Gavin Cornwell

Revert Safari 4 Tabs & Other Hidden Preferences

noreply@blogger.com (gavinc) — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 21:43:00 +0000

I don't know about you but I just can't get used to browser tabs being on the title bar, it just doesn't feel natural to me.

If you agree and you would like to move the tabs back to where they were enter the following command in Terminal...

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TabBarIsOnTop -bool FALSE

Quit and restart Safari and the tabs should be where they were in Safari 3. To move them back again just replace FALSE with TRUE in the command above.

For more Safari 4 hidden preferences see this article.

2 New Homes

noreply@blogger.com (gavinc) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 20:46:00 +0000

After a short hiatus to WordPress I'm back using Blogger again as it (unsurprisingly) seems to be more visible to Google!

I still have 2 other new homes though, my work blog and Twitter, hope to see you there!

Open In Tab (again)

noreply@blogger.com (gavinc) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 23:14:00 +0000

Since installing the beta of Safari 4 links started opening in new windows again.

It looks like the install resets any preferences you set via the command line, therefore to restore the behaviour just run the command again.

Syncing iPhone calendar colours

noreply@blogger.com (gavinc) — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 21:30:00 +0000

Since my move to Fruux the colours of my calendars have been different on my computers and my iPhone with no obvious way to make them stay in sync.

With a bit of research I found this article which highlights the fact that the colours used are actually assigned in a certain order, therefore, syncing your calendars one at a time in the right order provides the desired result.

Fruux

noreply@blogger.com (gavinc) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:32:00 +0000

I mentioned I was going to try Fruux in my last post, well I have and I'm very impressed.

It is a free service so you can't argue with the price! There are warnings about backing up your data as it's still a beta service but, touch wood, I haven't had an issue yet and I have 3 machines and my iPhone all synced up.

It's very simple to setup too, you simply download a preference pane and install it, setup an account the first time you use it and click the 'Synchronize Now' button. Go to another machine and follow the same steps and you have both machines in sync, currently this is limited to the address book, calendars, tasks and bookmarks. However, their roadmap has some interesting ideas.

The only negative comment I have at the moment is that you can't choose what gets synced it's all or nothing, this could be a problem as more is synced.

Other than that I think this is a great product and I'm really looking forward to seeing it develop.

Update: I received an email from Fruux earlier this evening pointing out that "selective syncing" is the first feature to be completed in the next version (0.9) as mentioned on their roadmap, I should have read it more closely ;-)

Mobile Not For Me

noreply@blogger.com (gavinc) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:59:00 +0000

When I got my iPhone in July I signed up for the MobileMe trial and like a lot others it was extended, in fact I'm still within my trial period!

However, during the trial I've encountered quite a few problems...

Although over-the-air syncing is extremely cool it's not without it's hitches, during my trial I've lost all the contacts on my phone once, had trouble updating contacts details and have been left with one machine that plainly refuses to sync it's calendar anymore, even after resetting all sync data.

iDisk has been really slow via the Finder and also tends to lock my out after a couple of days resulting in a Force Quit of Finder or a reboot. Once it is working it's not exactly fast either, in fact the web interface was quicker!

The only thing I found really useful was the syncing of bookmarks, that's the one thing I'm missing since I made the decision the MobileMe isn't For Me.

I'm currently seeking free alternatives to MobileMe, I'm now using delicious for bookmarks, box.net for online storage and I was going to use Google as the central sync point for calendars and contacts by using SpanningSync (which worked really well) but I've just discovered a free alternative, Fruux, which I'll be trying very soon.

Java Thread Dumps

noreply@blogger.com (gavinc) — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:10:00 +0000

Question: As most Java developers probably know a VM thread dump can be obtained on Windows by pressing CTRL + BREAK, so how can the same thing be accomplished on a Mac?

Answer: CTRL + \

Open In Tab

noreply@blogger.com (gavinc) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 15:37:00 +0000

If you're like me you get really annoyed with Safari when it opens links in new windows rather than new tabs.

If you're running the Safari 3.1 there is a solution and one that doesn't require a 3rd party plugin!

