UsingMac.com
Mac Tricks and Tips, Wallpapers and Applications for Mac Users
Custom Exposé Glows for Download
In our previous article: Daily Trick 47. Tweak Exposé Glow, we have brought forward the option to change your Exposé glowing effect. After few minutes playing around with the image sprite, I have come up with these various sprites.
In this article, I'd like to share the sprite with you. You can refer to the previous daily trick for the step by step guide on how to change the effect.
Inspired by Artless Processes - Customize Snow Leopard Exposé Glow.
Screenshots and download link provided after the jump.
Mac Application Updaters
Sometimes, it's difficult to search and update to the latest Mac applications. This may hinder some people in using their Macs. In order to reduce the hassle searching for required applications, we can use application updaters, which will do the information gathering for us.
Some application updaters can be seen after the jump.
Daily Trick 47. Tweak Exposé Glow
For Snow Leopard Users
If you have noticed, whenever you press F9 key to activate Exposé, you will see a rather different Exposé from Mac OS X Leopard. And upon mouse over on one of the item, you can see blue glowing effect.
Today, we are going to bring you to tweak on the glow color to your liking.
New Design. The White UsingMac
After several months of black-theme UsingMac, we've decided to transform into white-theme design. Perhaps, some of you might feel surprised by this sudden change, but we hope that you feel comfortable with our new design.
Why Do We Choose White?
Having browsed through most of the websites that contain guide or information, rarely can we see them using white-on-black layout. That's when we think of changing into white-on-black layout.
What Are The Changes We Made?
If you have visited our site before, you would notice that the look-and-feel of several places have been tweaked, for example: mini highlights on the top now is incorporated with simple round button, you can browse through those highlights by clicking on the button.
Besides that change, we have also made changes to
- Logo → Now with simple text instead of image, for faster loading
- Search Bar → Located at right most of our navigation bar
- Sidebar → More appealing hover effect is added for better navigation
- Comment Box → It has been enlarged and now accept line break
And the biggest change would be the change from Black to White.
What Do You Think?
We believe that we are still far from perfect. It's really appreciated if you can give us any constructive feedback or comment on this new design. Not only for giving feedback, you can also try out our new comment box.
Hope you enjoy this new experience with UsingMac.
Fave Mac App 3. Path Finder 5
Path Finder is an award-winning file browser and management application for Mac OS X. This is achieved by adding on more useful features to the familiar user interface of Finder.
There are several features that I like to use while using Path Finder:
-
Multiple Tabs Browsing
Sometimes we might need to open multiple Finder window to drag-drop or browse around directories. Using Path Finder, we can combine all these opened windows into just a single window with multiple tabs. -
Temporary Stack
Although the drag-drop technique has become my habit in boosting my productivity in handling files. Path Finder enhances this experience by adding temporary stack where we can have a temporary place for drag-drop process. -
Dual Pane File Browsing
Often, we need to view different folders side by side. And the good news is, Path Finder provides the dual pane browsing ability for us. This feature of Path Finder is just too good to be missed. -
Quick Preview
By default, if we want to show information of certain item on Finder, we will reveal the Get Info pane by hitting keystrokes Cmd-Opt-I.
However in Path Finder, we can just toggle on Preview Mode and we can have all important information the item has. -
Recent Applications
Path Finder can also help us keeping track of up to 50 recent applications.
Even though it's quite pricey for an application, I still recommend using Path Finder. Path Finder really helps a lot in enhancing your Mac experience. For your information, there is 30-day trial provided for this application.
Screenshots are provided after the jump.
Homepage | Download Link: Leopard ↓ - Snow Leopard ↓ | License: $39.95
Poll. Your Favorite Mac Desktop
This article is intended to give exposure to other contestants that have submitted their works. The screenshots of their submissions are listed below. And you can cast vote on any that you like (you can choose more than one) at the end of this article.
Let's vote for your favorite Mac Desktop and support the one that you like!
Hint. You can use keystrokes Cmd-[↓] to quickly scroll down to end of page.
