Weblog of a “Switcher”

I have been asked by a few people now how I get the screen shots I use in these posts. There is nothing really magical here, I just use a program to capture the images and let WordPress take care of changing their size to fit within the width of my blog. I use a small JavaScript program I found to display the full size images when someone clicks on the thumbnails. That's pretty much it.

For the screen shots I put on the site, I use a program called Snapz Pro X by Ambrosia Software. It may not be the very best program out there, but it's one I purchased a long time ago and have enjoyed it use for quite some time.

The screen shot images are stored in PNG format with a DPI of 72 dots per inch. That's done by Snapz Pro X and I don't have any control over the DPI at all.

Once, I get the screen shots I need, I use WordPress' ability to add media to a blog post to take care of creating thumbnails and smaller sizes so that the images will fit inside the content column of the blog. So if an image is 800 pixels wide by 600 pixels tall, WordPress will shrink the image to 500x375. It also creates an image that is 150x150 cropping it if necessary.

I then place the image also using WordPress to get my initial HTML data. I then remove a part of that data since I don't use WordPress' WYSIWYG editor when writing my posts. I style some of the images so that there is a small transparent border on the side of the image where the text will run up to it. This is done with CSS inside the IMG tag.

The images that are not screen shots that I use in the top right corner of my posts and sometimes sprinkled throughout the post are usually pictures I find on either flickr.com or image.google.com. I try flickr.com first and make sure the image is under Creative Commons before I use it. If I get the image from image.google.com, I'm just hoping that the owner is OK with it. I'm not a huge site like Digg.com or C|Net, so I don't present as big a threat as a larger site would. If I get asked to take down an image, I'll be more than happy to.

If the image I find is too big for what I am going to use it for, I will use Preview (an application that comes with OS X on the Mac) to reduce the size of the image to the correct size. I usually don't make these images bigger than 120 pixels wide. So I try to find an image that will scale to that size nicely.

Also, I never hotlink or "inline link" an image from another site. This is not an ethical practice and most importantly I would have no control over the image being displayed. The problem here is that the image comes from a different site and so the bandwidth it takes to display that image is being charged by that different site. It's well within the rights of the site owner of the hotlinked image to do whatever they want with the image. I have heard some interesting stories of hotlinked images being changed to rather rude images due to this practice. So the person hotlinking the image will now be displaying an image of something rather rude on their site instead of what they had originally intended.

Sometimes the smaller images are screen shots of application icons. They also might be edited with a program called Acorn by Flying Meat Inc. so that I can merge more than one icon together or do some other simple editing. I also use Pixelmator to do some of that editing. I'm no artist, so I don't use Photoshop.

That's pretty much it. I hope that answers the questions I have been asked. If not, please feel free to leave a comment with more questions. I have no problem at all answering questions about the site or the Mac and OS X. It's one of the main reasons for the site in fact.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: screen, Screenshot, shot

Secrets was (and hopefully still will be) a great little System Preference Pane that allows users to make adjustments to their system without having to worry about running Terminal and typing in scary command-line commands. I reviewed it earlier here: "Secrets".

I say was because I am reading text in the Secrets Discussion Group that gives me the impression that the developer has stopped working on it. This seems a little surprising to me since the developer is related to textdriven.com which is the developer that wrote Quicksilver. Although didn't the developer of Quicksilver put the source into OpenSource so that the project could continue?

Anyway, I have a suspicion as to why Secrets may lose development. MacPilot 3.0 has a great new feature that basically looks just like Secrets.

As you can see, MacPilot's General tab looks a lot like Secrets. I guess the big difference here is that the developers of MacPilot are the only ones adding items to this section of their program where with Secrets, anyone could add a new adjustment, if approved.

Now, MacPilot isn't free. It costs $19.95, but along with the functionality of Secrets, it also has a bunch of other adjustments that can be made to pretty much any part of Tiger and Leopard. I had bought it a while back as part of a software bundle and was quite pleased with the way it works. It's my main tool for making Leopard adjustments.

Now that MacPilot 3.x is out, I have removed the Secrets Preference Pane since it's had bugs that make it difficult to work with. Secrets had some great potential, but there just hasn't been any real progress made to fix bugs that have been found.

Its possible that the folks working on Secrets are just really busy with other coding projects and will get back to Secrets soon, but I can't recommend Secrets anymore knowing that MacPilot is out there and works so well.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: macpilot, pane, Preference, Secrets, utility

I just learned of a great little free program to help folks that are transitioning from Windows to the Macintosh, or just want to be able to access the Apple Menu Bar from anywhere on the screen.

The program is called DejaMenu and its really a nice compact program that doesn't take up any screen real estate. No Menu Bar icon and no Dock icon.

To use the program, install it somewhere where you normally install programs. Launch it. The first thing you will see is a dialog asking if the default keyboard shortcut (Control-Shift-M) is OK. If so, press Accept Combo and your set.

Now, if you find yourself on your second monitor or far away from the menu bar and want to access it, just press Control-Shift-M and you will see the applications menu in front of you.

If you have a multi-button mouse, you can even map one of your buttons to enter the keyboard shortcut and have access to the menu via the mouse.

One little caveat I have found so far is that this utility doesn't handle modifier keys changing the menu. So he shows all menu items no matter what modifier keys are pressed. So the menus are a little more populated than normal, but at least you have access to Option-File->Save All (as an example) with this utility.

I highly recommend this one for just about anyone who wants to make their life a little easier.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: apple menu bar, dejamenu, free, Freeware, menubar, utility

After seeing a poor attempt at describing what symbols match up with what keys on the Mac from another website, I decided that it would be good to actually show all of them and also show you how to find a page in OS X's help system to find a lot of them.

- Command
- Shift
- Option
- Enter
- Return
- Control
- Up Arrow
- Down Arrow
- Left Arrow
- Right Arrow
- Page Up
- Page Down
- Top (Home)
- End
- Escape
- Delete (or Backspace) (above \)
- Forward Delete (or Del) (next to Home/End keys)
- Eject key
- Tab
- Back Tab (or Shift Tab) (Probably not seen on screen)
- Space (appears in some program menu items)

That pretty much covers what you might see in Menu Item mnemonics (or shortcuts).

You can find a great list of keyboard shortcuts for OS X in OS X's help system. In Finder, pull down the "Help" menu and type shortcuts. You should see an item called "About keyboard and other shortcuts". Select that entry and Apple's help system will pop up with a list of shortcuts for pretty much every aspect of OS X.

Also, if you type "Symbols for special keys" in the help menu or Help's search field, you will see an entry of the same name. That is where you can find most of the symbols and their names like what I have displayed above. I have added a few that you will probably see in menu items that were not displayed in that help page.

I hope this post helps you to understand the strange symbols displayed all over when describing keyboard shortcuts or combinations to get to certain functions and features. I know I could have used them back when I was starting out on the Mac.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: keys, Mac, special, symbol

As I run this site and keep track of the statistics from Google Analytics, I have had a couple of search hits from people looking to know how to remove a Preference Pane from System Preferences.

When I first got my Mac's, I too didn't know how to do it and relied on 3rd party programs like AppZapper and CleanApp to help me remove them. Later I found out exactly how to do it via OS X and so I thought I would pass along that knowledge.

So, say you have a Preference Pane you don't use anymore and want to remove it from System Preferences. Obviously, the first thing to do is Launch System Preferences.

As you can see, I have quite a few installed, but I am not currently using Witch, so I'll walk you through the process of removing it.

First thing you do is while holding down the Ctrl key, click on the Preference Pane icon you wish to remove. Now this is not the same as Right-Clicking on the Preference Pane icon. In fact, Right-Clicking on a Preference Pane icon will simply display the Preference Pane.

When you Right-Click on the Preference Pane icon, you will see this popup menu appear. Actually, you won't see the exact one because I have a few Context-Menu plugins installed as well. However, the "Remove "preference pane name" Preference Pane" menu item will be present when you do it.

No all you have to do is select the "Remove "preference pane name" Preference Pane" menu item and that Preference Pane will be a thing of the past. It's just that easy.

I get the impression that the designers of OS X wanted to make sure that removing a Preference Pane is something that you actually want to do and not do by accident. That is the only explanation I can come up with that explains why you have to use the Ctrl key instead of just Right-Clicking. Which, by the way, is what the Ctrl key is for when you are using an Apple one button mouse.

