MacOSXHints.com

10.6: Delete selected page(s) from a PDF in Preview

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:30:04 -0800

The function to delete the selected page (or pages) from a PDF file disappeared from the Edit menu of Preview in Snow Leopard. Even worse, it was replaced (using the same Command-Delete shortcut) with a command that moves the entire PDF document to the trash.

You can, however, still delete selected page(s) through an undocumented keyboard shortcut. Hold down Shift-Command-Delete with one or more pages selected, and only those pages will be deleted from the document. Page numbering, however, does not update to reflect this deletion until you (re)save the file (in 10.5, the numbering updated instantly upon deletion).

Faster three-finger swipe navigation of PDFs in Preview

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:30:03 -0800

If you have a laptop that supports multitouch gestures, you probably are aware of the fact that a three-finger swipe in Preview will go to the next or previous page in a PDF. But you may be annoyed at how Preview insists on animating each page switch with a small scrolling action. This can make it very slow to scroll through a document -- almost as slow as regular two-finger scrolling.

Fortunately, there is a solution: use a three-finger swipe in the sidebar. When you swipe in the sidebar, the pages will change instantly, without any animation. This works no matter what mode the sidebar is in (table of contents or thumbnails). And if you are in contact sheet mode, three-finger swiping will navigate you through the contact sheet.

I can only test this in 10.6, and I didn't discover it until I was running 10.6, so I don't know if it works in 10.5 or not.

[robg adds: My MBP is also 10.6-only now, so I can't test in 10.5 either. If you can, please post...

10.6: View an email message's folder path in Mail

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:30:02 -0800

Locating an email message in your Mail folder hierarchy is now a snap. As of Snow Leopard's version of Mail, if you open a message in a new window, Command-clicking (or Control-clicking) on the icon in the title bar of the message window will reveal the path to the enclosing folder for the message (just like it does in the Finder).

Select the folder from the drop-down menu, and it will open in a new Mail browser window. This allows you to easily locate the message within the Mail folder hierarchy, which can prove quite handy.

Use a Quick Look plug-in to view Entourage email in Finder

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:30:01 -0800

Viewing Microsoft Entourage email messages in the Finder with Quick Look doesn't work -- it merely displays an icon image. If you have Entourage 2008 and 10.5 or 10.6, there is a way to display the contents of the message in Quick Look. Download the file named Entourage QuickLook Plug-In.dmg from this site, and place a copy in the /Library/QuickLook folder.

This solution is especially useful for scrolling through Spotlight search results in the Finder, with Quick Look opened in full screen mode on a second monitor.

[robg adds: The plug-in should also work in your user's Library/QuickLook folder. I don't use Entourage, though, so I can't test this one.]

10.6: Display contextual menus on Dock click-and-hold

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:30:22 -0800

To use the old-style contextual menus when you click-and-hold on an application's icon in the Dock (i.e. how it worked in 10.5 and earlier), type the following two commands in Terminal (don't type the $):

defaults write com.apple.dock show-expose-menus -bool no; killall Dock

All credit for this hint goes to Jeff Johnson of Lap Cat Software, who blogged about the solution. This hint is a significant update to this one, which pointed out you can use Control-click to get the old-style contextual menus.

[robg adds: To undo this behavior, you can either change no to yes in the above command, or delete the key entirely with ...

Change background color of Notes in Mail

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:30:15 -0800

Not a big of the yellow background in Apple's Mail.app Notes? Handy with a text editor? You can change the background with a few simple steps. First, make a backup of your Mail application in case something goes wrong.

With the backup in place, Control-click on Mail.app and choose Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu, then navigate into the Resources folder. Using BBEdit (or another plain text editor), open the following three files: note-view.html, note-window.html, and note.css.

In the two .html files, locate the img tag that references note-background-gradient, and delete the entire line (or comment it out with the  tag pair). In the .css file, change the background:rgb values to something pleasing; I used 250, 250, 245 so it would look nice with the rest of the Mail motif.

Save the edited files and launch Mail, and enjoy your non-yellow N...

10.6: Create a bootable 10.6 partition on an APM drive

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:30:00 -0800

As someone responsible for supporting Macs, I carry around an external drive (LaCie Rugged with USB2, FW400, and FW800 connectors) that holds all my tools, as well as different versions of OS X, reaching from 10.3 (PowerPC) to 10.5. Recently, I had the time to finally add a 10.6 partition to the drive, and noticed that Snow Leopard won't install on a non-GUID drive -- the Installer simply won't let you continue.

I can't afford to loose the ability to boot PowerPC systems like 10.3 or 10.4 or even the universal 10.5, so repartitioning as GUID was not an option here. Knowing that Intel versions of OS X will boot just fine (though officially unsupported) on APM-formatted drives, I solved this in a somewhat inelegant but effective way: I installed 10.6 on another drive with the GUID partition scheme, and simply cloned it back to an empty partition on my ...