Open a Terminal window and enter the following command:

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true

Relaunch Safari and links that have a target will now open in a new tab in the same window.

Selecting Text

noreply@blogger.com (gavinc) — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:29:00 +0000

Although you'd think it was simple selecting text in an editor takes some getting used to when you first move to the Mac. For example, up until reading this article I still hadn't worked out how to select a word at a time, now I know!

Monitoring the JVM

noreply@blogger.com (gavinc) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 22:29:00 +0000

The 1.5 release of the JavaVM added the ability to remotely monitor it's state. Add the following option to the command line to enable the feature:

-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote

Once running launch the "jconsole" utility to connect.

Terminal shortcuts

noreply@blogger.com (gavinc) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 22:18:00 +0000

A few useful shortcuts for use in Terminal:

Cmd+K: Clear the whole console
CTRL+K: Clear everything after the cursor
CTRL+R: Search previous commands
CTRL+A: Go to beginning of the command line
CTRL+E: Go to end of the command line

You can find a whole host of other shortcuts here.

New File

noreply@blogger.com (gavinc) — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 22:16:00 +0000

As a switcher from the Windows world one of the most annoying things on the Mac is the lack of a 'New File' context menu item in the Finder.

To create a file somewhere you have to open the appropriate application and then navigate through the 'Save As' dialog to find the place you want to save it (which you've probably already just navigated to anyway in the Finder!!).

There is a Quicksilver based solution, but it was far from straight forward to get set up.

Thankfully, there is a simple solution, install a little utility I found called NuFile. It simply installs a New File option in the context menu item of the Finder. It is also fairly configurable so you can set it up to create new files based on templates and file types not included out of the box.

Give it a try, it'll save you loads of time!

Multi-session Disc

noreply@blogger.com (gavinc) — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 21:32:00 +0000

Have you ever burnt a CD-R using Mac OS X and then found you can't add to it?

This is because by default Mac OS X does not create multi-session disks. I presumed this was not possible with the built in support and I was going to have to purchase a commercial solution such as Toast.

Fortunately it is possible via the 'Disk Utility', instructions on how to do it can be found here.

Text Editing

noreply@blogger.com (gavinc) — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 22:15:00 +0000

The built in text editor, TextEdit, isn't too bad, but it's not that great when it comes to editing code, there's no syntax colouring for starters.

There are a few popular text editors on the market namely TextMate and BBEdit but they do suffer a little from feature bloat.

Personally I use Smultron, it's free and open source. It has all the essential features for a programmers text editor but not too many!

Good Toes Naughty Toes

noreply@blogger.com (gavinc) — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 22:03:00 +0000

The girls practicing their ballet song...I have to warn you though, it's quite cute!!

Hidden Options

noreply@blogger.com (gavinc) — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 21:39:00 +0000

There are a whole bunch of options that are not exposed in the standard Mac OS X UI, some of which can be quite useful, for example turning on a Debug menu in various applications. You can alter these settings via the command line (if you can find the correct property name) or alternatively use one of the 'tweaking' utilities available. I know of 3 good ones:

They are all similar in that they provide a set of tabs of options, these range from extra Finder and Dock options through to maintenance routines. TinkerTool and Onyx are both free and between them cover most the options you'll need so there's no excuse not to have both installed!

The things I find most useful and use these utilities for is:

Turning on Debug menu in Safari
Show hidden files in Finder
Change default screenshot file format
Add Eject button to menu bar
Run dialy, weekly and monthly maintenance scripts (cleans out log files etc.)
Turning off startup chime sound effect

So Much For Regular Posts!

noreply@blogger.com (gavinc) — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 20:55:00 +0000

Well what can I say, where have all the regular posts I mentioned gone!! My intention was to post more but work took over as usual with our 2.1 release.

I've been a daily user of a Mac now for 3 months and feel completely at home, I wouldn't contemplate moving back to Windows now. What I thought might be useful for other recent switchers (as the number of them is rapidly increasing at my workplace) is to share some of the lessons learnt over the last few months and software I use that I couldn't live without. I'm going to do this over a series of posts, mainly to kick myself into gear and hopefully revive my online presence!!