Tweak Screencapture Behavior
Normally, we will use keystrokes Cmd-Shift-3 or Cmd-Shift-4 to take snapshot with Mac default screencapture utility. And new in Snow Leopard, we will end up having a PNG image file automatically stored inside our Desktop folder with the name Screen shot … .
Those behaviors mentioned above are the default ones. We can easily change those with simple command lines.
Daily Trick 46. Fast Exposé Shortcut
Whenever you want to open the Exposé view of an application, usually mac users will advice you on using Hot Corner. However, we have a new trick here for you.
- Open 'Application Switcher' with Cmd-Tab
- Press Tabs until the app you want to perform Exposé to is selected
- Hit the arrow key [↓] or [↑] and the Exposé for that app will appear
It's fast, quick, and totally free of mouse actions.
But unfortunately, this trick only works in Snow Leopard.
Categories:
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Expose,
Shortcut
The Winners of UsingMac Contest 1
After long consideration and development time to put up all submissions into our new gallery, finally we can announce to our readers the winners of this contest.
Fave Mac App 2. Adium
Adium is an application that lets you chat with your friends across many chat networks easily at the same time. With Adium, you can connect to Yahoo!, MSN, GTalk, and many others with just one single chat client.
Adding to its value, Adium also provides us with interface to Twitter and Facebook. And if you can't past a single moment without chit-chat with friends, Adium suits you most.
Homepage | Download Link ↓ | License Type: Freeware
Categories:
Applications
Tags:
Adium,
Application
Daily Trick 45. Quick Manage Mail
Throughout the whole time of using Mac, often we will spend time on checking and managing our mail. I personally like the default mail application for Mac: Mail.app.
In this trick, I am going to share with you some keyboard shortcuts that come in handy when we're going to manage our mailboxes, quick navigate mailbox, and handle message.
Daily Trick 44. Quick Exponential Math (10.6)
I believe we all know that we can use Spotlight to do quick calculation, where we can do quick addition, substraction, and other simple mathematical operations right from within of the Spotlight window.
In Leopard, you can just type in pow(a,b) to find the value of a^b (e.g. 3^4 = 81). However, you can do it even faster with Snow Leopard by just typing a^b.
Note that you can always use key combination Cmd-Space to call up Spotlight box.
Categories:
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Calculator,
Daily Trick,
Exponential
Daily Trick 43. Batch Resize Images (10.6)
Although the steps needed to do batch resize images on Snow Leopard are more or less similar to those batch resize steps for Mac OS X Leopard, there is a simple workaround needed to perform batch open and resize images on Snow Leopard.
Daily Trick 42. Quick Terminal Command
If you're fans of single-liner for UNIX command, you can always use this quick Terminal command line execution trick to save the steps for executing Terminal command.
Here are the steps:
- Ctrl-Click on Terminal icon sitting on your Dock
- From the pop-up menu, choose New Command…
- Type the command line you want to execute on the appearing window pane
- And click on Run button for command line execution
With this trick, I am sure you can start to tweak around with simple command line, e.g. command line for New List View.
Categories:
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Command,
Daily Trick,
Terminal
UsingMac Contest 1. Deadline Reminder
Just to remind you all that the end of this month will be the deadline for UsingMac Contest. If you haven't participated in the contest, make sure to submit the screenshot of What's on Your Mac Screen and stand a chance to win fabulous prizes.
Categories:
Special Event
Tags:
Contest,
Reminder
Fave Mac App 1. Facebook Notifications
Facebook Notifications is an application that alerts you when new activities happen on Facebook and also helps you easily update your status.
If you are one of Facebook active members, this application suits you best.
I personally feel it's quite troublesome to browse into Facebook only to check for new
notifications.
Homepage | Download Link ↓ | License Type: Freeware
Categories:
Applications
Tags:
Application,
Facebook,
Notification
Daily Trick 41. New List View (10.6)
Sorry for the long hiatus of daily trick series due to lack of internet connection. Now, we're back on the track again.
