Articles In Category
Shortcuts Nirvana, Part 2
Shortcuts Nirvana: How I Accumulated 800 Shortcuts
An Audiophile Listening Room with Apple’s HomePod
Apple's HomePod has been the underdog in the "smart speakers" category since its introduction last year. It's more expensive than the offerings from Google and Amazon, and Siri doesn't seem to be as powerful. I haven't used Alexa or the Google AI assistant, so I can't say what the difference may be. But let me just say that HomePod is a revelation in audio quality, and its "smart" features are more than adequate for my needs. The most surprising aspect of HomePod is that it has finally let me put together an audiophile listening room without taking out a second mortgage!
HTML5 Audio and Video Guide
Detailed examples of how to play audio from a web page
Cocoa with Love: Drawing gloss gradients in CoreGraphics
The Ultimate Solution To Window Clutter:
You Can Call Me SAM
I've observed that one of the most intractable problems bedeviling computer users, which makers of operating system software never seem to solve, is that of "Window Clutter." The inability to …
- Stay focused on the window you're working in, while
- Keep auxiliary windows handy and visible when needed,
- Avoid confusing any of these windows with those of other running applications, and
- Maintain some reasonable level of aesthetic quality to your computer desktop.
… is a nettle that keeps on pricking. At least, judging from continued user grumbling about it and the continued, less-than-satisfactory, though often valiant, solutions that user-interface experts keep offering users as the final salvation from this longstanding hindrance to productivity, I conclude that the nettle is alive and well.
That Window Clutter should still be a topic of conversation among engineers at Apple (I don't think Microsoft has any high-level staff who really care about or understand the issues surrounding interface usability, and Linux developers don't have the time to do so) is testament to their failure to stamp out a problem that appears from Mars to have a fairly simple solution, namely:
- Make it so that only one application's windows are visible at any one time.
Affectionately referred to as Single Application Mode, or SAM, this is the default desktop environment on Mars. It's also widespread on Earth, though its human adherents often practice SAM quietly or even in secret because it's not an official, supported Mac OS X desktop environment.
Still, we find SAM the best way of dealing with today's large monitors, huge RAM capacity, and equally huge software options—all of which spell Window Clutter at a scale never before experienced.
Mac | I Love Code
Very Clear and Useful Article on Cocoa Debugging and Dead-Code Stripping
Blow-By-Blow Description of How an NSApplication Comes Alive
CocoaDev’s “How To Program In OS X”: A Great Resource, But A Lousy Pointer
Courtesy of Borkware: Quickie Cocoa Code Snippets
My Passionate Fling With iWeb Is Wearing Me Out!
Since releasing of Crystal Clear and VacuumMail earlier this year, my download traffic has overridden my .Mac account ... and twice (so far) I've had to upgrade my account to accommodate the bandwidth. I don't mind that, nor do I mind the additional traffic on the Mars Downloads pages. What I do mind is the time it takes me to keep those pages updated! In fact, it takes so long I haven't been able to keep them in sync with the new stuff I was making.
I've been a pro webmaster for, well, a long time... since 1994, in fact. So keeping a couple of simple pages updated shouldn't make me break a sweat, right? Damn right! Problem is, the Download pages started as an experiment with Apple's iWeb software last year, and iWeb and WordPress don't mix well. To help them get along, I devised a simple checklist so all I'd have to do was:
- Generate the raw HTML from iWeb
- Massage the HTML by
- Tweaking a few CSS styles,
- Doing a few search/replaces,
- Doing a bit of reformatting, and
- Plopping the iWeb HTML in the WordPress template, and
- Moving the iWeb graphics and other files to the server.
At least, that's how I thought it was going to go. As it turns out, the convoluted HTML and CSS code that iWeb generates invariably causes problems when running inside Mars. This means each update can turn into a 2-3 hour scavenger hunt, with each contestant (Me, Me, and Me) trying to find a lost px in a huge block of unreadable code.
So last week I vowed to find another way, and I think I have. The end solution means more work up front in generating the site to begin with, but should make it very easy to rearrange, add, or rewrite content or images on those pages.
How To Use TextEdit as an HTML Editor
Like most geeky Mac users, I delight in the little "easter eggs" I discover from time to time as I use my Mac. It's especially satisfying when I stumble across something cool about apps I thought I knew... even mundane little apps like TextEdit. This article describes how I learned to use TextEdit as an HTML editor (!!) It's the first in a planned series I'll be publishing to share and preserve my personal Mac OS X "easter eggs." I've already got a long Edgies note that's full of little tips and tricks on topics like Pages, Quicksilver, contextual menus, PackageMaker, and DevonThink Pro, as well as more on TextEdit.
I originally published this particular tip on MacOSXHints last summer, and I always intended to republish it here... but, well, I'm only now getting around to it. MacOSXHints is a great resource for Mac users, and I search its archives frequently. However, as a purveyor of tips, it's a bit limiting, since you can't include images or movies in your writeup, and you don't have much control over how it's presented. One of the main reasons I purvey tips, by the way, is to try to counteract the drivel a Google search often dredges up. For example, I searched again today to see if anyone had published this useful tidbit about TextEdit and couldn't find it anywhere... for the most part, Google gave me articles like this one on About.com, which just don't tell the full story.
Daemons and Agents in Mac OS X: Apple Technical Note
Far Out Menu Highlighter with JavaScript and CSS
Parallax Web Page Background Using Javascript and CSS
MacEnterprise.org: Support Mac OS X Deployment in Business
The Best Cocoa UI components (Aaron’s UI Design Blog)
Prototype.js Gets A New Home, With Actual Rooms!