There is a drawback to removing a Preference Pane this way. You don't remove all the preferences for the just removed Preference Pane. Each Preference Pane has options that a user can set. Hence it being a Preference Pane. Those options are stored in a special folder in the users home directory kind of hidden away. Typically the path is {your home folder}/Library/Application Support/{name of preference pane}. It's usually pretty difficult to find the correct files to remove. Fortunately, these files are not big enough to be a bother and they are just text files so they won't slow down the OS like Windows' Registry typically does.

AppZapper

CleanApp

AppCleaner

If you are like me and really want to make sure that you have all the files to a Preference Pane removed, then I would suggest a program like AppZapper ($12.95), CleanApp ($10) or the free program AppCleaner (free). Each of those programs help you remove Preference Panes as well as Applications and other files that you may not need to help you recover space on a Hard Drive. I personally use CleanApp, I found it to have more features than AppZapper and it's a little cheaper. I have not looked at AppCleaner, I wasn't aware of a free Application Uninstaller like AppCleaner until after I had purchased CleanApp. However, I don't mind paying the $10 for a program. It's less than a trip to the movies these day.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: how to, Leopard, Mac, Os X, Preference Pane, remove, System Preferences, Tiger

Update: OK, I feel pretty darn stupid now. I found out why so many people are not able to restore closed tabs in Safari like I have been able to.

Turns out it's because I'm running an extension I found for Safari called Saft. Actually, I'm running a bunch of extensions for Safari. I liked a lot of the features I had in Firefox thanks to the extensions I had installed over there, but Safari doesn't really support extensions like Firefox does. However, it does support InputManagers or SIMBL programs. Saft can be run as an InputManager or as a stand alone application.

I run Saft as an InputManager so that it's around when ever I launch Safari. It does a bunch more things along with restoring closed tabs so head over to the programs website and check it out. It's not expensive at all and in my opinion, well worth what the developer is asking for it.

If you accidentally close a tab and want to reopen it, just type Ctrl-Z, or use the Edit menu and select "Undo Closing Tab".

I have no idea if this is a new Safari 3.1 feature or it's been in all versions of Safari since the beginning. I just had no idea it was there until today. Interestingly, it does not work in the Windows version of Safari 3.1. Can't say I understand why that is, they should be from the same build branch.

Here is why I'm posting this:

I just found a great feature of Safari totally by accident. Sometimes I close tabs I have open by mistake. It's pretty easy to hit Ctrl-W one too many times or just when you thought you were in a different application. At least for me it is. :shrug:

So I was working on an article I am going to post next when I accidently hit Ctrl-Z to undo something I had done in Snapz Pro X thinking I could undo something I had done. However, Snapz had completely gone away and Safari was the top app. I noticed that the page I was looking at had changed. I got a little worried since I had some text in a window I had typed and was afraid that I had lost it by closing the tab. So I looked at the tab bar and noticed that there were more tabs than should have been if I had closed it. I hit Ctrl-Z again and saw another new tab appear. I then realized that I was restoring tabs I had closed out earlier.

So I looked at the Safari menu bar to see if I could find out what Ctrl-Z did, not really thinking that it was Undo. I looked at the History menu first, then went over to the Edit menu and saw "Undo Closing Tab".

Now, at this point, I was saying to myself: Duh! Of course. Still, I wouldn't have thought to use Undo to restore a closed browser tab in a thousand years. Especially since Firefox and other browsers have other ways to restore closed tabs or no way at all.

So I pass this info on to others in hopes that it will make their decision to use one browser over another a little easier.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Leopard, Os X, Safari, Tiger, tip

One thing I like to do with my iTunes playlists, smart or normal, is to adjust which items are to be played in what order. Most the time, I'm happy with the order that appears when the items are downloaded. However, sometimes, I want to listen to a specific podcast first, or I might want to put a podcast off till the end.

When I attempted to adjust the order by dragging an item in the playlist, I found that my Video Podcasts playlist wouldn't let me do this, my Audio Podcasts let me adjust the order just fine.

Now this baffled me. There was one other time I wasn't able to adjust the order of items in a smart playlist. At that time, I just assumed I wasn't able to adjust the item order in smart playlists back then so I forgot about it. Fast forward to now. I have been adjusting the order of my Audio Playlist without any problems, but I didn't think about the fact that it was a smart playlist.

