I was attached to InDesign CS3 for a long time but had to install CS5 to test a content management system. The second thing that made me crazy (the first thing being the application frame) was the absence of a progress bar when exporting a PDF.
Okay, might be a feature for most people because you can continue the work on that or any other document while the PDF export is in progress.
But most of time I want to open the PDF in Acrobat or pass the PDF to another application after it's created. Now you have a zero kB PDF file until InDesign is finished with the export.
The following hint works in CS5, CS5.5, and CS6 as well:
Create a new blank text file with the file name DisableAsyncExports.txt and place that file in the InDesign application package itself (right-click on the application icon and select Show package content). Then go to the sub-directory Contents/MacOS and place the new file there.
After a restart of InDesign the progress-bars are back again, and you can tell immediately when the PDF is created.
[crarko adds: I suspect this is one of those things that will be undone by a software update. I would strongly suggest making a backup copy of the InDesign application file before making any changes, just in case. Out of curiosity, can someone using the cloud-based version of InDesign let us know if there is a progress bar or not?]
Many are complaining about the recent occurrence of blank, full page windows popping up under the active window in Safari versions 5 and 7 (not sure about version 6) when clicking on a link.
This is due to the Glims update that came out this week. To solve this annoying behavior:
Go to Safari Prefs»Glims»Ads/Shopping, and check Off. Mine was set to Hit Me, which is the default. I don't remember seeing this behavior in Glims before.
[crarko adds: Hi, all; it's your guest editor, Craig Arko, in for a week. I don't use Glims, so I haven't tried this out. It seems plausible, but if people still observe the issue and this isn't the fix please make a comment.]
I disabled automatic spring-loaded folders. But wanted to have ability to manually activate it.
As you know if you drag one folder to another you can wait a little or immediately press spacebar. In both cases folder "spring-loads".
But auto spring-load annoys me more than helps. Because I often need to find folder I want to spring-load. And also I have to control that I am not hovering some other random folder. And sometimes I start dragging folder and in some depth forget to control not hovering any unnecessary folder.
"And boom!" and spring-loads wrong folder.
In Finder Settings (Finder menu -> Settings or CMD+,) you can disable auto opening spring-loaded folders.
But it will also disable manual opening folder via pressing spacebar.
But the hint is to double click spacebar when you hover necessary folder. "And boom!"
Like most preferences, keyboard shortcuts can be set using "defaults write" commands in the Terminal. Useful if you have lots of shortcuts that you want to define, or if you have more than one Mac to set up.
However, the syntax isn't quite the same as the usual commands for setting a key to a value.
For Application-specific commands, use the following:
The meta-keys are set as @ for Command, $ for Shift, ~ for Alt and ^ for Ctrl. k in this example is the non-meta-key that you want to use.
For system-wide shortcuts, you can use -g instead of the app identifier, e.g.
defaults write -g NSUserKeyEquivalents -dict-add "Menu Item" -string "@$~^k"
Note that you'll need to relaunch the app before these will take effect. Also you can see if they've been successful in System Preferences -- which will also need a relaunch to show the changes.
GateKeeper will block files from opening that it thinks are command line apps.
I was trying to open in TextWrangler sample .ncx and .opf files that I had downloaded from an Amazon forum. The Mac saw them as command line apps, and when dragging them onto TextWrangler's icon, I got an alert from GateKeeper. Since they're files, the contextual menu "Open" command didn't work. When I went into the Security preference pane to temporarily disable GateKeeper, I noticed that it had a message about the last thing that was prevented from opening, with a button to open anyway, and the file opened right away in TextWrangler. (Note that I didn't try changing the "open in" app using Get Info, which may have worked also.)
When you're playing music in the Music app in iOS 7, there's a thin red playhead that you can drag to adjust the song's playback position. Tap and drag it around for what Apple calls "Hi-Speed Scrubbing." (Why it's not "high," I can't say. Maybe the programmers were hi.)
Here's the hint: You can adjust the speed at which you're scrubbing through the song, if you need finer-grained control: Tap and hold on the red line, and then drag your finger upwards.
As you drag up the screen, you'll note that there three other gradations of scrubbing speed: Half-Speed Scrubbing, Quarter-Speed Scrubbing, and finally Fine Scrubbing; that last mode lets you scrub through the song second by second.
