MacTricksAndTips.com

Today I am going to review an application which will be of interest to any one who has anything to do with web development, particularly CSS and HTML. One of the best ways to speed up the loading of a website is to put every image used in the CSS file into one large image. This means when your website loads, it doesn’t have to ask for many small images. It only asks for one large image (called a sprite) this improves loading times. For the new users generating a CSS sprite, where there is one large image that contains all of the images you are going to use can be difficult, if not confusing. Today’s app, Sprite Master Web, is a tool which you can use to generate your own CSS sprite on your Mac.

I like to get the latest content from various blogs around the world via RSS feeds. After having a discussion with a couple of people about the best RSS readers out there in the world wide web I am going to show you four really good RSS readers which you can use to get all of the latest content from your favorite blogs. There are three app’s in the list and one web based RSS reader, all different prices points each with a multitude of features. Like anything, there are a variety of different readers and app to do the job. If you have a particular favourite that you recommend please leave a comment.

When you use your Mac you generate files and folders worth of content. Unless you have a keen sense of keeping things in perfect order, once in a while you will find duplicates and copies of the same file. This wont just be the same file name, but the exact same file repeated in different places. It is acceptable to have one or two duplicates of the same file, but sometimes an entire folder or directory full of duplicate files can be a bit of a problem. Hence, I am going to demonstrate to your Araxis neat little app, Find Duplicate Files.

If you buy this game you will lose a lot of hours in the following week and month, I for one had to rush a report because I as playing this game. If you haven’t played Flight Control HD, on an iPhone or iPad you can finally play it on your Mac. Flight Control has been out for quite a while, so I thought I would give it a review and tell you what I think about it. I’m also interested in what other players of this game think as I have been addicted to this game.

There are many ways in which you can unrar rar files. In a similar method of yesterdays post on how to play mkv files, today’s post is going to mention some of the different ways to unrar rar archives. Since there are many ways to skin a cat there are also many ways to unrar these archives. Pretty much every app mentioned here does the same thing and there isn’t much difference between them. The only difference is between the command line program and the GUI app’s. Since the built in Archive Utility doesn’t have a support for rar files its worth having an app that can support these files when the time comes.

In the digital age that we live in there are hundreds of file formats, one that is getting particularly prominent is the mkv or Matroska, file format. A digital video container that is usually used for storing high definition videos. The Matroska format is a container format where the file can contain numerous video and audio files all in one container, Matroska is derived from the Russian term for a nesting doll. Its a very useful format and with it being used in HD videos it is becoming more common. The problem is that your Mac will not naively play them and you need a suitable plugin/codec to get them to play. This post is going to highlight some of the best ways to mkv files and get you on your way.

There is always that moment you are using your Mac that you wished you hadn’t pressed delete. It happens all the time and most of the time you can recover the file or folder. Once in a while, you find that you really have deleted the file and your can’t get it back the usual routes. This is where a new (and free for the time being) app comes in. Its called Disk Drill and it is designed to protect and recover files and folders have you have in advertently deleted without due cause.

My video collection, whether it be movies i’ve taken, other people have made or ones from sources I can’t remember, its useful to have a thumbnail or pictorial representation of the movie itself. Although the latest version of Finder shows a thumbnail of the movie it can sometimes be difficult to remember what the contents are. This situation is also exacerbated if the thumbnail is a black square, the file name is a string of random letters and Quicklook decides it want to wait to the end of the universe before it will open. To get around this problem I have slowly begun creating screen grabs or “caps” of my movies. This is where screen shots of the movie are taken every x minutes and made into a simple grid pattern. This allows me at a quick overview to see the whole movie, rather than the first frame. Its useful especially for archiving and quickly finding what is happening in a movie.