As you can see, there is a little insert bar that appears when adjusting the order of items in a playlist works.

So I attempted to adjust the order in my Video Podcasts playlist and found it wasn't working.

Here, you can see that no insertion bar appears when dragging an item around in the list.

This made me scratch my head since both are smart playlists. Now, I know I can, in fact, adjust the order in a smart playlist since the Audio Podcasts playlist was working perfectly. I know that the Video Podcasts playlist should work, so what is the difference between the two playlists that made one work and the other not.

I checked the settings in both smart playlist and saw that other than what they are set to display, the rest of the setting are the same. I really couldn't think of anything else that could cause this so I wound up giving up for a few days.

Today, it started bugging me again, so I took a look again. This time I notices something that I hadn't before. The Video Podcasts playlist has a "Name" sort order and the Audio Podcast playlist is sorted by the number column. "Bing" (lightbulb turning on over head) It hits me that if the playlist is not sorted by the first number column, it must not allow that playlist to have it's order changed. I changed the sorting of the playlist to the first column and "presto", I am now able to adjust the playlist order.

So it seems that the only way you can adjust the playlist order of a smart playlist is if it's sorted by the first column (what ever that column is called).

I figured that if I had problems figuring this out, there are probably others out there that are having similar problems and would want to know what the solution is.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: custom order, Few Days, Insertion, iTunes, Playlist, Playlists, smart playlist, Smart Tag, Smart Tags, sort order, Video Podcasts

I came across a great tip at A NEW MAC TIP EVERY DAY that pointed out that you can change the volume in OS X finer than by just using the volume keys on the keyboard. If you hold down Shift and Option when tapping the volume-up and volume-down keys, it will take four taps to change as much if you were not holding Shift and Option.

This tip apparently only works in Leopard. (Thanks, Stephen!)

If you look at the screenshot on the right, you see that there are 16 positions you can set the volume to when just tapping the volume keys. Notice the 6th box from the left. It has half of it's box white and half dark gray.

So with the Shift and Option keys held down, you get 64 volume positions instead of the normal 16.

Something I found out while playing with this was that if I just held the Shift key down when changing the volume, the OS doesn't play that short sound that lets you know that you are changing the volume and also lets you know what the volume level sounds like. This might be nice if you want to change the volume without having to hear that noise while you are listening to the latest Maroon 5 song.

So to summarize:

: Will adjust the volume in 16 steps with sound.

+ Shift: Will adjust the volume in 16 steps without sound.

+ Shift and Option: Will adjust the volume in 64 steps with sound.

This is just one more example of how great OS X is and how much attention to detail Apple puts into the software it creates.

"Share and enjoy!"

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Apple, Attention To Detail, Control, Keyboard, Mac Tip, Maroon 5, New Mac, Option Keys, Os X, Os X Leopard, S Box, Screenshot, Shift Key, Sounds, Taps, Volume Control, Volume Down, Volume Level

Temporarily change Dock magnification settings |
Dock/Exposé/Dashboard | Mac OS X Tips
"Here's a quick tip about a keyboard shortcut new to Leopard (OS X 10.5) that I didn't know about.

If you normally have Dock magnification turned off, holding Control and Shift while moving the mouse along it will temporarily turn on magnification. As soon as you let go of the keys, the magnification will turn back off again.

The Dock will magnify based on the settings in the Dock section of System Preferences, which you can only change when magnification is turned on. As a result you'll have to turn it on, choose your preferred magnification level and turn it back off again.

The keyboard shortcut works the other way round too. If you normally have magnification on, holding Control and Shift will temporarily turn it off.

I'm not sure how useful this feature is, but it's interesting none the less. "

This is the kind of thing that sets Macintosh and OS X apart from any other OS out there. It doesn't seem like much, but it's just the level of thought that is put into every application written for the Mac.

Thanks a bunch Mac OS X Tips for such a great tip! I'm so loving this tip!

(Via Mac OS X Tips.)

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Control, Dashboard, Keyboard Shortcut, Leopard, Mac Os X, Mac Os X Tips, Mac Tips, Macintosh, Macintosh Os, Magnification Level, Magnification Settings, Os X, System Preferences, Thanks A Bunch