Mac Tricks And Tips » Finder

Keeping Your Mac Safe From Harm

admin — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 19:26:56 +0000

Hey

Every one wants to keep there Mac safe from harm, whether it be from physical attack, such as it being stolen or from cyber attack from some intent on giving you a bad day. Inspired by the review of WatchMac I did the other day, I was having a look around the Internet for a couple of different ideas on how to keep you Mac safe from yourself and other users. This post will list a couple of different tips and tricks ranging from the simple, to the slightly more complicated.

Don’t Use Admin Accounts

One of the things that bugs me when I set up a new Mac is that the first account is always the administrators account. As it is a new install you always forgot about this little feature. It is a big security risk, since you do have permission to delete and change things you normally wouldn’t have access to. To relieve this problem you have to create a second account. Do this under System Preferences > Accounts. In your new account make sure you don’t have the check, in the check box option “Allow User To Administer This Computer”. This should close quite a big loop hole.

Disable Automatic Login

If you laptop does get stolen the last thing you want is to enable any thief to automatically log in. To disable automatic login, go to Accounts Preferences again, under Login Options in the sidebar, make sure the “Automatic Login” drop down list says “Disabled”. This will disable automatic login. It does mean you have too type you password to login but it does increase your security.

Looooong Passwords

This one thing that I personally insist on is, long passwords. For any user accounts or passwords for disks try and make the password as long and as memorable as possible. Add extra letters and numbers to your passwords. This makes guessing passwords a lot harder and increases your security.

Use WPA for Wireless Networks

It doesn’t that much longer to use WPA encryption on your Laptop and routers. WEP can be easily cracked with a little bit of know how. WPA increases your security as it uses a different method of encryption. When you do choose a password, pick a long password as mentioned.

Disable Sharing Options

You can create quite a few access points if you enable the various different types of share on your Mac. Under System Preferences > Sharing, you can pick various different options such as File Sharing, Remote login, etc. Each of these can be used as a possible method of attack, especially if you are using a public network. Disable all of the Sharing options which you will never need, and only turn on the other options when you have to use them. This blocks any possible security holes.

Use Up To Date Software

Old software can have bugs and holes may be patched in newer versions. As a rule of thumb always try and keep software up to date. I recommend you use software update every couple of days, to make sure you have the latest software. I also recommend you use apps such as AppFresh to keep none Apple apps updated to the latest version.

Hopefully these basic rules will keep your Mac as secure as possible. I could have gone into a lot of depth such as using Terminal to secure your IP tables from possible intruders, but I don’t have much knowledge of deep level Mac operations. As well as this it is pretty hard for less experienced users to get a hold of. I wanted to keep this article brief an to the point.

If you have any other Mac security tips, please leave a comment.

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Keeping Your Mac Safe From Harm

Mac Tricks And Tips

Increase Refresh Time For Folders

admin — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:03:28 +0000

Hey

If you have some folder Applescript or Automator work flows attached to a folder you may find out that it takes quite a while for them to begin running. If you are waiting for something to happen, you may be waiting up to three minutes for the action to run. You can change this polling time with a simple Applescript to change the value. This will hopefully speed up the interval in which scripts are executed and allowed to run.

This polling time is managed by a program called Folder Action Dispatcher, it checks when a script needs to be run. To change the polling time open up Applesctip editor and copy and paste the following.

tell application "/System/Library/CoreServices/Folder Actions Dispatcher.app" to set polling interval to nnn

This Applescript will tell Folder Action Dispatcher to change the polling time. Change “nnn” to a value in seconds. For instances “60″ will change the polling time to every one minute. Speeding up the refresh time by 3 times. Handy.

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Increase Refresh Time For Folders

Mac Tricks And Tips

Quickly Print Files From Finder

admin — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:07:59 +0000

Hey

I am for ever sending files to the printer, for what ever reason, I want a quick way to print those files from Finder. Usually you would have to open the file in your chosen application, what for everything to load, go to print and then pick it up. That takes to long. This post will show you two quick ways to print a file without the need to setup all of the various settings. It will throw it out of your printer as quick as possible.

The first method is to use the print dialogue menu from the File menu within Finder. When you click this button the file will load in its respective program (except if it is a PDF), it will then send it to print automatically. There is one problem with this, it will use you default printer. If you have many printers it may not send it to the one you want. This method is quick but you don’t have much control.