For this first one I'm going to mention Quicksilver. Quicksilver is a productivity tool in that it allows you fast access to more or less anything on your system via the keyboard. I'm not going to go into detail here as there are plenty of reviews including this recent Google Tech Talk by Nicholas Jitkoff, the author of Quicksilver. It does take a little while to get used to, but once you are it saves you a tonne of time, especially for quickly navigating around the filesystem.

HTML messages in Mail.app

noreply@blogger.com (gavinc) — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 21:11:00 +0000

Using a Mac for work obviously involves reading email, for that I'm using Mail.app to connect to our exchange server via IMAP.

It works well apart from one niggle. The default setting in Outlook is to use Word as the editor for email messages, this ends up creating HTML emails even for simple text based messages. The font Mail.app uses to display these messages is quite small and can be quite tricky to read sometimes.

Fortunately, email messages are often delivered with a plain text alternative, to view it you can simply select View -> Message -> Plain Text Alternative. This in itself makes the message easier to read especially if you also select the option to 'Use fixed-width font for plain text messages' and select Size 11.

If you like this option you can make it permanent with a little command line magic. Open Terminal and run the following command:

defaults write com.apple.mail PreferPlainText -bool TRUE

Shiny New MacBook Pro

noreply@blogger.com (gavinc) — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 20:58:00 +0000

This week I have become a full switcher, my Windows based work laptop has been replaced with a shiny new 17" MacBook Pro, so I'm now a Mac user both at work and at home.

The only downside is it came a week too early, the new MacBook Pro's have been announced today which include an upgraded AirPort Extreme card supporting the draft 802.11n standard. That would have worked nicely with the AirPort Extreme Base Station I purchased just last week!

On the upside as I'm now using a Mac all day every day the frequency of my blog posts may increase, you never know!

Search In A New Tab

noreply@blogger.com (gavinc) — Wed, 30 May 2007 08:32:00 +0000

Not strictly an Apple or Programming related post but something that has bugged me for a while...

There isn't an apparent way to make searches in the Firefox search box appear in a new tab (without installing an extension) so I have been opening a new tab before every search :-(

It turns out there is a 'hidden' setting for this. Type 'about:config' into the address bar, then find the 'browser.search.openintab' entry and double click on it, this changes the default value to 'true'.

Now try performing a search, it opens in a new tab!

Essential Software

noreply@blogger.com (gavinc) — Thu, 10 May 2007 20:17:00 +0000

One of the first things to do when you switch is to find the Mac equivalent of your favourite Windows apps.

This list of Mac software recently given away as part of a competition, it seems to contain the best application from various categories.

Java Development Environment

noreply@blogger.com (gavinc) — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 20:27:00 +0000

I recently got my Java development environment setup on my iMac. As a reminder (mainly for the obscure place to map JAVA_HOME to) if I need to do go it again and for a couple of my colleagues that receive their MacBookPro's soon (I'm extremely jealous!), here are the steps I took:

Open the .bash_profile file in your home folder i.e. /Users/gavinc/.bash_profile
Create a JAVA_HOME environment variable and export it, this should look something like:
JAVA_HOME=/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Home
export JAVA_HOME
Install MySQL from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.0.html#macosx-dmg
Install Subversion client from http://www.codingmonkeys.de/mbo/Subversion-1.4.3.pkg.zip.
Open terminal and type "java -version". Depending on your Mac OS X version you should see something like:
java version "1.5.0_07"
Type "svn --version" and ensure you get a non error response, if you used the link above the output should start with:
svn, version 1.4.3 (r23084)
Type "mysql -V" and ensure you get a non error response, if you used the above the output should look simialr to:
mysql Ver 14.12 Distrib 5.0.27, for apple-darwin8.5.1 (i686) using readline 5.0

NOTE: MySQL and Subversion can also be installed via fink, however, I have not tried this approach yet so can not comment on how easy/hard it is!

