UsingMac.com

Your Source of Mac Daily Tips and Tricks

Preview Tutorial - Mark Up Tools


With Preview, you can open your PDF files and do some modifications to the files. Modifications can be done only when file isn't locked.

There are several useful tools in Preview that you can use. One of those is the Mark Up Tools.

Introducing Mark Up Tools

As the name suggest, this tool is useful for you to emphasize some parts of your PDF files. There are three mark up tools available: Highlight Control Command H, Strike Through Control Command S and Underline Control Command U. Don't worry about the shortcuts since they're easy to remember: take out the first letter and add Control Command in front.

If you still forgot what are they, you can always refer back to Preview menu Tools ▸ Mark Up. The tools can be seen there.

Screen Capture a Window


We all know that by using Shift Command 3 we can take the capture the whole screen and using Shift Command 4 we can select the region to be screen captured.

Capturing Screen Window

There is a hidden trick behind screen capture, if you're pressing Shift Command 4+Spacebar, you will be able to capture a window hovered by your mouse along with the shadow.

You can also capture your menu bar, Dock and even additional menu extras of your Mac. I think you should try it. It's fun.

Screen Capture

Use MovieFX for Adding Movie Effect


Inside Quartz Composer, there is a demo application that can add effect to your movie. This demo application is called MovieFX and can be found in Mac HD ▸ Developer ▸ Examples ▸ Quartz Composer ▸ Applications ▸ MovieFX.

Launching MovieFX

After you've been inside MovieFX folder, you should search for MovieFX.xcodeproj file. Open that file with XCode and from XCode toolbar, choose Build and Go.

Up to this point, you should be able to see new pane opened with entitled MovieFX.

Beautiful, Inspiring Firefox Wallpapers


Hi all, now we're back again with our big collection of Firefox wallpapers. There are almost 100 wallpapers in total for you to enjoy. Hope that Firefox can bring you warm, comfortable summer.

Added : Best to be viewed with Firefox.

Firefox Wallpaper 64
[Foxkeh.com]

Unique Clock Screensavers for Mac


Polar Clock Screensaver

I am so much attracted to the smooth transition between one color to the other. Without doubt, this is the most colorful yet simple screensaver that I've ever seen.

Download link for PolarClock

Mac How To : Hide Everything


Hide Menu Bar and Dock

We're now introducing you the trick to hide your Mac menu bar. It's useful when you're trying to mimic the way Windows users do to their menu bar. But for real, by hiding (getting rid of) your menu bar, you can get extra 20 pixels for your display.

And after your hardwork in tweaking, you don't need to care about what's the most suitable color for your menu bar; Invisible is the most suitable color.

Before starting, I'd like to tell you that you will need to have a free application so called Property List Editor. This application is already packed inside your Mac. In case you've deleted it, get it back now.

Here is the basic idea, you tweak the Info.plist file of certain application. This application, when launched, will hide the menu bar for you. It's also named as Full Screen Presentation Mode by Apple developers.

Enough of the explanation, I think. Let's jump to details:

Exhaustive Tutorial for iMovie


This tutorials and all the details are written by Kelly Swee. Thanks, Kelly!

Starting Your Project (Command N)

After importing it into the mac, you will find your imported videos under the events library. To start, go to File ▸ New Project. The new project is found in the Project Library. Select and drag the video clips from the Event Library into the Project Library.

Addition of Audio (Command 1)

Click on the icon or shortcut key Command 1 to add audio tracks. You may choose a range of audio tracks from the default files, iMovie' 08 Sound Effect and iLife Sound Effects . There are so many different sound effects that you can choose from. I would advise taking some time off to go through them and get familarized so that you could refer to them as you shoot and edit videos from different ocassions. You may also obtain tracks from your iTunes and Garageband.

Transparent Login Picture


Even though we have put transparent image as our login pictures, the white square box will still be there. This indicates that there is lack of transparency in displaying our login pictures.

But now, it's not a problem. Mac OS X Hints has put up a really interesting topic about how to enable this transparency. All of the steps are done in Terminal.

In their article, Show User Pictures with Transparency, I can conclude three main steps used in adding transparency to login pictures.

  1. dscl . -read /Users/[your username] Picture
    This will help you identify which image you're currently using for Desktop picture. As a response, Terminal will return the path of the picture.
    Picture: /Library/User Pictures/Animals/Butterfly.tif
    Don't forget to copy the path to this file, as you will need it later.
  2. sudo dscl . -delete /Users/[your username] JPEGPhoto
    As explained inside the article, we will have a JPEG version of the image. This JPEG version is the culprit behind the inability to display alpha transparency. With the command line above, this JPEG version will be removed.
  3. sudo dscl . -change /Users/[your username] Picture '/Library/User Pictures/Animals/Butterfly.tif' '/Library/User Pictures/New/Smile.tiff'
    The first parameter under the single quote is the path to the current login picture. This is the path that you've copied to clipboard at the 1st step.
    The second parameter is the path to new login picture that you want to use. Obviously, use new login picture with some transparencies. You need to provide the full path of it. (Hint: You can use drag and drop to accomplish this task)

As usual, logout for the change to take effect.

I cannot fully guarantee that this trick will not harm your Mac. The only thing I can prove is that this trick didn't harm my Mac. So, you can try it for your own risk.