The second method which is much more accurate is to make icons on the desktop. Go to System Preferences > Print & Fax select your printer, then drag this to the desktop. Let you computer whirl, my Mac located up for a minute, you will then have a desktop icon of your printer. You can then drag files onto the icon and they will print out. If you do this for all of your printers you can quickly print any document you want.

There is one small caveat with this trick, it will open up the program the file is associated with. If you have a word document, Word will open. It will then print the file automatically. One small hiccup but another than that its pretty nifty. If you are on the look out for a printer I recommend this Epson one, I use it at Uni and it works like a charm.

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Quickly Print Files From Finder

Mac Tricks And Tips

Good Saving Habits On Your Mac

admin — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 22:13:59 +0000

Hey

This was a request by Jim on recommendations for good saving habits. Everyone has the odd file thrown anywhere and it can be really annoying to find it again when you need it. Although you do have Spotlight to find the file you are looking for, it is often quicker and easier to find files by looking for them yourself. This post is designed to show Mac newbies (and veterans) good saving habits. It does work out better in the long run.

To start all Applications should go into the root Applications folder. Pretty simple, but I have found friends computers which have apps all over the place. It makes finding them a lot longer and if you move an app it could take you weeks to find it again, plus it can break a lot of links. Keep all apps in the applications folder. As well as this try to keep the root of your hard drive as clean as possible. Ideally you shouldn’t put any files or folders here. Simply because they can get in the way and will probably not be backed up by Time Machine.

The best place to store all of your files is in your home folder. This is the one given to you when you create a user account. Inside of this is the Applications, Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Library, Music, Pictures, Public and Sites. The screen shot below shows this (plus a couple I have added for myself). It is design to be logical and make things easy for you.

I don’t recommend using the Applications folder in your Home directory. Simply because if you use an app in that folder and then decide to delete your account you could lose that app. Plus it is a lot easier for every one to have it in the main Applications folder and then set permissions to who can use it.

The Desktop should be used as a temporary storage area so you can quickly access stuff from your own Desktop, its best not used to store important files. Simply because it can tend to be overlooked by yourself or programs when backing up or re-organising.

Documents. This is where you should store every single file that doesn’t belong in any sub folder. The folder is there so you can quickly and easily find your files. Don’t, like myself, add extra files and folder all over the place which store your documents. For example I have a Uni folder on my Desktop with important files. I fail at my own recommendations.

The other folders such as Music, Picture and Movies, should be used to store those types of files. This is because programs such as Front Row, look in these folders when they run. If you keep files and folders in there designated locations things will work first time and you will get the full Mac experience.

In a nutshell try and keep files and folders in places where they belong. When you create a new account all of these folders are created so you can easily organise your documents. Keep everything in its own folder, and keep files in logical locations. For example put all of your work documents under the /Documents folder, and then sub-folder that folder. Keep you Movies and Pictures in sub-folders under their respective folder.

As a new user (and I have done this) it is all to easy to place files and folder everywhere. The problem comes when you have to find these files and folders again. Keep things simple and where they would belong. Although you may end up with a lot of files and folder, it doesn’t take a couple of seconds to run through a couple of folders to find the exact file, compared to spending 10 minutes trying to find it with search.

Hopefully as a new user you understand what each of the folders mean. Keep things simple and where they belong and you should do OK.

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Good Saving Habits On Your Mac

Mac Tricks And Tips

Amazing Mac Wallpapers (Collection)

admin — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 12:44:21 +0000

Hey

In a previous post about a great Mac wallpaper some one asked about compiling a list of great wallpapers for the Mac. I like good wallpapers. Some pieces of art are amazing and are definitely worth being adorned on your desktop. This post is not going to go through a list specific wallpapers, as peoples tastes vary, as well as this it would probably kill my bandwidth. I am going to link to collections which you should check out and every so often cite good examples. As always if you have a good site or wallpaper please leave a comment.

DeviantART

I love DeviantART it has so many good collections of art. Quite a few of my favourite wallpapers have come from here. If you check out the Apple Wallpaper section you can view some of the good designs people have submitted. I found the wallpaper in the previous post from here. If you use the controls in the top right of the main body of the content you can control how many you see. One of my new favourites is shown below.

