This tip is specially useful for users that have big monitors. Sometimes, when working with Apple apps, one needs to change some common document properties. That’s the time to call the already well-known Inspector. But what if you are modifying some table properties and, having not finished that yet, you feel the need to change some text properties? “That’s easy”, some would say. “Just click the text button (the big T on the top), change whatever needs to be changed and go back to editing those table properties.” Right, that will do. But if you have a big monitor with enough screen spare space, wouldn’t an extra Inspector be even more useful then going back and forward like that? All you have to do is, instead of clicking the big T, option-clicking it. That’s right! Just hold the option button while clicking any panel, not only the text one, and see magic happen. How do you like that, uh?

Henry here! After a looong while away, I’m back to the blog. And I return with a new series of posts called “It’s A Tip”. Every Sunday I will give a tip of usability for our beloved Macs. These tips will mostly make reference to the OS or the basic Apple software (iLife and iWork). That way, almost anybody will be able to take advantage of them.

Well, welcome back for me then! Heheh. The first tip will be here in a few moments, stay tuned.

You can add a Recent Items stack to the Dock. To do so, open Terminal and type this command:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add ‘{ “tile-data” = { “list-type” = 1; }; “tile-type” = “recents-tile”; }’

After that, type killall Dock to restart the Dock and see your new folder. The only thing that’s missing according to the original author, is the ability to display it is a fan, so you’ll have to live with it showing in tile view.

Once the stack is created, control-click on it to reveal a contextual menu that lets you pick between recent applications, documents, servers, volumes, and items.

Via macosxhints.com

Let me set the scene. You’ve come to your Mac, all ready to have some fun, maybe check your email, watch a video, you’re choice. And then suddenly, your dock freezes. You can’t click on anything in the dock and it’s causing you internal pain unmanageable by even the greatest ninjas.

You’re lost, and no one’s there to save you. However, I have the solution.

Open up your Macintosh HD (no, not literally), and basically do the following:

Macintosh HD > System > Library > CoreServices

Then click on the file named Dock (this is also the place you use to change dock image on Leopard, see this), and Tada! The Dock is back, and better then ever (not really)!

As Bryce posted before, there’s a way to change the Leopard dock back to 2D, for those who didn’t like the idea of a 3D dock. But what if you like the idea of it, but not the colors? Or the separators, maybe? Meet LeopardDocks.com, a place to help you change the looks of your dock while keeping it 3D. There are already around 70 different combinations that can be downloaded and easily configured (and that number should rapidly increase). Check 3 of the available designs below (Mario Mushroom Marker, The iPhone Dock and Cheese):

Those already using Leopard are probably aware that this cool new feature called Quick Look can be accessed by pressing the space bar while selecting a file. This is specially useful when we you need to check a PowerPoint presentation, for example. While Microsoft’s application runs terribly slow using Rosetta (sometimes even freezing for a while, if the presentation is fullscreen), Quick Look opens the document instantly, showing each and every slide. Check it out! Not working for you? You are probably trying to Quick Look a .pps file. Rename it to .ppt (the only difference between them is that .pps opens the presentation in fullscreen by default, .ppt does not) and try again, you will be amazed. No more PowerPoint freezes!

Another great thing about Quick Look is that it can open open multiple files. It works the same way for multiple files. Just select them in the Finder and press the space bar. Now your window will show a few different buttons:

From left to right: go to previous file, play, go to next file, visual index and the already familiar fullscreen mode. This shows Quick Look is even more useful than one could find it to be. Take the play button, for example. Just select a few images, Quick Look then to fullscreen and press play. Voilà! There’s your slideshow.

Choosing the visual index button you get a glimpse of all your selected files (in a stacks kind of way - the more files, the more it looks like it):

All you need to do is select one of them. Any other tips about Quick Look?

Even though I am extremely fond of the futuristic 3D Leopard dock, some people might feel differently. That’s why I have this handy tip for changing it back to a more Tiger OSX style.

Open the terminal and enter in:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES

Then type in:

killall Dock

If you don’t like this, type NO instead of YES above, like this

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean NO

The end result looks like this:

Via Eminemdrdre00’s Blog

This article is by Snarfer:

This will show you how to set your current Screensaver (set in System Preferences) to your background.

You won’t need any third-party software (excluding your favorite screensaver), just good old Darwin.

1) Open up the Terminal.

2) Enter in the terminal the following code:

/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background

*To stop it, press Ctrl-C.

*Note: On exit of the Terminal, it will ask you to terminate the following processes: xx, xx, xx, ScreenSaverEngin. To continue having the screensaver as your background but have Terminal closed, you need to Hide the Terminal (Command + H)

Screenshots: playing FLURRY

Read the rest of this entry »

Here are a few tricks for changing the Dashboard/Dock.
Simply open up Terminal (found in Utilities folder), and enter the following:

• This allows you to drag widgets out of Dashboard onto the desktop. But you’ll need to restart the dock, so type “killall Dock” and press enter (after entering code below). Now, if you click and hold onto a widget in the dashboard and press F12 to return to the desktop, the widget won’t disappear with the rest. Put NO at the end to reverse.

defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES

• Deactivates Dashboard. Also requires dock to be reset, so type killall Dock” and press enter (after entering code below). Replace YES with NO to enable again.

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES

• Makes hidden applications’ dock icons translucent. NO to reverse.

defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool YES

Luckily, there are hidden files that are viewable from any unix based operating system, which includes the wonderful Mac OS X. To see the list of what is available, type in the terminal (found in Applications/Utilities):

ls /usr/share/emacs/21.2/lisp/play

To play the games, open a new terminal window (Command + N) and type “emacs” and hit enter/return. Once in the emacs section, press “Esc” then “x” to get to the prompt. Now you can type any of the files in that original list to play them.

Some games are:
snake, tetris and pong, and some others.
zone, makes the text on your screen go crazy!

Trust me, this is worth trying out!

This tip is from Bryce:

Only a couple tricks here for Safari, but these can be very helpful, and are easy to set! Simply open up Terminal and type the following:

• This will enable the debug menu in Safari. If you want to disable this, Type again but with a 0 instead of a 1.

defaults write com.apple.safari IncludeDebugMenu 1

• This one sets the history limit in Safari to a certain number of items. You can also set the number of items for a certain age.

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitHistoryItemLimit 2000 and/or
defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitHistoryAgeInDaysLimit 30