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Path Finder 5 - A feature-laden Finder replacement
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Move BBedit 9's Documents drawer to the left side Apps
I've been trying to move over from Smultron to BBEdit for most of my text editing needs, as Smultron isn't officially supported any longer. One thing that I found very annoying in BBEdit 9 is that the Documents drawer appears on the right, with no apparent way to move it to the right (in older versions, I believe there was a preference to change the side).

In the "read more" portion of this hint, you can read my original solution to this problem, left in place for posterity's sake. However, commenter bhas points out a much simpler solution in the comments to this hint: just Command-click on the Drawer icon, and the drawer will flip from one side of the window to the other, and stay on that side for subsequent launches.

This also works in TextWrangler.
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Manually switch to next desktop picture in shuffle mode Desktop
I noticed that if you have your desktop picture (wallpaper) set to shuffle between a number of images, and you don't like the currently-selected picture, you can manually skip it by killing and restarting the Dock. Just type the following into Terminal:
killall Dock
When the Dock restarts, it will shuffle to another desktop picture.

[robg adds: I believe a "friendlier" version of this command is killall -QUIT Dock, which tells the Dock to quit nicely, instead of force quitting it. If you find yourself doing this regularly, you could turn it into a simple Automator application, using the above command, or the AppleScript alternative (tell application "Dock" to quit). Then again, if you're doing this a lot, perhaps you should look to change your collection of desktop images!]
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Set Firefox profile directly within the application bundle Web Browsers
I share a computer with my wife (using one account), and we both use Firefox and many of the same services (Gmail, Facebook, etc.). As such, it can be quite a hassle to keep track of who logged in last and who added what bookmarks.

Fortunately, Firefox provides the capability to have separate profiles for just such a situation. Unfortunately, it is not very simple to set up an easy and consistent way to launch those profiles. So, here are some of the options I tried before arriving at what I think is a pretty good solution.
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Open Bento's database backup without using Bento Apps
Do you want to open a Bento database backup when you're at a friend's house, and he doesn't have Bento? It's actually really simple:
  1. Control-click on your Bento database backup file (.bentodb) and select Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu.
  2. Navigate to the Contents » Resources folder.
  3. Copy the file named Database to another location.
  4. Launch a SQLite application, such as SQLite Database Browser.
  5. Open the copy of the Database file you just created.
Enjoy your database!
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Comments are now editable Site News
This was one of the promised features from the Geeklog upgrade, and after resolving an issue with the theme, it's finally working -- at least, it's working in my testing. Feel free to leave a comment here and edit it to make sure it works for you, too. Note that there's a one-hour time limit on changes to comments.

We're still working on the character set issue; hope to have progress on that front shortly.

-rob.
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10.6: Navigate Snow Leopard Stacks with gestures Apps
Navigable stacks in Snow Leopard are a very nice feature, but the lack of gesture recognition is frustrating. Using the free BetterTouchTool, though, navigable stacks are a reality. BetterTouchTool is forked from the ">MultiClutch source. BetterTouchTool is essentially the same as MultiClutch, but it runs without a reliance on InputManagers. As a result, it works great in Snow Leopard, on 64- and 32-bit apps, and on Carbon apps (read: iTunes).

For Global Gestures, I have set the bindings:
  • Command-Up = Swipe Left
  • Command-Down = Swipe Right
In Finder, these navigate folder hierarchies more naturally. They allow me to move up and down folder hierarchies without relying on a history. This breaks the native behavior of forward-back navigation history, but for me, this method makes more sense.

Old Behavior: Back and Forward in History
New Behavior: Parent and Child Directory

The fringe benefit is that this also works in Snow Leopard's navigable stacks, as I feel it should have from the beginning. Click into a folder, a new stack window appears, and swipe left takes you to the parent folder.
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Adjust browser width on a per-Spaces basis Apps
Do you need to change the width of your Safari or Firefox window, but only on the desktop of the currently active Space? Try using this AppleScript. Placed in the excellent program Butler, you can even use a key combination to toggle the width.

Here's the script:
(* Thanks to:
 JNSoftware LLC, founded by Jonathan Nathan. See http://macscripter.net/viewtopic.php?id=23453
and
 Tip  "10.5: Find current Space number via AppleScript " of macosxhints See: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080227075244778 *)

set safariNr to get_space_binding_for_application("com.apple.safari") -- on wich space is safari?
set firefoxNr to get_space_binding_for_application("org.mozilla.firefox") -- on wich space is firefox?
set currentSpaceNr to get_my_space_number() -- on wich space are we?

tell application "Finder"
  copy name of processes to MyProcesses -- wich browesr(s) is/are active?
end tell

-- change window-width of browser if active & on current space 

if (("firefox-bin" is in MyProcesses) is true) and ((firefoxNr = currentSpaceNr) is true or (firefoxNr = 65544) is true) then
  say "Firefox"
  --tell application "Firefox" to activate
  tell application "System Events" to tell process "firefox-bin"
    activate
    if size of window 1 = {596, 1111} then
      set size of window 1 to {796, 1111}
    else if size of window 1 = {796, 1111} then
      set size of window 1 to {996, 1111}
    else if size of window 1 = {996, 1111} then
      set size of window 1 to {1296, 1111}
    else if size of window 1 = {1296, 1111} then
      set size of window 1 to {1543, 1111}
    else if size of window 1 = {1543, 1111} then
      set size of window 1 to {596, 1111}
    else
      set size of window 1 to {996, 1111}
    end if
    set position of window 1 to {4, 27}
  end tell
end if