Flickr

Flickr is massive. Once you get past all of the pictures of people dogs and cats you can find some good wallpapers. One such examples are the Designer Wallpapers Pool and Wallpapers And Backgrounds. You do have to do a lot of searching, but there are some good gems hidden away.

As well as wallpapers there is another program that I should point out. This is FlickrSavr. It is a screen saver that download images from your account or other groups and displays them in a funky fashion as your screen saver. It is interesting to watch although it can be a bit of a bandwidth hog.

InterfaceLIFT

What is it with design sites shouting the last part of there name at me. Anyway, InterfaceLIFT is similar to DeviantART. It hosts really good wallpapers and designs. If you check out the wallpapers section you can find and download some wallpapers. One of the interesting features of InterfaceLIFT is the ability to pick you size. Very useful for people with large monitors. It doesn’t take long to find a good wallpaper to adorn your desktop.

HongKiat

Although not a website dedicated to hosting wallpapers it has found a good list of some amazing Mac wallpapers. There is three sets Apple related One And Two. As well as this it also offers some really interesting iPhone wallpapers. A good list to check out. The only problem I find with the list they have created is that they some times doesn’t cite there authors. I like checking out the back story of where the wallpaper has come from and how it has been designed.

Mac Wallpapers

Another top wallpaper site, Mac Wallpapers. Like most wallpaper sites you have to look through the site to find some good ones to keep. They vary in quality. Some are really good like the image below.

Desktoptopia

This isn’t a Mac wallpaper site exactly, but it does have some an application that is designed to download wallpapers to your computer and rotate them automatically. This is free software. Some of the wallpapers I wish you could download with out having to install the software. Desktopia.

Renew

Similar to desktopia, Renew goes a long the same lines. You download the software, install it. It will then run, download wallpapers and automatically display them on your desktop. This costs $20, so you may want to try out Desktoptopia first.

If you know of any more wallpaper sites or good wallpapers people leave a comment below. I would love to hear your opinions.

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Amazing Mac Wallpapers (Collection)

Mac Tricks And Tips

Adding A Trash Stack

admin — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:08:22 +0000

Hey

This is quick post which many of you find useful. For any one who has Leopard and uses stacks, a Trash stack may be very useful. Normally you can’t put a Trash stack in the dock since you don’t have access to to the Trash folder itself it can be quite hard to do, but there is a work around.

First open a new Finder window and press Command + Shift + G or goto to Go > Go To Folder. Then type ~/.Trash. You will then see a new Finder window. You can then drag and drop this folder onto your Dock.

Quite a neat little trick. A lot more useful than the normal way of opening up the Trash from the dock. Although it doesn’t work to well, in my case, with quite a lot of files in the Trash.

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Adding A Trash Stack

Mac Tricks And Tips

Finding The Folder Path

admin — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 19:30:00 +0000

Hey

This will just be a quick tip today since I have a lot of work on. Coursework + Exams leaves you with hardly any free time. Anyway this is just a simple tip to help you find the path of the folder you are in.

The quickest way to find the path is Command + Click on the title in the Finder window. This will show you the path of the Finder window you are in.

Alternatively you can right click on the toolbar, select customize from the list and drag the Path icon onto the Finder window. It will achieve the same thing.

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Finding The Folder Path

Mac Tricks And Tips

Hide Icon Previews

admin — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 19:26:00 +0000

Hey

Icon previews on Leopard are a love hate relationship. For example images, videos, and any other program which renders a large visual image is great for an icon preview. You can quickly see what is happening with out looking at the file name or using quick look to view the file properly. On the other hand it can be a bit of a pain. For example if you have a lot of work documents, including text, spreadsheets, websites to some extent you will probably get a white icon with very small text. This means that in a Finder window full of icons it can be hard to find and differentiate the between files, due to them all being white squares. The option is very simple, turn off preview.

If you right click on your folder, or your hard drive and select show view options, you will get a pane a pop-up pane full of options. Half way down the list there will be an option called “Show Icon Preview”. If you untick this box at the bottom of the items, all the icons will stop rendering live previews and instead default back to the file icon. You can of course re-tick it to show them again.