Install more than 180 apps on the iPhone/iPod touch

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 07:30:53 -0800

The latest version of the iPhone OS allows you to have 11 pages of 16 icons, plus the four permanent icons at the bottom of the screen, for a total of 180 apps. You can actually have more than 180, though only 180 icons will be visible.

To get to the invisible apps, just do a search (press Home from the home screen), and type part of the non-visible app's name. I don't know how many of these invisible apps you can have, as I have not tried more than three so far.

[robg adds: As far as I know, the limit is simply based on the available space on your device. Long before that point, though, you may run into a limit with your ability to remember the names of all the invisible apps.]

10.6: A fix for failure to connect to new wireless networks

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 07:30:23 -0800

After upgrading from 10.5.8 to 10.6.1 on my MacBook Pro, I was unable to connect to wireless networks unless I had already connected to them running under 10.5.8. Snow Leopard would "see" the new networks, but could not connect to them.

The Genius Bar at the Apple Store helped me solve the problem. We opened Library » Preferences » SystemConfiguration, and trashed the entire contents of that folder. We also deleted all locations in System Preferences » Network, and recreated the location Automatic. Finally, we rebooted.

So far, I have been able to connect to all wireless networks that I want to using OS X 10.6.1.

Delete email in Mail without showing next message

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 07:30:03 -0800

One of the "features" in Apple's Mail program that has always annoyed me is how it handles messages after doing a delete operation. If you press Delete to throw away the message you're currently looking at, Mail displays the next message (marking it read in the process). While I like the fact that Mail marks displayed messages as read, I have always found it annoying that it displays a message that I have not specifically selected (and then marks it as read).

There's a way around this. Instead of pressing Delete, press Option-Delete. With this shortcut (which doesn't show up in the Edit menu), Mail deletes the currently-displayed message and then does nothing at all, and the next message is not displayed. This is exactly what I want -- I now must explicitly tell Mail when I want a message to be displayed.

I expect I can make this the default using the Keyboard Shortcuts tab in the Keyboard System Preferences panel, but I have yet to play with that.

[rob...

10.6: View debug info about current desktop picture

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 07:30:02 -0800
Within the Desktop & Screen Saver System Preferences pane, pressing Command-Option-D (Show/Hide Dock shortcut) will add two new buttons to the panel: TEST and DEBUG WINDOW. Press Command-Option-D again to remove the buttons.

TEST doesn't seem to do anything, but DEBUG WINDOW displays a window that gives you debug information about the current desktop picture.

[robg adds: I'm not sure why this info might be useful; it's very low-level stuff, such as the value for configManager.operationQueue.operations. I'd guess that a bit of development code got left in the final release, and I expect it will be disappearing in a future point update.]

10.6: Jump to path via global Service

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 07:30:59 -0800
When I'm working anywhere in 10.6 other than in the Finder, I might suddenly need to go to some path. It kind of bothers me that I have to Command-Tab to the Finder, and then do the Shift-Command-G keystroke. Also, I might want to open some Macintosh-style path (:) instead of POSIX-style (/) path.

Now, in 10.6, I can jump to a path using a Service. Here is a basic intro:

Open Automator and choose Service from the Templates chooser.

Make sure the Service receives "no input" in the pop-up menu at the top. Drag the Run AppleScript Action (in the Utilities Library), into the work area on the right, and enter this AppleScript in the Run AppleScript box:
--Go to...

Publish a Git repository on MobileMe

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 07:30:55 -0800
Git is a very popular distributed version control system. You can use it to track versions of files in your project and collaborate with other project participants in very sophisticated ways. To learn Git, I'd recommend Scott Chacon's Pro Git book (free online, or buy a printed version). You can use Git on your local computer, but if you want to access it from multiple computers with Git installed, MobileMe can be handly.