Apple changed the looks of Notes.app in Mavericks and it is now mostly white with a light yellow paper texture as the note background. Turns out the texture is a TIFF file you can easily edit with any image editing app.
Quit Notes.app. Go to /Applications/Notes.app/Contents/Resources. Copy paper.tiff file to your desktop. Make another copy and save it as a backup to a safe place. Open Desktop/paper.tiff to Photoshop or some other image editing app. Use your creativity. After saving, drag the file back from desktop to /Applications/Notes.app/Contents/Resources.
I changed mine to a bit more saturated and removed the texture. Looks like a Post-It note.
Mac OS X has long supported password encrypted zip files, but you have to use command line to do it. So here is a simple Automator based Service to give you a GUI.
OpenAutomator and choose "Service" (the gear). Change "Service receives selected" to Files or folders in "Finder.app"
Add the "Run Applescript" step and then copy the code below and replace all the code in the "Run Applescript" command with this code.
Choose save, naming it something like "Make Protected Zip", then test it by going to the finder and selecting one or more files/folders. Scroll down to the "Services" Menu and select the service with the name you just saved as.
on run {input, parameters}
set dialogResults to display dialog "Name for zipped file (no extension)" default answer "Archive" buttons {"OK", "Cancel"} default button "OK"
if button returned of dialogResults is "OK" then
set passwd to text returned of (display dialog "password for zipped file" default answer "password" buttons {"OK", "Cancel"} default button "OK")
set archiveName to text returned of dialogResults
tell application "Finder"
set archiveFileName to archiveName & ".zip"
-- Append on a number if file exists.
set suffix to 1
set theFileExists to true
repeat while theFileExists
try
set archiveFile to ((container of (item 1 of input) as Unicode text) & archiveFileName)
if exists file archiveFile then
set archiveFileName to archiveName & suffix & ".zip"
set suffix to suffix + 1
else
set theFileExists to false
end if
end try
end repeat
end tell
set itemStr to ""
repeat with thisItem in input
set itemPath to quoted form of (POSIX path of thisItem)
tell application "Finder"
set parentFolder to POSIX path of (container of thisItem as alias)
end tell
set itemStr to itemStr & " " & itemPath
end repeat
set zipFile to quoted form of (parentFolder & archiveFileName)
set cmd to "zip -P " & passwd & " -rj " & zipFile & " " & itemStr & " -x *.DS_Store"
do shell script cmd
end if
return
end run
Do you love TextEdit for its simplicity and elegance? Have you ever thought that it'd be great to use it in full screen mode? Here's how to achieve that. Apple has released TextEdit's source code as an example of an Xcode project; with Xcode installed, you'll be able to manufacture a version of TextEdit with full screen support.
Open TextEdit.xcodeproj and on the left, find the Interfaces folder and select the file DocumentWindow. Then, select the window; make sure you select the window itself and not one of the objects contained in it. On the right, you can see the different inspectors Xcode provides. You'll want to select the fourth, the Attributes inspector. There are a lot of changeable attributes of the window available, but what we're interested in is the full screen support. Change that to "Primary Window". Build and run the application. Presto, you have full screen support!
To get the finished, executable application, locate "TextEdit.app" in the folder "products", right click on it and "Show in Finder". You can move or copy it to a place of your choice - you might wanna keep the original TextEdit application, just to be safe though.
Ever wanted to remove all events prior to a given date from your calendar? Well, there's a script for that. This Applescript prompts you for a pivot date and removes all events prior to this date from your Calendar database.
display dialog "Please set the pivot date. (Events earlier than the pivot date will be deleted.)" default answer "01-01-2010" with icon note
set dateLimit to (date the (text returned of the result))
display dialog "This might take a few minutes." giving up after 2
tell application "Calendar"
set cals to every calendar whose writable is true
set r to {}
repeat with c in cals
set event_list to every event in c
repeat with e in event_list
if start date of e is less than dateLimit then
set r to r & {e}
end if
end repeat
end repeat
if the number of items in r > 1 then
display dialog "Nothing to delete."
else
display dialog "Done. Found " & (number of items in r) & " events with a date before " & dateLimit & ". Shall I delete them?"
repeat with e in r
delete e
end repeat
display dialog "Done." buttons {"OK"} default button 1
end if