Strange Browsers


Click here to view this short video on Flickr

Terminal Sings Songs


Just a quick tip, with a your Mac built-in voice, you can make your Mac sings several nice songs with Terminal. 

say -v Good oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Is it nice? Do you want more? Don't worry, there is more songs ahead for you to enjoy, especially during your most boring time. You know what I mean. 

say -v Bad oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Maybe you feel the lyric is a little bit boring? All o's like that. Let's use a little bit creativity. 

osascript -e 'say "Dum dum dum dum dum dum dum he he he ho ho ho fa lah lah lah lah lah lah fa lah full hoo hoo hoo" using "Cellos"'
osascript -e 'say "Dum dum dee dum dum dum dum dee Dum dum dee dum dum dum dum dee dum dee dum dum dum de dum dum dum dee dum dee dum dum dee dummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm" using "Pipe Organ"'
osascript -e 'say "Dum dum dee dum dum dum dum dee Dum dum dee dum dum dum dum dee dum dee dum dum dum de dum dum dum dee dum dee dum dum dee dummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm" using "Hysterical"'

I don't like this one above. It's just because it's too long. 

osascript -e 'say "oh This is a silly song silly song silly song this is the silliest song ive ever ever heard So why keep you listening listening listening while you are supposed to work to work to work to work its because i hate my job hate my job hate my job its because i hate my job more than anything else No its because youve no life youve no life youve no life and you better go get one after forwarding this crap" using "cellos"'

You can Triple-Click on the displayed command line to highlight the whole line.
Special thanks to :

  1. MacRumors for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd songs
  2. The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) for the 4th and 5th songs
  3. The commentor Jérémie for the last song

Firefox 3 How to: Store Bookmarklet in Bookmarks Bar


Last time, I've compiled an article about Bookmarklets for Mac Safari. Actually, those bookmarklets also can be used on your Firefox 3. Because those bookmarklets are running with javascript. As long as you have your javascript turned on, you can use them.

"A bookmarklet is an applet, a small computer application, stored as the URL of a bookmark in a web browser or as a hyperlink on a web page." ~ Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It's a bit tricky to store your bookmarklets on Firefox 3 Bookmarks Bar. Simple favicon drag and drop, unfortunately, cannot work in Firefox 3. You still can do simple favicon drag and drop to bookmark a certain page of your visited site. But I don't know why, it just can't work on storing bookmarklets.

Therefore, you need another way to store the bookmarklets on bookmarks bar. I have two alternative ways here and I will explain you the details on how to make it. This is the case if you're willing to read through the article though. You can also watch the short video tutorial at the end of this article.

Play Emacs Games on Mac OS X


What's Emacs

Unlike what people think of and write of, Terminal game isn't the correct term to be used; Instead, emacs game is the correct term.

Emacs version 22.1 first supports Mac OS X on June 2, 2007. The complete story of emacs can be read from wikipedia: GNU Emacs, if you're interested.

How to Play Game with Emacs

  1. Open Terminal
  2. Execute command emacs
  3. Under emacs, type keystrokes Escape X
  4. Insert the game you want to play. There are several interesting games you can play here, such as: Tetris, Dunnet and Gomoku
  5. Later I will tell you where to find the listing. Now, let's watch emacs in action

Mac Applications for Video Recording


Nowadays, I have been hunting for good mac applications to record screen of my Mac. And I found these five applications are good enough to do the task: ScreenFlow, SnapzProX, ScreenMimic, iShowU and Jing.

Their prices are varying. They also have their own uniqueness. Here are what I thought of them.

Jing

Price : $0.00 alias Free

Let's start from Jing.

With Jing, you can record video of your screen up to 5 minutes. The recorded video is in the swf format. The file size of the result is quite big so that it's not compatible for recording long video.

Recover Deleted Desktop Picture


I have set up a cool image as my Desktop picture and that precious file is accidentally deleted. And I will be really confused if someone came and asked me to send that image file I used as Desktop picture.

I spent my precious two-hours time digging through folders to find where the file is saved inside my Mac and ended up in vain. But then I realized, I can use one trick to recover that deleted Desktop picture. Here is how the trick works:

  1. Open System Preferences
  2. Choose Desktop & Screen Saver and then go under Desktop section
  3. Simply drag out the Desktop picture thumbnail and you will get the copy of that picture file. It works like a charm

For additional illustration, I have embedded the video tutorial for this trick.

Preview: Handy Color Picker [Leopard]


As a huge fan of Leopard Preview, I always try to do my image editing process with Preview. And I guess today is my lucky day, I discovered how to pick color from anywhere of your Mac screen with only Preview in hex format.

You could see the benefits here: Preview is fast, rarely crash and most importantly: it's free.

Setting Up

Here is the step by step tutorial on how to set up the color picker:

  1. Open Preview without opening any images file. This way, only the menubar of Preview will be shown on your Mac
  2. While the menubar is showing Preview, hit keystrokes Shift Command C to reveal one of Preview tools: Show Colors
  3. Inside Colors Pane, choose Color Palettes which is the third pane from the list of tools
  4. There you will see the palette chooser. In order to display the hex format of the color, you need to choose palette named Web Safe Colors
  5. Now, you've done the setting