if (("safari" is in MyProcesses) is true) and ((safariNr = currentSpaceNr) is true or (safariNr = 65544) is true) then
  say "Safari"
  tell application "Safari"
    activate
    if bounds of window 1 = {4, 27, 600, 1138} then -- klein
      set bounds of window 1 to {4, 27, 800, 1138} -- middel
    else if bounds of window 1 = {4, 27, 800, 1138} then -- middel
      set bounds of window 1 to {4, 27, 1000, 1138} -- normaal
    else if bounds of window 1 = {4, 27, 1000, 1138} then --normaal
      set the bounds of window 1 to {4, 27, 1300, 1138} -- groot
    else if bounds of window 1 = {4, 27, 1300, 1138} then -- groot
      set the bounds of window 1 to {4, 27, 1547, 1138} -- max
    else if bounds of window 1 = {4, 27, 1547, 1138} then -- max
      set bounds of window 1 to {4, 27, 600, 1138} -- klein  
    else
      set bounds of window 1 to {4, 27, 1000, 1138} --normaal
    end if
  end tell
end if

tell application "Play Sound.app" to («event µSNDplay» alias "Hry HD:System:Library:Sounds:Sosumi.aiff") -- you need application "Play Sound"

-- handlers

on get_space_binding_for_application(application_bundle_id)
  set application_bundle_id to my make_lowercase(application_bundle_id)
  set app_bindings to my get_spaces_application_bindings()
  try
    get app_bindings as string
  on error error_string
    set app_bindings to my string_to_list(text 13 thru -20 of error_string, ", ")
  end try
  repeat with i from 1 to (count app_bindings)
    if item i of app_bindings starts with ("|" & application_bundle_id & "|:") then return (item 2 of (my string_to_list(item i of app_bindings, ":"))) as number
  end repeat
  return 0
end get_space_binding_for_application

on get_spaces_application_bindings()
  tell application "System Events" to tell spaces preferences of expose preferences to return (get application bindings)
end get_spaces_application_bindings

on get_my_space_number()
  set xxVar to 0
  tell application "System Events"
    tell process "SystemUIServer"
      set xVar to value of attribute "AXChildren" of menu bar 1
      set cVar to count of xVar
      repeat with iVar from 1 to cVar
        set zVar to value of attribute "AXDescription" of item iVar of xVar
        try
          if zVar = "spaces-menu-extra" then
            set xxVar to iVar
            exit repeat
          end if
        end try
      end repeat
    end tell
  end tell
  if xxVar = 0 then
    display dialog "Spaces Menu Extra not installed"
  else
    tell application "System Events"
      tell process "SystemUIServer"
        set theCurrentSpace to value of menu bar item xxVar of menu bar 1
      end tell
    end tell
    return theCurrentSpace as number
  end if
end get_my_space_number

on string_to_list(s, d)
  tell (a reference to my text item delimiters)
    set {o, contents} to {contents, d}
    set {s, contents} to {s's text items, o}
  end tell
  return s
end string_to_list

on make_lowercase(the_string)
  return do shell script "echo " & quoted form of the_string & " | /usr/bin/perl -pe 'use encoding utf8; s/(\\w)/\\L$1/gi'"
end make_lowercase

"SafariSpace " & safariNr & ", FirefoxSpace " & firefoxNr & ", currentSpace " & currentSpaceNr
[robg adds: This script includes a reference to the Play Sound app; you'll either need that, or you'll want to remove the line that references it. I haven't tested this one.]
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10.5: Remove Shut Down from the Apple menu System 10.5
Leopard only hintWe have some users who, through habit or sloppy clicking, always shutdown their machine when they leave. This means that we can't perform maintenance without walking to the machine. If you need to prevent users from shutting down machines so you can do maintenance, this will help by removing the Shut Down item from the Apple Menu.

The following patch removes the Shut Down menu item for everyone on the system, admin and non-admin users alike. The patch doesn't delete the entire object, it just replaces the content of the object with a separator. Deleting the entire object causes Bad Things To Happen. You can probably use this method to remove other items in the Apple Menu, but I haven't tested that.

Warning: Altering anything under /System/Library is always risky. Don't deploy this without testing it thoroughly in your environment. I don't know for sure what will happen when updates are applied to the box, though I haven't seen any problems.
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Embed formatted, syntax-highlighted source code in Keynote Apps
If you have ever given a presentation on any aspect of programming (or webdesign), you may have felt the need to embed some source code (formatted and syntax highlighted to be easily readable) in Keynote. Your options have traditionally been limited:
  • You can take a screenshot of the code in a programmer's editor and embed this in Keynote, but you lose any ability to edit the code or change its appearance once inserted.
  • You can use a web-based syntax highlighter such as GeSHi, and embed the generated page in Keynote as a Web View, but this is similarly inflexible. Also, Web Views have been removed from Keynote '09.
A much better approach would be to have the source code text (suitably formatted and highlighted) inserted natively in your presentation. Since you can drag Rich Text Format (RTF) text to Keynote, all you need is a way to convert your code to RTF.

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10.5: Enable momentum scrolling for Magic Mouse in 10.5 Other Hardware
Leopard only hintThe Mouse System Preferences pane on Leopard does not include an option to enable momentum scrolling like Snow Leopard does. However, by setting a hidden preference, you can get this feature without updating to Snow Leopard.

To enable momentum scrolling, first run the following command in Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.mouse MouseMomentumScroll -bool yes
Next, go to the Mouse System Preferences panel, and uncheck and then check the Scroll option. You should now have momentum scrolling enabled.

[robg adds: I don't have a Magic Mouse, so I can't test this one.]
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