If you put the Dock on the left of the screen, you're left with two display options, which are Grid View and List View. However, folks at Mac OS X Hints found a Terminal command to bring out new list view.
defaults write com.apple.dock use-new-list-stack -bool YES && killall Dock
After execution of the command above, your list view will look like the combination of Grid View and List View.
↑ new List View : After Execution of Command Line
And you can always use command line below to revert back to normal.
defaults write com.apple.dock use-new-list-stack -bool NO && killall Dock
Categories:
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Daily Trick,
Dock,
Stack
Daily Trick 40. Input Source Selector (10.6)
If you've mastered and used not only one language, but many of them, I believe you would want to have selections of input source and the input source switcher.
First of all, let me guide you to add more input sources for your Mac OS X 10.6.
- Open System Preferences and go to Language & Text section
- Select Input Sources tab
- Inside, there will be many languages input sources listed. Enable input source for the language by ticking the checkbox next to it
- Now if you click on the menubar flag icon (just next to Spotlight), you will be able to change your input source
Though now you can have more than one language of input sources, it will slow you down if you can't do the fast switching between input sources. In order to perform a quick input sources switch, you need to…
- Open System Preferences and go to Keyboard section
- From the sidebar pane, select shortcuts for Keyboard & Text Input
- The last two of the shortcut list displayed on the right pane are used to change your input source
- Assign the same keystrokes for them. If you are using language switching quite often, you can consider assigning Opt-Tab for them. Otherwise, Cmd-Shift-Space would be okay
- Lastly, whenever you want to switch to different input source, just press and hold the modifier keys (Opt for Opt-Tab or Cmd-Shift for Cmd-Shift-Space)
- You can perform an action like switching application, i.e. you can press Tab or Space many times to choose the input source
For a side note, if you only need to switch between two input sources, you can just press the keystrokes without the need of holding modifier keys.
(L). The screenshot of input source selector that I mentioned.
Categories:
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Daily Trick,
Input Source
Extending UsingMac Contest
I'm really excited to grab a copy of Snow Leopard and successfully upgraded my MacBook to Mac OS X 10.6. And amazed by many new feature enhancements, I decided to extend the UsingMac Contest so that you can also submit a screenshot of your Mac desktop, extended until end of September 2009.
It's very simple to participate in the contest: you only need to submit screenshot(s) of your Mac desktop to show the beauty of Mac. Or, if you're proud of your Mac hardware setup, you can also submit the photo of your Mac.
The image uploader is provided at the bottom of this linked article. Some examples are provided after the jump.
Daily Trick 39. New Exposé Feature (10.6)
It surprises me that Apple has finally solved the hard-to-navigate minimized window issue with the release of Snow Leopard. If you've upgraded to Snow Leopard, you won't need to use Open Minimized Window Trick to reveal those minimized windows.
With Snow Leopard, you only need to click-and-hold on the Dock icon of that application and an Exposé display will appear, showing all opened as well as minimized windows.
And if you prefer using Hot Corners to using click-and-hold, you can set it up as one of your hot corner actions; you can do it by following these steps:
- Open System Preferences and click on Exposé & Spaces icon
- On top of the pane, you will be able to see four select boxes, which each of them is mapped into one hot corner action
- Choose Application Windows for one of the boxes
- Next time if you want to show all opened windows, you only need to move your cursor to the assigned corner
With simple steps, you can get a wonderful effect. Great!
Categories:
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Daily Trick,
Expose,
Snow Leopard
Daily Trick 38. Text Transform (10.6)
When I browsed through new features of Snow Leopard, I stumbled on text transformation feature built-in on TextEdit. Using this feature, you can easily capitalize, make lower case, or turn words into upper case.
This new feature can be found on TextEdit Menubar · Edit → Transformations.
Putting productivity on the top priority, I create keyboard shortcuts for each of the action. If you want to do the same thing, you can follow these steps:
- Open System Preferences and click on Keyboard
- From the Keyboard Preferences Pane, go inside the Keyboard Shortcuts section
- Click on the [+] button and an additional menu will appear
-
And these particulars can be used:
Application: TextEditFor creating keyboard shortcut to make highlighted words upper case.
