that website that interests me. In Safari 3, I can take a snapshot of any website and make it into a Dashboard Widget easily with WebClips. The new Widget will automatically update as the website does, allowing me to just press F12 to Open Dashboard and look at all the websites I usually visit in one shot.
To make any section of a website into a Dashboard widget all I need to do is Open Safari and surf to the website I wish to capture. I visited the Apple Start Page for this example.
Click the WebClip button that is directly left of the Address bar. Safari will now darken the window except for a highlighted region. Anywhere I hover the mouse over will become highlighted.
I can hover above headlines and whole text boxes will become highlighted. If I click a highlighted region, it will become selected and nodes will appear on the corners. I can resize and position the highlighted region now. Sometimes I may want to clip a region of a website, so if I hover over any section of the site where the background is showing a standard sized box will appear.
Click the Add Button to Create a WebClip.
Dashboard will now load the WebClip…
I can change the border style of the WebClip by pressing the i button in the lower right hand corner of the Widget. The Widget will flip over and reveal the border styles. Click Done and the Widget will flip back over.
One of the coolest new features in Mail is the ability to make cool looking emails with a few simple clicks. Want to send a birthday party invitation or a wedding announcement via e-mail? Maybe I just want to thank my dinner guests for attending or show off some pictures from my last vacation. Well Apple thought of everything it seems in the new version of Mail for OS X 10.5 Leopard. Now I can create cool looking emails with Stationary. I can even throw in photos from my iPhoto library with simple drag and drop fashion.
Open Mail and Click New Message.
Stationary Is Fun
I could just write out a simple e-mail here, but why not include some flair? If I click Show Stationary in the top right of the Compose New Message window, all the Stationary templates will appear organized by Category.
Select the appropriate Category for the Stationary E-mail. For instance, if I wish to send a couple photos from the latest family vacation, I should select Stationary from the Photos tab.
Below is a sample of the Air Mail Stationary. Highlight any text and start typing to personalize the e-mail.
Why send stock photos when I can personalize this e-mail with my own digital photos? Click Photo Browser in the top right of the New Message window and the iPhoto Library will appear.
Select a photo and add it to the template by dragging and dropping the photo from the browser into any photo box already in the template. Switch photos around by dragging them in between photo fields in the template.
Personalizing e-mails was never so much fun!