By disabling previews this may also help speed up any aging Mac’s (as well as my MacBook Pro sometimes). This is because Finder doesn’t then have to open up every file do a bit of processing and then render an image. Although the image is probably cached and the process doesn’t take up that much CPU, for anyone who does find Leopard a bit unresponsive sometimes when you open a folder full a images, this may help out.

It can help out by speeding up your computer and helping you see the files in Finder but then again you do lose that cool functionality for live previews for files that make Leopard so cool. At the moment I still have it left on, although for some, mostly work, folders its off to help speed things up. If only you could apply it to certain files, then this “feature” would be pretty useful.

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Hide Icon Previews

Mac Tricks And Tips

Show Hidden Files

admin — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:09:00 +0000

Hey

Did you know that your hard drive is full of hidden files. All of them are hidden to keep your computer running smoothly. But every so often you may want to view those files to see if your computer is acting out of the ordinary or you have mistakenly named something starting with a dot (.) and want to find the file again. There are three ways you can do this. Through an application, through a preference pane, or good old command line. Each have there pros and cons.

Application Method

The application method is probably the simplest. With a simple application such as Houdini, you can at the click of a button hide or show files or folders. As well as this it also enables you to quickly hide folders on your hard drive so they are hidden from view. This works very well if you want to hide your “important files” from people, and don’t want to use the password protect folder method.

Preference Pane Method

Another simple method of hiding files is using a special preference pane called Secrets. I posted about earlier. It enables you to show and hide folders using one of the many options, within the program. It also has a whole lot more, to enable you to access the deepest parts of your operating system.

Terminal Method

Probably the hardest to do but uses the least amount of work and has the most potential to go wrong, that is the Terminal Method. If you open up terminal (Applications > Utilities) and type the following:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE killall Finder

This will show you all of the hidden files and folders on your operating system. If you want to reverse the command replace TRUE with FALSE.

Personally my favourite method is to use the secrets pane, I find it is the quickest method of them all. To conclude if you want to use these commands I suggest you don’t change anything. Like my parents said, look with your eyes and not with your hands. I seriously don’t recommend you change anything at all, other wise there would be dire consequences for you system.

If you want to learn more about these sort of tricks I recommend, Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual or Mac OS X Unix Toolbox. Both develop this skills further and have lots of other types of tricks like this.

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Show Hidden Files

Mac Tricks And Tips

View Wireless Network Info From The Menu Bar

admin — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 19:22:00 +0000

Hey

For any one that has a wireless network and has the menu bar item, you will no that the items on the drop down list are a bit limited. For example you can’t see signal strength or any other factors, if you have a choice of wireless networks this could be a problem. As a result you could install a piece of software to do this for you. There is a work around for this. For example the first image below show what the drop down list would normally look like.

But if you press Alt and then click the menu bar it will give you a lot of information about the network you are currently connected to. This is great. You can have all of this knowledge which you can use.

The first number in the list is you MAC address which the wireless network card is connected on. The channel, is you wireless channel, pretty standard. The RSSI is your signal strength. A perfect signal strength is 0. The lower this number the worse it is. As a result of lots of wall and metal my signal strength is pretty low. The final number is data transmit rate, this is problem in mbits per second although don’t quote me.

As a result of a quick button press you can get a lot more information, which should be included by default. Many people have commented on not being able to see this easily. It is there all along, like most Apple products these features are not very well advertised.

If you want to find information about networks you are not connect to, just press Alt again while clicking on the menu item and hover over any network. It will give you the RSSI and the encryption type is shown. You can then make a more informed decision to connect to any networks since you can easily find out the signal strength.

If you have any more tips or tricks, or just a general comment about his tip please leave one below. I know from now on that I will be using this tip every time I am at a wireless access point or want to find out some general information.

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View Wireless Network Info From The Menu Bar

Mac Tricks And Tips

Automatically Set Subfolders Permissions

admin — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 16:34:00 +0000

Hey

Sometimes you may want to change the permissions of subfolder and all of there files. This could be down to the simple need to enable them to be read only for part of a server network or in my case allowing files and subfolders and files to be read and write for website development. Its took me a while to figure out how to do this, and it is blindingly obvious.

If you right click on any folder or file and select Get Info you will see a pane of information as you would expect. If you then click the pad lock and enter your admin password you will be able to edit the folder permissions at the bottom.