What Is Wired Memory?

noreply@blogger.com (gavinc) — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 23:06:00 +0000

Have you been into Mac OS X's Activity Monitor, looked at the System Memory Tab and wondered what "Wired" means and why is there sometimes so little "Free" memory?

This article does a great job of explaining what the labels really mean and when you need to buy more memory.

Tips For A Switcher

noreply@blogger.com (gavinc) — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 22:53:00 +0000

Being a switcher I'm still getting used to the Mac and learning how to do things. I found this blog post this week requesting it's community provide some tips for new Mac users.

I thought I'd summarise the tips and shortcuts given in the posts comments and those I've learnt myself since switching.

A commom tip was to refrain from installing any 3rd party applications for about a week to get a feel for and an idea of what is in Mac OS X out of the box........there's a lot!

Conversely, another common tip is to install Quicksilver straight away, apparently it's a must have application, once you've used it there's no going back. I'll definitely be giving this a go soon, I'll let you know if I can live without it!

The main complaint I've seen about Mac OS X is it's uninstall process and I must admit you see all the files being copied when you install an application (which is a breeze by the way) but when you drag an application to the Trash you don't see any evidence of the files being removed. According to reports this is because most of them are left behind. Your home Library/Application Support folder is one place you can look for files to remove as is Spotlight. 3rd party applications seem to be the best solution, AppZapper is one (although it's commercial), AppDelete and uApp are the others mentioned, both of which are free.

One thing I don't know how to do yet is access the main menu bar with a keyboard shortcut (if it is indeed possible). If anyone knows the answer to this or have any other tips please share.

Update: I attended the grand opening of the Apple store in Kingston today and was able to ask someone about accessing the menu bar from the keyboard, the answer; CTRL+F2.

I Have An Office!

noreply@blogger.com (gavinc) — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 20:46:00 +0000

It's been a while, over 2 months in fact, since I last blogged. Ironically it was about the possibility of an iPhone, which was actually announced for real earlier this month (as if you didn't already know!), unfortunately we have an agonizing year to wait here in the UK.

Well, the building work is more or less finished and I'm now properly setup in the new office with my iMac.

As for most switchers getting data over to the Mac is the first priority (this month's edition of MacFormat actually has a great article for Mac newbies). I moved all my files a few weeks back, all that was left was my contacts, todo list and calendar i.e. my Outlook data. I know there are products out there to help with this transfer but I thought I'd use my mobile phone as the transfer medium, as all the data was already there from ActiveSync.

I paired my phone with the iMac using the Bluetooth utility on the menu bar and opened iSync, only to find that my phone, the Nokia 6233, was not supported :-(

A quick Google search found a company called Nova Media who sell a product called "iSync phone plugins" which basically adds support to iSync for a whole bunch of additional phones, including mine. At 10Euros it's a bargain. It installed seamlessly and my phone was instantly recognised by iSync. I then had my "home" calendar, to do list and address book data on both the iMac and the phone in minutes.

I still had a problem though, I needed to get selected appointments from my work based Exchange calendar onto my phone. I decided to use iCal as the master calendar as this is what the phone would sync with. Fortunately iCal allows you to subscribe to calendars and subsequently sync them, this gave me the idea of using my Google calendar for the "work" calendar as they provide an ical feed to the calendar. Furthermore, as Google Mail scans any email you receive for anything that looks like a calendar entry I can simply email myself the appointments in Exchange I want on my "work" calendar.

I also subscribe to my favourite football teams fixtures calendar and a feed that contains all the UK public holidays, all of which also get automatically synchronized to the phone.

But what about online access? The Google based "work" calendar is obviously available and it's easy to also add the football fixtures and UK public holidays to Google as it also supports feed subscription, that just leaves the "home" calendar. Although I haven't tried it yet, iCal has a Publish option allowing any calendars to be pushed to a private server (or a .Mac account), presumably this could then be subscribed too in Google Calendar giving you all your events in iCal, on the phone and in Google Calendar.

The next major job is to setup the Alfresco development environment so I'm sure there's going to be lots more lessons to learn!