Your MobileMe disk space is available via the WebDav protocol, which Git can also use. Here are the steps to create a repository on MobileMe. First, if you use Git from MacPorts, chances are that Git on your machine uses a version of curl without SSL support. In Terminal, use the following command to check:
$ port installed curl
If that does not list +ssl in the curl options, reinstall it by typing sudo p...
Repair a Time Machine error after restoring from Time Machine Tue, 03 Nov 2009 07:30:52 -0800 After restoring from a Time Machine backup, I ran into this error when Time Machine then tried to create a new backup: The backup is too large for the backup volume. xxGB is required but only yyGB is available. This occurs because Time Machine sees your restored computer as a completely new set of data and is trying to do a full back up. To solve this issue, open the backup drive that Time Machine backs up to, and locate the following file: computername_0022334455.sparsebundle Where computername is your computer's name, and 0022334455 is your computer's MAC address. Delete this file and have Time Machine do a new full backup of your system, and this error will disappear. [robg adds: I've never had to do a full restore from Time Machine, so I haven't seen this error -- if someone else can confirm the problem and the fix, please post in the comments.] 10.6: Fix errors with certain timezones in Java Tue, 03 Nov 2009 07:30:12 -0800 Java on MacOS X 10.6 has some problems with certain timezones. This problem only affects Java programs, but will cause any Java programs to use incorrect dates. For example, any cities/towns/villages in southern Ontario (locations using "America/Toronto") will find their Java apps reporting an offset of five minutes behind GMT. The solution is to explicitly specify an alternative location that doesn't have problems. For those in southern Ontario, Montreal works fine. To see if you have this problem, perform the following steps: Copy the following text to a file called tz.java in your home directory: class tz { public static void main(String[] args) { java.util.TimeZone tz = java.util.TimeZone.getDefault(); System.out.println("Timezone offset from UTC reported as " + (tz.getRawOffset() / 1000 / 60) + " minutes"); if(tz.getRawOffset() % (15 * 60 * 1000) != 0) { System.out.println("Warning: not a multiple of quarter-hours"); ... Scroll to scrub through a song in iTunes Tue, 03 Nov 2009 07:30:02 -0800 I would be surprised if this really is a new hint, but I can't find anything on the subject from searching Mac OS X hints. The closest hint is similar, though, as it refers to changing iTunes' volume by using a scroll wheel mouse. Whilst a song is playing in iTunes, position the mouse pointer anywhere over the display element that contains the current position of the song (i.e. the long thin gray bar between the 'time elapsed' and 'time remaining' counters). You can now use the scroll wheel of your mouse (or scroll with a track pad) to scrub backwards or forwards through the song. This technique allows for some precision playback adjustment. One 'click' on the scroll wheel of my Logitech trackball seems to adjust the playing time by less than a second. This hint also works in the miniature iTunes window. Set default zoom level in Safari using a CSS file Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:30:05 -0800 In this post on Apple's discussion site, user dearlt posted a great tip on how to get Safari to use a default zoom level of your own choosing (instead of the standard 100%). I've edited the post a bit to make it clearer, but the basic instructions are unchanged. Create a file (using a pure text editor) named defaultzoom.css, or any name you like -- just make sure it has a .css extension. Copy and paste the following code into the file: body { zoom: 130%; } Change 130 to whatever number suits you. Anything greater than 100 means zoom in; less than 100 means zoom out. Don't forget the % percent sign! If you're using TextEdit on a Mac, be sure to have it create .txt documents by default (not .rft) before copying and pasting the above text. You c... Use more photo effects than those offered in Photo Booth Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:30:04 -0800 Ever thought that Photo Booth doesn't provide enough image effects? Probably not; there are sixteen (very cool) effects built in. However, there are a couple of ways to get more effects. You could use this hint to add more effects directly to Photo Booth. If you'd rather not do that, though, try these alternatives. If you want to make a new image, first open Automator and make a blank workflow. Drag the Take Video Snapshot action from the Photos library into your workflow (strangely, Take Picture does not work). Choose your file name and location, and select Take Picture Automatically, then run the workflow. Click the effects button next to the snapshot button, and choose your effect. There are twenty-nine effects there that aren't in Photo Booth, including Blur, Pixelate, and City Lights. Alternatively, if you want to simply modify an image and don't care too muc... 10.6: How to install Win XP Pro Service Pack 3 in Boot Camp 3 Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:30:03 -0800 Over the weekend, in preparation for an upcoming review of the newest versions of Fusion and VirtualBox, I needed to set up a new Boot Camp partition on my MacBook Pro. Because Windows 7 isn't yet officially supported by Apple, and Vista isn't widely used, I chose to install XP Pro. My XP Pro disc is a Service Pack 2 release, so after booting into Windows, the system found and downloaded a bunch of updates to apply, chief among them Service Pack 3 (SP3). The update process went smoothly, until the system tried to install SP3. The update process started, then died with this error: An error occured while copying file osloader.ntd. Cannot copy file to destination directory. Click Retry to retry the operation or click Cancel. At that point, the only solution was to bail on the update, and have Windows back out the changes it ... 10.6: Save a few keystrokes when typing URLs in Mail Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:30:02 -0800 More pointing out a new feature (though it is one that's not documented) than a hint. In Mail 4.1, you no longer need to type the http:// part of a URL to make it clickable for the recipient. In previous versions of Mail, the text would not become a link without http://. Unfortunately, Mail still does not show your URL as a link while composing the email.