The problem with this is that it only changes the folder you are on. This can be a real problem if you have hundreds of files and folders that you want to enable specific settings, you would have to go through each one and change it by hand. The solution is to click on the tiny cog at the bottom of the pane, almost hidden away.

Clicking Apply To Enclosed Items will set the permissions to what you have changed above to every single item. It will come up with a warning message saying if you want to change them or not. Click OK. It will then whir away for a couple of seconds based on how many files and folders it has to change and then you will be done. If you want to change them back simply change the permissions in the list and apply it to the items once again.

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Automatically Set Subfolders Permissions

Mac Tricks And Tips

Moving Around In Finder

admin — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 18:04:00 +0000

Hey

Did you know that if you press enter on any Finder entry it will enable you to edit the name of that file or folder. Pretty neat if you want a way to rename stuff quickly, but not very useful if you want to open the file or folder in question. After some keyboard bashing I have found some quick keyboard shortcuts to enable you to move around in Finder quicker and easier.

The first tips is to open folders. This is done through Command + The Down Arrow. If you are in list view or thumbnail view this will open the file or folder that you have selected. A bit of a weird shortcut to open a folder or file, but that is one you can use.

The second tip is to move up in a folder hierarchy. This is done through press Command + The Up Arrow. Using the two mentioned key shortcuts up can quickly move up and down the folder menus. This works in both list and thumbnail view. If you press the left or right arrow while you are in the list view you can open and collapse the sub folder. If you are in column view and want to open a folder and move into it you can press the left or right arrow.

As a final tip, if you have a long list of items and you don’t want to scroll or click the down button you can press Option + Up or Down, to move to the top or bottom of the list. This only works in list view and it will put you to either the first or last menu item.

Hopefully with this quick tips you can now open up Finder items with out reaching for the mouse. I will now use this command even if it is a bit cumbersome.

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Moving Around In Finder

Mac Tricks And Tips

Finder Sidebar Separators

admin — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 16:25:00 +0000

Hey

The sidebar in Finder 10.5 is great, I like how it works and how it is designed. But there is one small problem that could be improved and that is separators. Separators are designed to visually split up your interface. You can usually move these about. They are a great way of simply organizing your workspace.

Currently Finder doesn’t have a way for having separators so a clever hack has to be implemented. Some clever guy has worked out that you can make a false applications, that is blank, give this application a .png image which is blank/transparent and then give the name of the application the line symbol repeated over a couple of times. Genius. This magic happens at this site.

The result of this is a clever way of separating items out in your Finder sidebar. If you look at the image it clearly breaks up the image and things look a bit more visible. There are a couple of limitations which I will explain.

In the included zip there are 7 dividing lines. Since these are technically applications, you can only add in 7 diving lines, since every time you add the same line in again it moves the existing one. This can be overcome by copying a line in the folder and inserting it that way.

To delete the line, since clicking on it brings up an error. Immediately right click on the line and select remove from sidebar, your line will then be gone.

If you want to check it out, head over to this website and find the download link at the bottom of the page. Its fun to use until an official way comes out.

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Finder Sidebar Separators

Mac Tricks And Tips

An Ultimate List Of Quicklook Plugins

admin — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 21:40:00 +0000

Hey

In my previous post I mentioned about Quicklook plugins. It got me interested into how many plugins there are and what ones you can get. As a result I have looked all over the web for some the best Quicklook plugins. These are designed for nearly every file time imaginable. Some of them are really cool and should probably be included with the system, some are more unique and are for special groups of users who use specific files. There are 20 plugins in total. Arranged in alphabetical order, all of the links will take you to the download page. Most are free although there are a couple that you have to pay for. Clicking on any of the images will give you the full size version if you want to take a closer look. If I have missed off any please leave a comment. As a side note, usually all Quicklook plugins will enable the same features in coverflow.

To install a Quicklook plugin drag the .qlgenerator file into /Library/Quicklook or into username/Library/Quicklook. This will either install it system wide or only for your account. If the folder isn’t available create one. Quicklook will then automatically install and use the plugin. This may take some time as it uses a cache basis for running the system. If you don’t want to want you can either restart or open up Terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal) and type in qlmanage -r. This will reset the generators and you are ready to go.

1) Brainsight

I haven’t used this quicklook pluing but it offers the ability to view files used in brain scans and the sort. It supports file formats which include dcm, mnc and img format. A very niche market and you may not need this plugin.

