Stop Safari viewing PDFs with Acrobat Reader

Acrobat Reader is a constant annoyance in Safari and even Firefox/Mac. I doubt Adobe did much testing with non-admin privileges, fast-user switching, firefox/safari use, external drives, etc.

How does minimize use of Acrobat, but keep it around for emergency uses? There's no Acrobat option to turn off Safari integration (another sign that Acrobat is badly written), but you can track down and delete AdobePDFViewer.plugin. (Use Spotlight to find it.)

Then find a PDF and make sure it's set to open with Preview (Get Info, etc, etc).

Unfortunately the next time you start Acrobat it may "repair" its Safari integration and reinstall the plugin. I read conflicting reports. I'll document what I learn.

I wonder how much of its software work Adobe has outsourced, and whether they're really getting value from that decision.

Many lists of top 10 Firefox extensions

List top 10 FFox Extenstion you use...

Many lists. Most I know, I have about 4 I use -- mostly from Google. Google toolbar, Google Browser Sync, Google Notebook, IE View.

Google now has a unified help page

Google Help puts all their services in one place. It's a large number now. My Google Account now also lists all of the services (spreadsheet, page editor, etc) tied to my Gmail account.

BlogJet: Changing the BlogJet This! Template

BlogJet, my somewhat undocumented XP blog editing tool, has a simple template model that’s quite easy to customize.

BlogJet - Blog - Tip: Changing BlogJet This! Template

... If you want to change the template, find C:\Program Files\BlogJet\Data\Templates\blogthis.htm file and edit it. Here are a few variables that you can use:

{$ .URL $} - page URL
{$ .Title $} - page title
{$ .Text $} - selected text
...

It was easy to edit the default (which I disliked) to produce what I routinely do. Now if they’d port it to OS X …

PS. I finally noticed the the BlogJet default dictionary is UK based! No wonder I’ve been getting some “odd” spelling corrections. It took me years to change from my native Canadian spelling to US spelling, and now an odd tech twist is forcing a reversion …

iLife 06 Hot Tips

For example:

Sometimes photos look better in a particular context when "flipped" horizontally... e.g., have your two kids face each other on a two up photo page. It seems few people know about the contextual menu option that allows you to do this easily. Simply cntrl+click on a photo in a book, card, or calendar and select "Mirror Image."

Great TUAW post.

Flock: A purpose-build mozilla based browser

Flock is interesting. It's a "web 2.0" application built around the firefox/mozilla rendering engine. Open source. Tied to a variety of blogging services, photo sharing, etc. It bugs me that they're hiding their business model, I assume it's somehow tied to selling integration into other services.

There are versions for OS X and XP, including built-in blogging tools that cover Blogger. I'm going to try it on OS X for Blogger work. It has lots of memory leaks and performance bugs (like Firefox) though, so I'm mostly intereted in the version that will come out with the Firefox 2.0 engine.

(PS. Blogger is agan in crisis mode - posts failing, etc. Wow. Blogger is a living advertisement for the downside of web apps.)

Fujitsu SCANSNAP FI-511 for Mac

I've never seen a product get 15 five star reviews over the course of more than a year. I'm tempted to buy it just to find something to complain about. It includes Adobe Acrobat Standard in the price.

Very impressive scanner. I wonder how it would do with a stack of 4x6 prints? I wouldn't expect any prizes, but I'm curious. This post was very interesting -- only one I could find. It sounds like me. A high speed scan of lots of prints, then f/u with a high quality negative scan of the good ones.

Update 10/1/06: I eventually figured out the problem with the ScanSnap. It needs an attached computer. What I want is a scanner that sends the image to a file share, no computer required. I'd like a web interface to configure it. Wireless of course.