MacResearch Website Tutorials Cover AppleScript, Cocoa
Background Gradiants with CSS
CNET’s Clientside Group Posts Mootools Primer/Tutorial
What If Growl Displays Were Just Little Web Pages?
If you’re a Mac user who’s 
wandered in to this article and don’t know what Growl is yet, you might want to stop by that essential open-source project’s home page to get acquainted. Once your Mac starts Growling, you’ll understand how fitting it is that Apple’s naming all their OS X releases after large cats. 
If you’re a Windows user, you’re still welcome to read up on Growl and why it’s become a standard component of so many Mac users’ desktops even though it’s still only at version 0.7.4. If you find Growl cool, too, you know what to do.
This article isn’t about Growl, though. It’s about Growl displays—the part of Growl you actually see when an event occurs you’ve asked to be notified about. You see, like many other cool apps nowadays (Adium, Synergy, Menuet, etc.), Growl is “skinnable.” Part of the fun—and the utility—of Growl is that users can customize the appearance of different kinds of alerts. In fact, Growl provides you with an astonishing degree of control over your customizing, and this flexibility is one of Growl’s coolest aspects. Using the Growl Preference Pane, you can:
- Set a default Growl style as your starting point.
- Customize certain aspects of each Growl style. Some styles let you set different attributes for up to 5 different priority levels.
- Assign a default style to each different application that’s registered with Growl. (Here’s a growing list of Mac OS X applications that now include support for Growl event notifications.)
- Override the default for any specific notification event, or for a given event priority.
With so many options, it’s no wonder that Growl users collect Growl styles like some Mac users collect system icons or desktop pictures!
Growl notifications can take several forms: Email, speech (using the Mac’s built-in vocal chords), or visual displays. The visual display types are roughly broken down into two kinds:
- Displays you build with AppleScript or xCode (those with the extension .growlView), and
- Displays that are basically just little web pages (those with the extension .growlStyle).
It’s the latter type I want to briefly shout about today.
QT Bridge: QuickTime Resource Warehouse (in French)
Apple Publishes Developer Tips for Testing the Nightly WebKit Builds
Rendertests: Lots of useful browser testing here
How To Crop A QuickTime Movie
Web Inspector Gains New Eyes for Metrics, Properties
Like many of you who develop on the Mac, I was amazed and very impressed by the WebKit team’s Web Inspector tool when it was unveiled in January. However, it was clearly not yet complete… two critical tabfulls of data were missing, which kept me turning to other tools—like the excellent Firebug for Firefox—when getting into a serious debugging session.
Well, tonight I was delighted to discover that the wait is over! On downloading a new build of WebKit today, I found that Web Inspector finally can provide those critical Metrics and Properties of each DOM element on my web pages. And boy, have they done a great job in the implementation! Every bit as cool and functional as the original bits, so I can now get all the details on any element of the page with a right-click of my mouse (control-click for some folks) and a simple selection of “Inspect Element.” Now come on Firebug fans, don’t you wish you could inspect an element that easily? Not that it’s hard with Firebug, but I always say, “Save a millisecond here and a millisecond there, and pretty soon you’ve saved a whole second!” (Just kidding… I never said that before.)
A Guide to OS X Software for Switchers
Quick Lessons in How To Optimize AirPort Reception
An Interesting Approach for Implementing Global Ajax Activity Indicators
Use Your Own Groupings for System Preference Panes
Best Tips for Working with Text in Cocoa Apps
Beautiful CSS Experiment in Equal Text Columns
Still Solving Windows.Onload Problem: This Is It! (?)
Tell Me One Thing You Can Do With a Mac that I Can’t Do With Windows! (Part 3)
3. Use Real Productivity Applications To Get Work Done Faster, Easier
As inventors of new tools have done throughout human history, the visionaries who designed and built the first personal computers saw them as tools that would provide an immense boost to human productivity. And they weren’t just thinking about business productivity, folks. They were also thinking of personal productivity: Getting more things done faster so we’d have more leisure time.
Today, in our Microsoft-Windows dominated world, we use the term “productivity application” to refer to Microsoft Office, and we think of the personal computer as a business tool. (Quick: Do a Google search for that term–”productivity application”–and see what you get.) But has Microsoft Office provided us with more leisure time? Of course not. Microsoft Office is a business tool that replaced prior, non-electronic tools like the typewriter and pencil. If it has enhanced productivity at all (and that is arguable), the productivity gain has come in the form of more output per worker… not more leisure time for the individual. In any case, whatever productivity impact Microsoft Office and its ilk had on the business world was completed many years ago. Yet even for businesses, productivity didn’t stop with improving our ability to prepare reports and memos, or compile numbers in spreadsheets, or do overlays for a presentation in PowerPoint.
Productivity goes up whenever you can suddenly do a task in less time than before, either at home or at work. Since its beginnings with the original Apple computer, Apple has appeared to be pursuing a vision that steadily expands the personal computer’s potential to save you time… to do complicated things simpler. Apple’s operating system recognizes that this kind of productivity gain begins with the simplest interface to the computer: Finding things, opening applications, printing, opening documents, organizing information, and the like. As a result of this vision, Mac OS X has two built-in features that are simply lacking in Windows, and they enable “productivity” applications that are truly the envy of the Windows world:
Applescript and Application Services.