2) ColorXML Quicklook

A Quicklook plugin to show you the contents of xml files with indentations and syntax highlighting. The default install of Leopard doesn’t offer such features as a result this is great for anyone who uses xml files a lot.

3) EPSQLPlugIn EPS Viewer

This is one for any graphic designers out there that use a lot of .eps files. This Quicklook plugin is great as it gives you a quick look of any eps file.

4) Flash Video Viewer

Although the site is in Chinese or Japanese this quicklook plugin is used to quicklook Flash files and videos.

5) Folder Viewer

One of the best Quicklook plugins there is. This plugin offers the ability to view the contents of any folder, including all of the files. If you are going to download and install a plugin this is the one your should use. It is the equivalent of opening a new folder in Finder except it is a lot quicker and easier. It is written by the same guy how did the Flash plugin (number 4) so you may have a little trouble navigating the page.

6) HetimaClipping

This is Quick Look plugin for text clipping files (.textClipping) and picture clipping files (.pictClipping). I don’t use this application so I can’t comment on it usefulness.

7) QLEnscript

This plugin renders coloured output code for the following languages, Objective-C/C++, C/C++, Perl, Python, Java, Shell scripts, Assembly language.

8) SCR File Viewer

Another niche Quicklook Plugin that renders standard Spectrum SCR files, and also the enhanced Timex modes.

9) SneakPeekPro

One of the more professional sites and product. This plugin (which is $15) enables you to render in Quicklook, Illustrator .ai files, as well as InDesign, EPS and Flash files. It is one plugin that can do many things. If you are willing to pay the price it is a good product.

10) Textmate Integration

This is a pretty standard plugin that enables intergration within Textmate. The landing page sounds a bit complicated for me, but any one that has used Textmate and wants the functionality of Textmate this is one to install.

11) Zip File Viewer

Another amazing plugin, this one offer the ability to look inside zip folders ands view its contents. It is in the same style as the folder plugin, it is written by the same person. It includes the folder structure and all the the files contained in the zip. Very useful if you have hundreds of zips and you want to know what is inside them, as well as inspecting files you have downloaded on the internet.

12) Apple Scripts

This is another plugin for programmers and coders. It again takes the code, this time Apple Script, and outputs it in tabbed and colour syntax. It very similar to QLEnscript, except it is for Apple Script.

13) C64 Images

Another niche product that enables you to view many file types not supported on the default system. These include Koala (.koa, MultiColor), Koala (.gg, compressed, MultiColor), Amica Paint (.ami, compressed, MultiColor), FLI Designer (.fli, MultiColor, FLI), Drazlace V1 (.drl, MultiColor, Interlaced), Fun Painter 2 (.fp2, un-&compressed, MultiColor, FLI, Interlaced), Hi-Eddi (.hed, Hires), Image System Hires (.ish, Hires), OCP Art Studio V2 (.ocp, Hires), AFLI-Editor (.afli, Hires, FLI).

14) CHM Files

If you have ever downloaded .chm files, which are also know as complied HTML files, you can’t view them in Quicklook, this plugin enables you to do this with the greatest of ease.

15) iContainers with Candy Bar

This is not actually a default Quicklook plugin, but for any one who has downloaded and installed Candy Bar for changing and modifying your operating system this plugin offers the ability to look into iContainers.

16) Suspicious Packages

Suspicious packages is a Quicklook plugin for previewing the standard Apple installer packager with out launching the installer. You have the option for delving deeper into the package through the use of flippy triangles.

17) JEF Files

If anyone uses a Janome Embroidery Machines for patterns they come with a .jef extension. This plugin enables these formats the be rendered like pictures within Quicklook.

18) QLColor Code

Another syntax highlighter but this version has support for Tcl, Lua, and JSP. Compare and contrast this plugin with the other ones mentioned.

19) QuarkXPress

If you use any Quark files files, this plugin renders these files perfectly. It is distributed by the Quark team so it is a perfect match.

20) Shade 3D Scene

Although this site is in Japanese, this plugin will enable you to render any Shade 3D scenes in Quicklook. Like most of these plugins you just need to find the right plugin for the job.

If anyone has any more Quicklook plugins that they wish to add to the list please leave a comment below. You can also use this for your comments and suggestions. All in all, this isn’t a very interesting post on the face of it since most plugins are designed to render one file. Hopefully in the later updates Apple will release more support for more file formats.

