Category: Mac & OS X
How to make navigating between Safari tabs suck less
Here's how to make Safari's tab navigation not suck!
With the release of Mac OS X Lion, I switched back to Safari as my main browser. Almost all the extensions I want are available for it, and it’s much less buggy than Google Chrome was beginning to be. But there are a few things that bother me about Safari, one of which is the way you navigate between open tabs.
With every other browser, you can navigate between open tabs by hitting Command + the tab number (#2 would open the second tab from the left, #3 the third, etc.). But with Safari, hitting Command + a number opens the link number of whatever is in your bookmark bar. Handy if you actually have bookmarks in your bookmark bar, but I have nothing but folders. Hitting Command + Shift + } four times to reach the fifth tab from the left is a pain because it requires both hands.
Thankfully, Olivier Poitrey offers SafariTabSwitching, a SIMBL plugin that brings the Command + number feature to Safari. I’ve been using it so long that I actually forgot where I got it from. It’s quite a nice add-on, and I’ve never had a problem using it. The only foreseeable issue is that it is a SIMBL plugin, which Apple doesn’t condone, and could cease to function at any OS update in the future if Apple so chooses – such as OS X Mountain Lion, due later this summer.
Apple is missing one killer option with OS X’s Full Screen feature
When Apple announced the Full Screen feature in Lion I was quite skeptical of it. I really didn’t see the value of it from what I read. Of course, once Lion shipped and I gave Full Screen a try, I love it. It’s not just that it provides a distraction-free workspace, but when I use gestures to swipe between apps, I just feel more productive; much more so than using the application switcher, Mission Control or switching apps with the Dock icons.
Unfortunately the one feature that would make Full Screen much more valuable to me, and one that should be painfully obvious to Apple, is missing. The ability to set Full Screen as the preferred viewing method in the preferences would be a killer option.
Apple being Apple, if they were to implement this feature, they would probably put it in the System Settings and it would be an “all-or-nothing” option. But to me, that option would be a different devil in the same hell.
Putting the option in an individual application’s preferences won’t work, because we would be reliant upon the individual app developer to actually code this feature into their apps; and we simply can’t expect every developer to support this feature, at least not yet. But here’s an idea… (more…)
Mozilla releases Firefox 13 beta for Mac
Mozilla has released the latest beta version of their Firefox browser, version 13, with over 85 improvements and bug-fixes.
Specify launch order of Mac OS X login items and menubar icons
One thing that always bugged me about menubar apps is that the OS appears to load them randomly; meaning they never seem to show up in the menubar in exactly the same order. For someone with a little OCD, this can be maddening!
Don’t bother trying to adjust the order in OS X’s Login Items Preferences, it doesn’t work that way.
You can fix this problem manually by using Apple’s Automator app and configuring a custom load at launch app to control the order and time delay between each app’s launch, but it can be time consuming and cumbersome. Instead, here are three apps you can use that accomplish the task easily. (more…)
Delay OS X Mail’s “Mark As Read” status
One annoying function of OS X’s Mail app is that it automatically marks an email as Read the second it is selected. This is compounded by the fact that Mail automatically selects the top most email in the list (usually the newest email). Sometimes I just want to take a quick peek at an email without actually marking it as read. Thanks to this clever plugin, you can alter the delay Mail uses to mark an email as Read.
TruePreview is a simple plugin that allows you to adjust the delay time Mail uses to mark an email as Read. Once installed, you will find a new tab in Mail’s preferences where you can set the delay time to whatever you wish for all emails. Alternatively, you can turn of the “Mark as Read” status completely until you open an email in a separate window by double clicking the email, forwarding, or replying to an email.
TruePreview solves a huge annoyance in OS X Mail's behavior
If you prefer, TruePreview allows you to adjust the delay time on a per-account basis. This is particularly useful for those who have multiple email accounts with different providers. (more…)
Reset your OS X Lion user password
Prior to OS X Lion, the OS X installation DVD included a password reset utility. With Lion there is no install DVD, and no easily recognizable way to reset a password for a user account. Don’t worry, if you ever forget your password for a Lion user account, there is still a way to reset it; in fact it’s much easier than booting from a slow DVD.
Restart your Mac while holding Command + R. This will boot you into the Recovery HD Utility. Launch the Terminal from the Utility menu at the top and type resetpassword and hit enter. The Reset Password dialog box will appear where you can choose which user account password you wish to reset, and allow you to enter a new password and hint.
Remove Lion’s Mission Control animation
For users with the latest & greatest Macs, the animations Lion added are probably barely noticeable. But for those of us running it on older Macs, it’s painfully slow and quite annoying. Thankfully, much like removing the new Mail animation I wrote about last week, you can remove the animation completely.
Launch the Terminal app and type the following and hit Return after:
defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -float 0
Before the change takes affect, you need to restart OS X’s Dock, which you do by typing the following in the Terminal and hitting Return:
killall Dock
Thanks to OSXDaily for the tip, and a few more adjustments you can make to Mission Control’s animation, including restoring it to its original state.
The easiest way to extract (mask) objects from images
The situation is common; you want to remove the background from an image and the subject/foreground object is a person. The trick is masking things like hair, glasses, and other subtle areas that can make or break the final result.There have been numerous Photoshop plugins and stand-alone applications over the years that claim to do the job quickly and easily with stunning results. However, it has been my experience with most of these methods that they simply don’t work, or are more difficult than masking the objects manually in Photoshop.
I recently came across Decompose from metakine software, who’s tagline for the app is “Extract objects from images with ease.” Indeed, they promise “easy and flawless extraction of elements from pictures in order to use them to make composite images.” Those are some bold statements, so I decided to give it a shot to see if things have improved in the years since I’ve used other masking applications such as OnOne’s Perfect Mask (which crashed every time I tried to use it for the purpose of comparison in this article, so I’ve left it out).
For the purpose of this article, I’m not going to go into the controls and features of Decompose. Instead, I’m only going to focus on the results. (more…)
Get rid of the new window animation in Lion Mail for a speed boost
Among many of the changes to the Mail application that Lion brought was an animation when you reply or create a new mail window. It’s a nice touch, but on an older Mac such as my original Mac Pro, it becomes a slow, annoying, and frivolous feature. Here’s how you can turn it off.
Fire up the Terminal and copy/paste the following text (and hit return):
defaults write com.apple.Mail DisableReplyAnimations -bool YES
This will turn off the animation when opening new windows in Mail. If you ever want it back, simply replace YES at the end with NO.