A Macintosh Tip or Three…October 2006 Edition by Harry {doc} Babad |
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Product and company names and logos in this review may be registered trademarks of their respective companies. |
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This month I continue sharing my occasional tip related finds with you. Some, but not all of the Tips I share come from — Paul Taylor’s Hints&Tips column http://www.mac-hints-tips.com and are used with his permission. Where I use any tips for this column, I acknowledge both their source and their contributors.
Note that Paul is sufficiently busy with the rest of his life that he is considering dropping the Hints&Tips column project. If you’d liked him to continue, send him a bit of hard appreciation in dollar form. I have.
Oh, I almost forgot! unless otherwise noted, all the tips and tidbits I share, where appropriate, work on my computer. If I don’t own the software, but the tip sounds interesting, I’ll so note.
The software related tips were tested on a 1 GHz dual processor PowerPC G4 Macintosh with 2 GB DDR SDRAM running under Macintosh OS X OS X 10.4.7.
And the tips are;
Can You See Your Desktop?
Free Up Some Space By Helping Your Mac Unlearn Foreign Languages
Quick Printing W/O A Desktop Printer
How To Resolve Keychain Issues
Keep Your Friends Close, But Your Dust Caps Closer
More-Efficient Firefox Downloads
Are WMV (Files) Virus Free
Save As Dialogue — Keyboard Shortcuts:
Dragondrop – A Better Way To Clear Your Desktop
iDVD Burning Tips – Reduce Errors
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CAN YOU SEE YOUR DESKTOP?
Are the number of open Finder windows getting in the way of a project? Control/click the Finder icon in the Dock and use the “Hide” command. Hold down Option/Control when clicking changes the command to “Hide Others”.
Mouse Droppings, Corvallis, OR
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FREE UP SOME SPACE BY HELPING YOUR MAC UNLEARN FOREIGN LANGUAGES
In his most recent Mac 911 column , our Macworld colleague Christopher Breen http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/mac911/2006/08/slimharddrive/index.php?lsrc=mac911blog mentioned a handy utility to help you free up some extra space on your hard drive. Mac OS X, by default, is installed with a number of different localizations: versions of the OS in other languages. Odds are you only really need one of these: your primary language. I admit, I do harbor a certain fondness for running my system in Arabic, to help me practice my language skills, but I’d honestly rather have the extra space.
I was fairly certain I’d done this operation at some point, but I realized that was actually because I’d done it on my last computer, the iBook. Meanwhile, a number of language files were taking up tons of space on my computer. So I downloaded the utility Chris mentioned, Monolingual and checked off all the languages I didn’t want.
The result? I freed up 1.5GB of space. That’s a pretty good haul for something that a) I didn’t need and b) was fairly painless to remove. So if you’re cramped on storage space, I recommend you give it a shot. It can also be used to remove architectures for chipsets you don’t use (for example, PowerPC users can remove Intel-specific code). Do remember to give the Read Me a once over before, as there are a couple of pitfalls to avoid, but overall, the process is quite safe.
Authored by Dan Moren MacUser Blogs, dated August 22, 2006<
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QUICK PRINTING W/O a DESKTOP PRINTER:
If you are like me and hate having a printer icon on your Desktop, you can still print a file without opening the application for it. Control/click (or right-click on a two-button mouse) on the file and use the “Print” menu item.
Alternatively, you can install Apples Desktop Printer Utility into you dock and drag printable items to that icon {doc_Babad}
Mouse Droppings, Corvallis, OR
9.06 Hints and Tips Column by Paul Taylor
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HOW TO RESOLVE KEYCHAIN ISSUES
The Mac OS X Keychain is a great time-saver, storing passwords and other login information for Safari, Mail, and other software. The Keychain is accessed and manipulated by many different applications, so it's susceptible to a number of problems. Here's how to fix some common Keychain problems.
Password Amnesia
Can't remember a password in Keychain? Your best bet is to delete your keychain and re-create it. Here's how you can delete a keychain. Keep in mind that this routine is also useful if your keychain appears to be corrupt or otherwise inaccessible.
Launch Keychain Access (JApptications/Utitities).
Click Show Keychains in the lower-left corner of the window.
Select the problematic keychain from the left-hand pane.
Click File and select Delete Keychain name of keychain.
Check all options for deletion and press OK.
Create a new keychain. Go to the File menu, select New, and select New Keychain.
You can now make this keychain your default. Go to the File menu,
select Make Keychain name of keychain Default.
No Entry into Keychain
Sometimes Keychain doesn't automatically enter your password in a field. Here's the fix.
Launch Keychain Access.
In the Keychains window on the upper left, select the login keychain.
Go to the File menu and select Make Keychain login name Default.
MacFixit – MacAddict October 2006 Page 14.
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KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE, BUT YOUR DUST CAPS CLOSER
Sometimes the best solutions are decidedly low tech. Apple products in past years have increasingly included dust caps: little plastic tops that snap onto the ends of cables to keep them dust-free and protected. But these tops are tiny and often translucent, which means that once dropped they can be as hard to find as contact lenses.
Mac OS X Hints reader c8h10n4o2 has come up with an ingenious MacGyver-like solution for keeping track of these little fellows: tie them to the cable with dental floss. Brilliant! I’ve been keeping close tabs on my MacBook’s MagSafe dust cap for weeks now by making sure to always put it in the same pocket in my bag, but this idea is so much more convenient. Not only is dental floss resilient, but if you use the mint variety it’ll keep your power cable smelling fresh and clean. Plus, if you ever get something in your teeth while working, well, you’ll never be far from some floss.
