Archive for May, 2009

Mac OS X Hints is closed today in observance of Memorial Day in the United States. The hints will return as usual tomorrow morning

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No new hints today…

This hint combines two common documented tools into a time-saving trick. It requires is that you have a picture for your desktop. To use that image as your desktop picture: Open the picture in Safari

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A fast and simple way to set a desktop background image

I use Path Finder as a Finder replacement on all my machines; I really like the added features it brings to the table. While reading some other stuff about Path Finder, I stumbled across this thread in the CocoaTech forums. There you’ll find a number of AppleScript tidbits for Path Finder, many going back a few years.

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Move and size a Path Finder window based on stored values

A reader emailed me a question; he wanted to know how to identify what sort of recordable media (CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, etc.) was in his machine’s optical drive. Obviously, you could hit the eject button to answer the question, but I wondered if the system would be able to help. After a bit of testing, I found three ways to find this info, though I suspect there may be more.

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Identify inserted recordable media type

On my last project, we made extensive use of iChat’s video, audio and screen conferencing features. I found myself wishing I could record our sessions, as some of our discussions were extremely complex

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Auto-record iChat A/V chats

I discovered by accident that you can drag an iCal event on to the desktop to instantly create a .ics file that can then be shared easily with others. Just click and drag an event as if you were moving it to a new time. As soon as the cursor leaves the main calendar view area it will turn into a small “summary” version of the event you are moving

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Create .ics files from iCal via drag-and-drop

It seems that the OS X 10.5.7 update causes issues with Adobe’s CS4 applications and OS X’s Spaces feature. As noted in this Apple Discussions thread , clicking an icon in the Dock for a CS4 app that’s in a different Space won’t cause that Space to become active. Adobe’s Photoshop CS4 Read Me clearly states that Spaces isn’t a supported feature: Spaces (Macintosh only) We do not officially support the Apple OS X Leopard “Spaces” feature.

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10.5: Issues with Adobe CS4 apps and Spaces in 10.5.7

If the film you’re watching on your laptop is too wide to fit, and you want to zoom in on the movie in DVD Player, there’s a nice slider for it in menu Window » Video Zoom. In QuickTime Player, however, there’s only an option to completely zoom in, cutting out a lot of the movie on both sides. So if you want a compromise between those two views, do it this way: Zoom in on the movie by first dragging it over to the left side of the screen, and then resizing it by dragging the lower right corner.

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Watch widescreen movies in QuickTime Player with zoom in

Fujitsu does not list Mac OS X drivers for the ScanSnap S510 on their English language website (maybe because they have a Mac version of the ScanSnap S510, the ScanSnap S510M). They do, however, list the OS X drivers for the ScanSnap S510 on the Japanese language site, but as you may expect, the program is also in Japanese. The directions that follow are to get the ScanSnap S510 working under Mac OS X, in English.

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Use a Windows PC Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner on the Mac

I send a lot of letters written in Pages ‘09 from myself personally, as well as from my business. Pages already offers “merge fields” that allow you to setup placeholder text which can be populated by dragging and dropping in a contact from Address Book, but you have to pre-choose the type of address when you set these fields up. Normally, I set up all my templates using a person’s work address, but sometimes, I need to send a letter (business or personal) to a person’s home address (or another address), and I’m back to copying and pasting the address from Address Book again

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Create customized Pages ‘09 letters from Address Book