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An Ultimate List Of Quicklook Plugins

Mac Tricks And Tips

Change The Icon Spacing On Your Desktop

admin — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 22:31:00 +0000

Hey

If you use your desktop a lot you usually end up with a lot of files and shortcuts scattered about the place. You may run out of room quickly but there is a new option that has been implemented in the new Leopard build to enable you to change the spacing between the icons.

If you right click on the desktop and select “Show View Options” a new menu will appear. This is used to organise the size and spacing of the icons.

If you reduce the grid spacing your icons will be closer together. As a result you can fit more on your screen. This is great for anyone that tends to run out of room quickly. There is a problem if you reduce it all the way as the text disappears.

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Change The Icon Spacing On Your Desktop

Mac Tricks And Tips

Cycle Through Toolbar Views

admin — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 13:18:00 +0000

Hey

You may notice at the top of an average finder window the toolbar containing small icons to help you work better with your make. You can of course right click and customize your toolbar from the appropriate menu. But I have found a cool tip by accident that lets you change the view of the toolbar. A bit mundane but cool none the less.

In the top right hand corner there is a small button that hides the toolbar and the sidebar, showing a more cut down view. If you command click it the toolbar will change. You can do this a couple of times as it navigates through the different sized text and combinations of text and icons.

It is a very simple tip but it is a quick way of changing the layout.

Edit: Stupid mix up of key commands, my bad.

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Cycle Through Toolbar Views

Mac Tricks And Tips

Enabling The Folder Path In Finder

admin — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Hey

Here is a power trick that I love. In a nutshell it enables the path of the current finder window to be shown where the name of the folder is kept. For example on a default Leopard installation the name of the folder is shown in the top of the window, for example “Applications”. This is Ok, but there is a quick trick and can enable the full path of the current finder window to be shown. An example of this is shown below.

What I really find cool about this is that with many finder windows open you can easily see which folder is where, if that makes sense. For a power user who usually ends up with a millions finder windows open it helps loads. It is really easy to do as well.

Firstly open up Terminal. This is located in Applications > Utilities > Terminal. Then type the following command.

defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES

Type NO to reverse it. As a result you get the full path in the finder title window.

I love this trick. I can’t remember where I came across it, it was written on a sticky under a virtual pile of them. I use stickies all of the time, quite a lot of things does tend to get lost.

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Enabling The Folder Path In Finder

Mac Tricks And Tips

Changing A Mac OS X Folder Icon

admin — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 19:49:00 +0000

Hey

You may want to after a while change a folder icon. This is a pretty simple process to do but its hard to get the hang off. But Apple Mac Tips will be your to savior. To begin, find an icon you like. A Good place is interface lift.

Once you have found your icon right click and “Get Info” on both you icon file and the folder you wish to change.

You will notice in the top left hand corner is a small icon, this will be the key to the process.

What you need to do is click on the icon. There will be a blue outline around the icon.

Now press Command + C, this will copy the icon to your clip board.

On your folder icon that you want to change, click it again and press Command + V. This will paste the icon.

This may take a couple of times to work, but you will get the hang of it. Have fun.

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Changing A Mac OS X Folder Icon

Mac Tricks And Tips

Creating an Alias on an NTFS Drive

admin — Tue, 29 May 2007 18:09:00 +0000

Hey

The Problem: You cannot create an alias on an NTFS Drive because you cannot right to the disk. The Solution: Read on.

The problem when creating an alias on an NTFS drive is that you cannot write to the disk, you get this error.

The solution to this is a little long winded but it works.

The first step is to create a temporary folder where you want the Alias to be. For example in your documents folder. This will bring you up with an alias of that temporary folder.

The next step is to delete the temporary folder you used to create the alias. You now have a “lost” alias.

The final step is to link this lost alias to the folder or file on the NTFS drive. This is done simply by double clicking on the alias.

Click “Fix Alias” and navigate to the folder you want on the NTFS drive. Problem Solved.

This work around helps if you need to a quick short cut to folders or files on an NTFS drive (or any other formatted drive that you cant right to) but were unable to do so because you didn’t have sufficient rights.

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Creating an Alias on an NTFS Drive

Mac Tricks And Tips