Menu Title: Make Upper Case
Keyboard Shortcut: Cmd-Shift-↑ - Menu Title can be changed to Make Lower Case or Capitalize to create another shortcuts for another two text transformation actions
As you can see from screenshot on the left side, now I have applied my customized shortcuts for these new text transformation actions.
Hope that I can help you improving your productivity with this little trick.
Categories:
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Daily Trick,
Snow Leopard,
TextEdit
Daily Trick 37. Snow Leopard Stack Highlight
Reading from the title, you will know that I have successfully installed Snow Leopard on my little Black Macbook. As a kick-start, let me share with you this simple trick to enable stack highlighting.
You only need to execute these two lines of Terminal commands to make it happens :
defaults write com.apple.dock mouse-over-hilite-stack -boolean YES
killall Dock
After execution of the second command line, your Dock will be restarted and when you mouse over one of your stack items, it will be highlighted.
Screenshot on the right displays how the stack highlighting looks like.
Source → MacRumors Forums
Categories:
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Daily Trick,
Dock,
Snow Leopard,
Stack
Daily Trick 36. Reject Message
Often, it's really annoying to have stream of continuously coming unwanted messages. By only trashing the message won't discourage the senders in spamming our mail.
There is one way you can use to discourage them: by rejecting the message. Technically, it's called Bounce Back. If you're currently using Mail.app (default mail reader for Mac), you can do the trick.
- Open Mail and highlight the unwanted message
- Go to menubar Message → Bounce or you can always use keystrokes Cmd-Shift-B
- The message will be bounced back to the sender
There are still many interesting, nifty Mail tricks, which can be found out more here or you can just check out additional mail plugins.
Categories:
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Daily Trick,
Mail,
mail,
Reject
Daily Trick 35. File Aliasing
As we all have known, having alias (or well-known as shortcut) can save you a lot of time in navigating through files.
For highlighted items, there are 3 ways you can use to create an alias of them:
- Ctrl-Click on one of them (highlighted items) and choose Make Alias from the contextual menu
- Drag-n-Drop them with modifier keys Cmd-Opt pressed
- Hit the keyboard shorcut Cmd-L and the alias will be made
Depending on the situation, you can choose one of the making alias techniques. For example, if you want to make alias on the same directory and subsequently move it elsewhere, 3rd technique is the most suitable.
Categories:
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Alias,
Daily Trick,
Finder,
finder
Daily Trick 34. Screen Capture
It's not just as simple as pressing Cmd-Shift-3 to screen capture your Mac. If you've used screen capturing feature for quite a long time, you will figure out some nifty tricks of it.
In this daily trick, I am going to share some tricks that I know in capturing screen. I hope that using list is fine for you.
-
[Ctrl-Cmd-Shift-3] or [Ctrl-Cmd-Shift-4]
After pressing the keystrokes to capture screen, by default the picture will be saved to your Desktop. If you press another modifier key [ctrl] while performing the keystrokes the snapshot will be saved to your clipboard.
This trick is quite well-known. I just re-emphasized it here. -
[Cmd-Shift-4] + [Spacebar]
Using this key combination, you will be able to capture a certain stand-alone object on your Mac desktop, e.g. the dock, the menubar, opened window, etc. It's easy to use as the captured part will be highlighted. -
[Cmd-Shift-4] + [Hold Spacebar | Shift | Option]
In adjusting your screen capture region, you can use the key listed above. It's hard to explain how each of them works, but it's self-explanatory if you try it. -
Grab: Cmd-Shift-Z
This is to have a screen capture with timing. Using built-in application called Grab, you can bring forward a 10-second timer to capture your screen when it's elapsed.
That's all for this screen capturing tricks. You can apply some of the tricks above to capture things on your Mac desktop and use the screen capture result to take part in our contest: UsingMac Contest. Beauty of the Mac [more…].
Categories:
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Capture,
Daily Trick,
Grab,
Screen