For caps without a loop, all of them, a drop of superglue or airplane glue works fine. The only problem is when you drop the cable with the cemented dust cap down into the gaggle of wires behind your Macintosh, you my tear of the dust cap. I’m now using dental floss tape. Picky, picky doc_Babad.
Authored by Dan Moren MacUser Blogs, dated July 28, 2006
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MORE-EFFICIENT FIREFOX DOWNLOADS
Question: I visited a Web site that had links to a lot of MPEG-4 movies. I wanted to download them all, but when I clicked on each link I found that Mozilla Firefox would download only two movies simultaneously. Is Firefox really limited to just two downloads? —Don MacKenzie
Answer: By default, Mozilla’s free Firefox Web browser can download only two files at a time, but you can change that. Type about:config into Firefox’s Address field. Type persistent into the Filter field that appears at the top of the resulting page, and double-click on the network.http.max-persistentconnections- per-server entry. In the sheet that appears, type in a number larger than 2. (This will be the number of simultaneous connections.) Quit Firefox, and relaunch. Once you do this, you can download more files simultaneously.
If you download a lot of files frequently, you might also get the DownThemAll extension (free). As its name implies, DownThemAll allows you to automatically download all the linked files on a page or just a selection of particular file types (see bottom screenshot). For example, you can ask it to download just a page’s video files. This queues the downloads so you don’t have to hang around clicking on link after link. Editor Christopher Breen - 911
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ARE WMV (Files) VIRUS FREE?
Question: Is it safe to launch a WMV file of unknown origin? If not, can I protect my Mac so that I can watch the video without fear of a virus contamination?
Response: We've never heard of an actual virus traveling via WMV, but we've learned never to say never. There are ways a malicious hacker could use a WMV file to hijack a Windows machine; however, the problem isn't the WMV file itself, but rather vulnerabilities in Windows and the Windows Media Player that the file might exploit-by taking you to a Web site full of destructive, automatically installing code, for example.
So at this moment, we'll say no, you won't catch anything by playing strange WMV files on your Mac, but that could change at any time. Regarding fear: In computing (as in life) there's always some possibility of viral infection.
Niko Coucouvanis, Mac Addict, October 2006, Page 61.
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SAVE AS DIALOGUE — Keyboard Shortcuts:
Apple has provided some useful keyboard shortcuts to navigate and quickly select commonly used folders:
• Command/D selects the Desktop
• Command/Shift/A selects the Applications folder
• Command/Shift/C selects Computer View showing the list of volumes
• Command/Shift/G opens the Go To dialogue
• Command/Shift/H selects your home folder
• Command/Shift/K selects the Network icon
• Command/Shift/L does a Google lookup on the text of the filename (Check for others in the TextEdit > Services menu)
• Command/N creates a new folder in the currently selected folder
Additionally, use the Tab key to select different elements of the dialogue and the arrow keys to navigate through nested folders.
Press the Escape key to dismiss an unwanted dialogue.
OSXFAQ via Allen Kalka, Mt. Dora MUG, FL 9.06 Hints and Tips Column by Paul Taylor
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DRAGONDROP – A Better Way To Clear Your Desktop
One “classic” feature missing in OS X is the ability to put a list of aliases in a folder, then shrink the folder window down to a small tab at the bottom of the screen. Clicking on the tab opens the window, then clicking on an alias in this window activates the alias then shrinks the window back to a tab. While the OS X’s Dock is supposed to fulfill this need, it doesn’t for me. I have too many aliases, and need items in fixed places that I can remember.
A shareware program called DragonDrop http://cs.oberlin.edu/~dadamson/DragonDrop/ has now brought back the useful “tab at the bottom” facility. I have set up two such tabs and saved a lot of clutter on my small laptop screen. My many aliases are now readily accessible.
I (Bruce) has the Dock “hidden” so that it only appears when I move the mouse pointer close to the right hand edge of the screen. But the Dock effectively deprives me of a strip of area at the right edge of the screen, and that is a loss, when I have two text windows open on my laptop screen. A program called DockBlock has an option to turn the Dock off altogether, when so required. But unfortunately DockBlock expands my DragonDrop tabs to open folders, so I can’t use DockBlock with DragonDrop. Frustration!
DragonDrop is purported to conflict with DefaultWindowsX; but one can tell DragonDrop in preferences to not see DefaultWindowsX. ~ Bruce Craven
AUSOM News, Melbourne, Australia
9.06 Hints and Tips Column by Paul Taylor
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IDVD BURNING TIPS – To Reduce Errors:
Question: How can you rduce DVD burning errors?
Answer: Jim Heid recommends that if you’re going to burn an iDVD project to a DVD, create a disc image first for greater reliability. To do this, choose File > Save As Disc Image. Then, to burn the CD, use Apple’s Disk Utility (in Applications > Utilities) and click the “Burn” button in the upper right corner of its window. Navigate to your DVD disc image and burn away. He suggests using the slowest speed available to improve your chances that the DVD will play on all DVD players. Also, when burning a DVD, avoid running complex programs that use the hard drive a lot. I find this good advice for any project in which you need to assure accuracy. Creating the partition containing your information is slow, but the actual burn process is fast and relatively more error free than the alternative {doc_Babad}
Design Tools Monthly
9.06 Hints and Tips Column by Paul Taylor
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