Nov 27, '03 12:23:00PM • Contributed by: iMatt658
There are a few notable exceptions, however, and interestingly they are mostly Apple spin-offs. AppleWorks, FileMaker Pro and the Microsoft family (we'll count Microsoft as a spin-off because Windows owes a lot to Mac OS) all hide their applications in a sub-folder of the Applications folder. The Macromedia family also follow this pattern.
Ideally, to remedy this one would simply place the application folder in /Library -> Application Support, and drag the application itself back to /Applications. However, many of these applications misplace their templates, plug-ins and support files, and the particularly iconoclastic programs (i.e. Excel, PowerPoint and Word) refuse to even start up when you do this.
To overcome the limitations in these programs, I dragged each folder over to /Library -> Application Support/, and then created symbolic links to the applications in /Applications. One could also use aliases, but if you replace the program with a new version, the symlink will still resolve to the correct file (assuming it has the same name of course).
To create symlinks from the terminal type (as an admin user):
ln -s /Library/Application\ Support/AppleWorks/AppleWorks.app/ /Applications/
ln -s /Library/Application\ Support/FileMaker\ Pro/FileMaker\ Pro.app/ /Applications/
ln -s /Library/Application\ Support/Microsoft\ Office/Microsoft\ Word/ /Applications/
etc...
Also be sure to remove any versioning information in the names before hand (e.g. a sym link to FileMaker Pro 6 won't work when you replace it with an app called FileMaker Pro 7).
[robg adds: If you use this hint, you might also wish to implement this one, which should force installers to follow your symbolic links -- in case they ever update any of these applications.]
