In iCal 5 you can now move multiple events forward or back in the calendar at once.
Multi-select the events to move by Shift+Clicking each event. Then, while holding down both the Control and Option keys, press the arrow keys to move the selected events.
In day or week view up/down keys move the events forward/back by 15 minutes, left/right keys move forward back by a day. In month view up/down move the events forward/back by a week, left/right still move them forward and back by a day. There seems to be no effect in year view.
[crarko adds: I tested this, and it works as described. I don't think I would have guessed to look for that first part.]
iCal's Debug menu in Lion has a 'Top Sekret' (sic) menu item which allows you to increase the number of days in the Week view up to 28.
You have to turn on the Debug menu in iCal first. This was detailed previously on MacOSXHints for 10.5 and is done with the following Terminal command:
defaults write com.apple.iCal IncludeDebugMenu 1
Or you can use Secrets from Blacktree, a System Preferences pane where it's simply a checkbox.
The Debug menu in iCal now features a 'Top Sekret' menu item. And you can alter the number of days in the week view between 7, 14, 21 and 28. You'll likely need a widescreen monitor or two for that.
[crarko adds: This is definitely new in 10.7. To turn the Debug menu off repeat the above command, using 0 instead of 1.]
With AutoSave and Versions in Mac OSX Lion, iWork now creates a 'Backup of' file for every document you create in an iWork application. However, there is a very easy way to prevent this.
If you're tired of the backup files created by iWork, simply go to Preferences » General (in each of the iWork applications) and then uncheck 'Back up previous version when saving' and check 'Save new documents as packages.' This will maintain the data needed for Versions and AutoSave without cluttering up your Mac with duplicate files.
[crarko adds: This seems to work as described in Pages; I don't necessarily mind having the backup file.]
In iCal 5.0, which is included with Lion, you can navigate between dates, weeks, months, or years using a finger swipe left or right using an Apple Magic Mouse or Trackpad.
Click on the Day, Week, Month, or Year button. Navigate between dates, weeks, months, or years using a finger swipe left or right. The left or right swipes will advance or reverse the displayed calendar.
With the Magic Mouse use a single finger swipe, and on a Trackpad use a two-finger swipe (you must check 'Swipe between pages' in their respective Control Panels).
[crarko adds: When I tried this with the Magic Trackpad, I could only get it to work reliably in the Weekly calendar view, so your mileage may vary.]
I use the Programming mode in Calculator.app and often find myself moving to the mouse to switch between octal, hex, and decimal modes. I wrote the two following Applescripts to cycle forward and backward between bases and use Butler to bind them to Command+D and Command+Shift+D.
Cycle forwards:
tell application "System Events"
tell application process "Calculator"
repeat with i from 1 to 3
if the value of radio button i of radio group 1 of group 2 of window "Calculator" is 1 then
click radio button ((i mod 3) + 1) of radio group 1 of group 2 of window "Calculator"
exit repeat
end if
end repeat
end tell
end tell
Cycle backwards:
tell application "System Events"
tell application process "Calculator"
repeat with i from 1 to 3
if the value of radio button i of radio group 1 of group 2 of window "Calculator" is 1 then
if i is equal to 1 then
set n to 3
else
set n to i - 1
end if
click radio button n of radio group 1 of group 2 of window "Calculator"
exit repeat
end if
end repeat
end tell
end tell
[crarko adds: I tested this (on 10.7.1), and it works as described.]
In some of Apple's Apps (I've tested Preview and Quicktime Player) holding Shift after launching them stops previous documents from reloading.
I've tested this launching from the Dock, the application icon in Finder or from LaunchPad. These all work (Launchpad also does the slow motion effect from holding down shift).
This doesn't seem to work if you use Alfred or Spotlight to search for and launch an application.
[crarko adds: While I'm sure this has been mentioned before, that last bit is news. I tried running TextEdit from Spotlight and sure enough, the Shift override does not apply. It's worth remembering if that's the way you launch applications.]
Now that Mac OS X supports Emoji, they can be added to the title of a terminal window to help distinguish shell windows.
One application that has been updated in Mac OS X Lion is the venerable Terminal.app which finally supports 256 colors. While playing around with Emoji characters, I realised they were quite useful to mark different terminals. I typically have multiple windows open with local and remote shells, along with a python interpreter. Previously I used the background colour of the terminal to distinguish the various contexts, but now I also add an relevant Emoji in the title.
To add the character to a Terminal window's title, just go into Terminal » Preferences, select the Settings Icon and the Window tab. In the Title item, you can enter the emoticon in the title text by going to Edit » Special Characters and select the Emoji set. Double-click the character you want to insert.
Lion's iCal changes default behavior of new event creation in Month View and creates all day events by default.
The single behavior in Lion that makes me grumble the most is the behavior in iCal when creating a new event in Month View (things work as before in day and week views). In Lion, when creating a new event by double clicking on the day the event is automatically assigned as an all day event. In most instances where an appointment is being created this will need to be changed.
The solution is that in Month view double click on the day you want to make the event on and then type 'Steve 9am' and it will correctly define an event called Steve that starts at 9am and ends one hour later.
You can even get fancy and define an event's length in the title, e.g. 'Steve 9am-2pm' and it will correctly set an event that starts at 9am and runs until 2pm.
One hour is the default length for an event, however if you would like to redefine the default length of all new events the command is:
defaults write com.apple.iCal 'Default duration in minutes for new event' 15
This makes event lengths default to 15 minutes, but you can use whatever value you wish.
[crarko adds: I tested this, and it works as described. Obviously to go back to the hour default length you can change the 15 to 60 in the above command.]
I came across this when I accidentally moved my finger on my Magic Mouse when playing back a video.
When a video is playing in Quicktime Player X if you swipe with with one finger on the Magic Mouse (or 2 fingers on the Trackpad) the playback speed can be altered.
Swiping from left to right speeds things up; right to left slows things down.
When you swipe the speed is displayed on the top left of the video and the controls popup is replaced with a simple arrow indicator with gradient lines at 2x, 4x and 8x speed up.
The speed change only happens as long as you have your finger on the surface; as soon as you release the playback resumes to 1x speed.
[crarko adds: When I tried this using the Magic Trackpad (with two fingers) what happened is that is would stop playing the video and scroll to a different spot in the timeline. But as with the Window-throwing hint, I'm willing to believe it's me fat-fingering things. Give it a try and post your results.]
