Niceties of the OS X GUI

GUIdebook > Articles > Interview with John Gruber

John Gruber discusses some niceties of the Mac UI:

For example, I recently discovered that if there are two or more files sharing the same name in the Open Recent menu, Mac OS X also shows where do they come from – a very nice touch.

It’s not recent, but the most delightful surprise I can remember from the last few years is when I discovered that you can use Command-Tab switching when you’re in the middle of a drag. So you can start dragging something in one app, then use Command-Tab to switch to another app, and then complete the drop in the new app. I don’t even know when this happened – it might have been like this on Mac OS X all along, but I don’t think I noticed until sometime during the 10.2 era. This also works with things like Exposé and Dashboard.

It sounds obvious, but doing something like that was completely unheard of on the old Mac OS.

A lot of the stuff I wrote about in my Tiger details report delighted me to some degree. For example, I love that you can now click in the very top-left pixel of the main display to trigger the Apple menu (and likewise for the top-right pixel for the Spotlight pseudo-menu thing). I think the Apple menu should have worked like this all along.

The pixel clicks are indeed nifty. That inspired me to see what happens when I option-click the green 'window grow' icon. My window pops over to the top left of the display. Nice surprise.

Blogger for Word: a mixed bag

Blogger: Download Blogger for Word

On the one hand, this sounds great. On the other hand, I hate Word and I don't want to buy a copy. Fortunately it supports my ancient version of Word 2000.

Now you can use Blogger right within Microsoft Word. Just download and install the Blogger for Word add-in and a Blogger toolbar will be added to Word allowing you to:

* Publish to your blog
* Save drafts
* Edit posts

I hope there's an API someone else can use ...

Logitech mm50 Portable Speakers for iPod

Logitech Products > Speakers > Stereo - 2.0 and 2.1 > Logitech mm50 Portable Speakers for iPod

A quite competitive portable or small room iPod speaker solution. Good for the kitchen. Cheaper than some of the Altec Lansing solutions and has its own LiOn rechargeable batteries.

Exotic OS X knowledge: unifying data and resource forks

Mac OS X 10.4.2 (Part 29)

I once spent a few days looking for a way to unify data and resource forks. I didn't come up with anything. So this Macintouch discussion really caught my attention:

I haven't tried this as I don't have any files on a FAT32 volume, but I believe that this technique should work. Obviously, don't throw out the component files until you've tested this solution.

1) Identify the files which are the actual resource and data forks. In Scott's case he seems to understand which is which.

2) Copy the data fork file onto an HFS volume. Let's assume that the copy will be called /Users/me/test.

3) Open the terminal app.

4) Here's the slightly tricky part. You can use the 'cp' command to copy into the resource fork directly. Assuming the resource fork's file name is

/Volumes/Fat32/file/resource.frk, use this command:
cp /Volumes/Fat32/file/resource.frk /Users/me/test/rsrc

Even though /Users/me/test is a file, not a directory, the syntax above is valid (on OS X, not other Unixes). Actually, I think as of Tiger, it's being deprecated in favor of a more extensible fork naming scheme (/Users/me/test/..namedfork/rsrc), but this still works and it's easier.

5) If you (or your applications) care, use a utility to set the new file's Creator and Type. If you're not sure what they are, just open the finder info file in a text editor- they ought to jump out at you. Alternatively, make a new data file with the relevant application, and copy the info from there. I'd probably do this step just to be sure, but most OS X apps don't care about this. The Finder won't care if the file extension is correct and unique. /Developer/Tools/SetFile is a command-line tool that will work, but there are zillions available, some for free.

File Buddy for OS X has some interesting features - creating packages

The most popular file utility for the Macintosh

This Macintouch reference suggests FB is worth a look:

Use some file-system tool (SkyTag's FileBuddy for instance) to tell the MacOS that a certain folder is actually a Package. If File-Names were not ruined in the copying process, and multi-fork resource-files were not part of the deal (they are quite rare these days), then this trick will work for you.

The following FileBuddy screenshot contains an "info" window for file-system objects. Note the "Package" checkbox. That's the one you'll need to set up for the folders that "forgot" they were packages.

Wi-Fi Protected Access: where Windows XP SP2 meets OS X

Setting up an encrypted wireless LAN with both Windows and OS X clients used to be very ugly. There was no implemented standard for WEP passphrases, so one had to work around cryptic hex keys. Well, at least if you're using XP SP2 and OS X 10.3.x or later the bad old days are history. Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) just works.

My AirPort Extreme is running WPA (my iBook doesn't seem to support WPA2, not sure if that's a Panther issue or a G3 issue). My XP SP2 laptop connecs using the same passphrase my Mac clients use. No problems at all. Apparently since May 2005 XP SP2 also supports WPA2.

This is so much better than WEP -- although I fear my aged iBook doesn't like the CPU burden ...

MacDevCenter.com: Automated Backups on Tiger Using rsync

MacDevCenter.com: Automated Backups on Tiger Using rsync