Back in April I blogged about an issue I found with the Chrome browser where the Flash Player debugger wasn't working properly. That post has received a number of views and has helped a few folks get around the issue. I recently ran into a similar issue where viewing PDF files in Chrome caused the following screen to display. NOTE: I believe this issue only pertains to the dev channel version of Chrome.
I recently stumbled upon a little tab key trick in Mac OS X. I already knew you could press the tab key to autocomplete directory names, but I didn't know you could press the tab key additional times to resolve directory name ambiguity. How does it work? When you are typing directory names and paths, which you do with the change directory (cd) command, you can press the tab key to autocomplete the directory names. If two directories have similar names OS X and Linux will complete what you type up to the point one or more additional directory names match. If you continue to press the tab key a list of all possible directory names will display. This lets you determine what you are looking for and continue typing a directory name to resolve the ambiguity.
I'm stunned I didn't know about this neat feature of OS X and Linux, the two platforms I tested.
Check out the quick video demo below to see exactly what I'm talking about.
A few weeks ago I started using Chrome on Mac OS X as my main Web browser. I had grown tired of Safari 4 chewing up nearly a gig of RAM after leaving it open for a week or more. Don't get me wrong, Safari is a fantastic browser and I wasn't happy about switching. But I can't have any browser chew through a gig of memory even if it takes it a week to do so. Chrome is nearly as fast as Safari (for me) and I've left it open for two weeks without any tab hogging memory. Each opened tab spawns it's own process allowing a single tab to fail without affecting other tabs. In general I've found each tab occupies 25 MB to 40 MB of RAM. If you do that math you'll realize I can open around 25-40 tabs before Chrome takes up a gig of RAM.
MacHeist is known for providing low cost software bundles that let users save ridiculous amounts of money on up and coming titles. Over the last few years I've bought bundles from MacHeist that got me using great software such as 1Password and Snapz Pro X. Last week MacHeist offered their second nanoBundle which I also purchased. Shortly after the sale ended purchasers could log into the site and download their nanoBundle 2 software licenses as a 1Password interchange file. This allows users of 1Password to import all their new license keys into 1Password 3's new Software management feature. If you bought the nanoBundle and you also use 1Password be sure to import your license keys following the directions on the 1Password blog.
I don't know about you but I can't stand the sound effect that plays when I use my MacBook Pro keyboard (or external Apple keyboard) to turn my volume up or down. It can be ear-piercing if you have a nice pair of headphones on. In the OS X 10.5 (Leopard) days there was a Terminal command you could run to turn off the sound effect. On OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) there's actually a setting in the Sound preference pane of System Preferences that controls whether the sound plays. Following the break is a screenshot that shows where you can turn the sound effect on or off.
It didn't take long for the release of the iPad to spurn negative reactions from Apple fans and geeks everywhere. In fact, I heard 80% of the buying public was unimpressed with the iPad. Hitler wasn't impressed either as evident in the Downfall video meme you can watch here. But the best Downfall spin-off yet was when Doug McCune put Hitler in the speaker lineup for CFUnited 2009!
I write many blog posts that instruct readers to press command+this and command+that and for the longest time that's exactly how I wrote them. But isn't it much better to say press ⌘+i or press ⌘+m?
To display the ⌘ symbol online simply use the HTML Entity ⌘. This works in Safari, Chrome, and Firefox, the only browsers I tested. And frankly, the only browsers worth using really.
I was on my new MacBook Pro the other day, working on some database stuff when I accidentally hit ⌘+comma in a Finder window. This keyboard sequence brings up the software preferences for whatever program you have activated. I was a bit surprised to see the Finder Preferences window pop up because I hadn't seen it in over a year. Since I was on a new machine I clicked through the various tabs in the window and noticed the Show all filename extensions in the Advanced tab. I'd never seen this setting before so I turned it on. And it did exactly what it says it does, makes all extensions of every file show up in all Finder windows.
I like this setting as I'm always editing file properties (⌘+i) that don't show an extension to force the behavior. The only downside to this setting - if you can call it that - is apps in the Applications Finder window show a .app extension. That's probably the only file type I don't want to show an extension.
Here's a screenshot of the Advanced tab settings in the Finder preferences window. Maybe someone else will be as excited to find this feature as I was. Incidentally, I thought this might've been a feature added in Snow Leopard. Sadly (sad that I didn't know), I checked an OS X 10.5 machine and saw the same setting.
I found this slide deck on the presentation secrets of Steve Jobs interesting. While I was reading I found myself thinking: "I know most of this." But, the hard part is actually doing the things Steve does. For instance, creating a "holy crap" moment in a presentation is tough. Especially if you're giving a talk on Web caching. Introducing a revolutionary product on the other hand comes with more "holy crap" fodder. I enjoyed this slide deck and thought I'd share.
Click here to view the deck.
This sounds totally crazy, but nearly five years ago I wrote a little AppleScript that allowed me preview an entire album on iTunes. I don't know the Apple Store didn't have this functionality from day one, but they didn't. Well, they've finally seen the light of day and created this in the latest edition of the store. Check it out.
http://www.macworld.com/article/144930/2009/12/itunesalbumpreviews.html
Given how often I use Evernote for work and personal activities I'm quite surprised I've never blogged about it. I want to put an end to that right now and talk about one of Evernote's useful features, Web clipping.
I add notes into Evernote all the time. Whether I'm taking notes in meetings, doing research on what camera case to buy, or grabbing a quick screenshot of a map for use later on my iPhone, Evernote has become a critical component of my computer use. As I add or change content in Evernote on one computer, it is synced with my account on evernote.com, all my other Macs, and my iPhone!
This is one of those blog posts where 99% of you will say "Huh, he's actually blogging about this?" It's true this might be one of the easiest things in the world to figure out but for those who've asked me already, and for those who might in the future, here's how you activate Safari's developer tools.
Open Safari's preferences window (command + comma) and click on the Advanced tab in the upper right. At the bottom of the resulting screen there will be a checkbox you can click to activate the developer tools. This will allow a new "Develop" option to show in Safari's menu bar.
Now that you have the tools activated read this overview and this detailed article to ensure you're getting the most from the Safari 4.
I've been running Safari 4 beta for a few weeks now and am quite happy with it. It's much faster than Firefox on Mac, has a smaller visual footprint, and includes a great set of developer tools. Some people aren't too happy with some of the new tab features though. Have no fear, Rob Griffiths over at Macworld put together a screencast that shows you how to move the new tab bar from the top of Safari window to its original position. Rob also shows how to hack the active tab color or the inactive tabs colors to make either stand out.
Check it out here.
This may come as a surprise but it's not that often that I have a need to compare entire folders or projects of code. Most of the time I'm using Subclipse's compare functionality to compare two different versions of the same file. When I do need to perform heavy code comparisons I typically rely on File Merge, a utility that comes with Xcode.
Realizing there are probably much better tools suited to this task I thought I'd reach out to my readers and ask what you use. So, if you're on OS X, fire away and offer up your best suggestion for the most rockin' code compare utility.
Incidentally, for those that are on Windows (I'm sorry), Beyond Compare and WinMerge are the best tools I've seen.
I'm pretty much addicted to my iPhone but I believe I would've sold it for $50 the other day. It'd been several days since I updated my installed applications so I visited the app store to see what was new. I had 10 updates. Thinking nothing of it I began downloading all 10 application updates. After the updates were ready I connected my iPhone and started a sync. Halfway through the sync iTunes crashed.
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