Ever wonder how many Applications are phoning home with information about you or your Mac?
While using OS X Leopard for a few days, I noticed OS X 10.5 was phoning home to Apple for seemingly every reason imaginable. The only reason I even noticed was because I was running Little Snitch. This Application is a must have for anyone paranoid about outgoing Internet communications on their Mac.
Little Snitch once was a System Preference but is now available as a Menu Bar item for OS X Leopard. Little Snitch tattles on any outgoing communication from your Mac that you have not authorized to happen.
When you first install Little Snitch, it may take a few days of setting conditions for certain Applications via the Little Snitch pop up windows. I find this is not an annoyance but relieving to know which Applications are trying to connect to the Internet and when. Little Snitch makes it really easy to set conditions for certain communications. For instance, I can allow an Application to communicate online Forever, Once, or Until Quit on All Ports or only certain Addresses.
Download the Trial version of Little Snitch from the Official Objective Development Website. To Buy the Application, it costs $24.95 and is worth every penny.
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.
This post will outline everything someone will need who wants to start designing new Stationery for Mail in OS X Leopard. Hopefully, this will turn into an ongoing series about Stationery in Mail.
First Attempt at Skinning the Air Mail Stationery
What you will need to create new Stationery for Mail:
- OS X 10.5 Leopard
- XCode Installed
- Photoshop (or other Image Editor capable of editing .jpg and transparent .png)
- HTML / XML Editor
- Package Maker (installed w/ XCode)
Do not overwrite existing files. If you wish to the modify existing files, backup the originals before changing anything!
The default Stationery you see in Mail is stored in a folder at the following location:
/System/Library/Application Support/Apple/Mail/Stationary/Apple/Contents/Resources/
If you navigate to this folder, you will notice a file called TableofContents.plist. This file contains the XML necessary for Mail.app to list the Categories of Mail Stationery.
Notice how each Category has it’s own Folder? By default there are Announcements, Birthday, Photos, Sentiments, and Stationery Folders. If you click on one of these folders, you will see it has it’s own directory structure: /Announcements/Contents/Resources. You will find the the actual stationery in the Resources folder for a specific Category.
There are two oddball files among the Stationery, another TableofContents.plist and an English.lproj Folder (I imagine for others running Leopard in other languages this folder may change, can someone confirm?). TableofContents.plist here is another XML document that lists the Category’s Stationery in a format Mail.app can understand. Does anyone know what the Stationery ID parameter in this file might be for? How can I create a new Stationary ID or a new piece of Stationery? The English.lproj folder contains a file called DisplayName.strings. In this file there is a comment that says: “Stationery category name as appears in the stationery selection pane in the New Message window after clicking Show Stationery toolbar item.”
If you go back to the Resources folder and Ctrl+Click on a .mailstationery file, you can select Show Package Contents from the menu. This will open the Stationery’s Directory Structure which is the same: /Stationary/Content/Resources/. Here you will find the files that make up a piece of Stationery in Mail.
There will most likely be the following basic files:
- bg_pattern.jpg : The Background Image
- top.jpg : Header Image
- bottom.jpg : Footer Image
- content.html : The HTML Template
- Description.plist : The XML File Necessary for Interactivity in Mail.app
- English.lproj folder : Contains DisplayName.strings (file that names the Stationery for Mail.app)
- thumbnail.png : The Thumbnail for the Selection Screen in Mail
Photo Stationery may have the following:
- Mask1.png : The Mask for Drop Zones
- placeholder1.jpg : The Placeholder Image for Drop Zones
- banner.jpg : Usually the Background for the Masked Drop Zones
- frames.png : The Template for the Drop Zones
The Workflow:
Do not overwrite existing files. If you wish the modify existing files, backup the originals before changing anything!
- Create New Folder for “Custom” Stationery in the Resources folder, give it the Directory Structure /Content/Resources/
- In this folder, make a file called TableofContents.plist. You will need to enter XML data here for the Individual Stationery inside the “Custom” Category. Project Folders and eventually Packages will go in this folder. An English.lproj folder with DisplayName.strings (for the Category name) must be in this folder as well.
- Make a New Folder for the new Stationery and give it the same directory structure: /Content/Resources/
- This is the folder you will place the HTML template (content.html), XML template (Description.plist), all images, and the English.lproj folder with DisplayName.strings (Name of the individual Stationery)
- Use Package Maker to create a Package for the Stationery (must have .mailstationary as a filename and the correct Directory Structure)
- Backup TableofContents.plist in /System/Library/Application Support/Apple/Mail/Stationary/Apple/Contents/Resources/
- Add new lines in TableofContents.plist for the new Category
Can anyone tell me what that the Stationery ID is for in TableofContents.plist and how to create unique Stationery IDs for new Stationery and is this necessary?
If anyone ends up creating new Stationery because they read this tutorial, I would gladly post custom templates on iUseApple.com.
Safari’s new Find feature is slicker than ever! Use the keyboard shortcut Apple + F or Select Edit -> Find -> Find from the Menu Bar. The keyboard shortcut is so much easier…
A Find toolbar will appear under the Address Bar. Type in the word or phrase I wish to find in the website here. Press return.
The number of matches will appear in the tool bar. The first match will appear on the website, highlighted in yellow. Find next by using the keyboard shortcut Apple + G. Find previous by pressing Shift + Apple + G. Or just click the arrow buttons in the Find tool bar.
Click Done in the Tool Bar when I am finished searched for the term.
