This is not a specific Mac OS X hint, but it is very helpful, because Mac OS X has so many excellent browsers and I guess many of you use more than one at a time.
If you are using more than one browser, one usually has the problem keeping all your bookmarks in sync. If you are like me using Chimera, OmniWeb, Mozilla and Internet Explorer on many different machines, this is a real hassle. Skramkoob stores your bookmarks on their server and implements a superb and very intuitive user interface to access them.
To solve this problem, I have been using Skramkoob (bookmarks in reverse) for some years now and would not want to surf without it anymore. Recently they started supporting Gecko based browsers and now I use Chimera even more.
I am not affiliated in any form with skramkoob but just a happy user. The service is free and implemented with Apple's WebObjects.
Haven't seen this tip before. A procedure to remove the build number listed in every Mozilla browser window. Rather than repeat what has already been written and also to give credit where credit is due, I point you to the original tip.
[Editor's note: I tried this, and it does work as advertised (and it's quite nice not seeing the build number in the windowbar title!). However, this hack will have to be reapplied each time you upgrade Mozilla, as it's modifying the actual program files. Does anyone know how you might do this non-destructively? Is it possible?]
Today I suddenly was afflicted by the "crash on launch" problem that I have seen other complain about. I also stumbled across a solution that worked for me, but of course YMMV. It exploits a "trick" I learned a while back when using NSCA Mosiac on Solaris -- and had no idea it would work in OS X until I started poking around....
Here is an abbreviated list of the steps that restored Chimera to its old (new?) self: (Yes, you will have to use the Terminal. Sorry!)
From your home directory, type cd .mozilla/Profile/Chimera
Find the funny-named directory that ends in '.slt' and cd into it.
Type ls -laF and look for a file named lock@. It is a symblic link.
Remove the file it is pointing to. In my case, I typed rm 127.0.0.1:373.
Restart Chimera and enjoy!
Again, I cannot promise this will work for everyone, but it worked for me twice now, whereas reinstalling older or newer versions of Chimera (including from the nightly build) did not.
Last night, a friend pointed out a very nice feature in Mozilla (version 1.0 and perhaps earlier). If you use Mozilla, you more than likely use its tabbed windows feature (discussed in this hint). But did you know that you can save a set of tabbed windows as a group of sites?
For example, if you usually load Mozilla and then open new tabs to macosxhints, the macosxhints forum site, Macintouch, MacFixIt, CNN, and Apple, you can make that process a one-click operation. Launch Mozilla, open new tabs to the sites you would like to have in the set, and then select Bookmarks -> File Bookmark. It does not matter which tab you are on when you select this menu option.
This opens a dialog box that allows you to name and store a bookmark in a given location. But there's also a checkbox option called "File as Group". When you check the box, the "Location" field (for storing the URL) is disabled and the name of the bookmark is blanked out. Type a name for the set ("Normal", etc.) and hit OK and you have just saved your current tab configuration! If you save it to the Personal Toolbar folder, then you can open your standard set of tabs with one click when you launch Mozilla.
I've created sets for working on macosxhints, for checking other Mac web sites, and for checking the various news sites. Each has a spot in my personal toolbar, making it easy to completely switch from one set of sites to another. Alternatively, I'll use "Open New Window" to create separate pages, each containing a different tab set. This allows me to keep the number of tabs within any window under control, and yet maintain easy access to the large number of sites I browse each day.
The more I dig into Mozilla, the more and more I'm impressed with the depth of its feature set!
The command line program "open" is weak in that it doesn't work on URLs, even if they are put in proper form (i.e. with a preceding http://). To provide this missing function, I built a quick shell script that takes any number of URLs as an argument and then opens them concurrently in Omniweb. An added bonus is that the URLs are sent as if they were typed in the Omniweb address bar, so any completion options work. The script follows:
#!/bin/sh # sends a string to be parsed by the Omniweb browser
if [ -z "$1" ] then echo "usage: ow URL ..." exit 65 fi
until [ -z "$1" ]
do osascript -l AppleScript -e "Tell application \"Omniweb\" to getURL \"$1\"" shift done & exit 0
So now, "ow google hats" opens a browser window in the background with a google search for the word hats.
[Editor's note: To make the script executable, make sure you issue a "chmod 755 ow" and then "rehash" (or close and open the terminal). Enter the text using vi or pico or any other text editor that will not add Mac line breaks.]
Chimera's Navigator is having nightly builds released lately, so I wrote a shell script to grab it, mount the image, backup the old navigator.app, copy the new one over, and rename the disk image file to the current date.
Hi, I recently noticed that Omniweb logs my web page accesses under the Tools menu in the Error Log. I found that by default the check box for Show HTTP requests (at the top right of the Error Log window) was checked, and there was a nice list of the sites I've recently visited.
For those people for whom privacy is important, i thought this should be pointed out. Disabling this checkbox causes the Error Log function to only actual errors as opposed to all HTTP requests.
For fans of anti-aliased fonts - ever notice how Mozilla just doesn't render fonts as nicely as other browsers? The fix is on Tinker Tool's "Font Smoothing" tab.
Select "Manipulate font smoothing for applications using QuickDraw" and then choose to "Smooth fonts equal for greater than a size of..."
I chose 6pt. and that make pages looks nicer and cleans up the text in the URL, Bookmark and Status bars.
Don't forget to log off and back on to activate the change.
If you don't like Mozilla's implementation of the Aqua interface in Mozilla, try the Pinstripe theme instead. It installs directly from the web page and presents (I think) a nicer Aqua interface than the stock version. I've actually switched from the Modern theme to the Pinstripe theme; my only modest complaint is that the shortcut bar and the tab bar are basically the same color. Other than that, I prefer Pinstripe to any of the other included choices.
Note that the Pinstripe theme works up through Mozilla 1.0rc2; on newer nightly builds, the names of the pages may not show in the tabs. This problem could, of course, change on a nearly daily basis as Mozilla is updated.
I found the Pinstripe theme through this thread on the Macworld forums.
I found this hint on Mozilla's bug tracker (bugzilla), listed as bug #11459. Within this bug, you'll find comment #72:
I'm not sure if this applies to all builds of Mozilla or just the Mac OS X build, but adding a file called user.js to your profile folder (the same folder which contains prefs.js) and placing the following text in that file will fix this bug:
From what I understand, this also works for ftp and nntp. This was pointed out to me by someone in the netscape.public.mozilla.macosx newsgroup.
Save the file as a plain text file, and place it in your Mozilla profile folder (buried in your Library -> Mozilla -> Profiles -> username -> some_mess.slt directory). Now quit and relaunch Mozilla, and voila, mailto links open with you default mail client.
[Editor's note: Try as I might, I could not make this work on my Mozilla installation (20020417 nightly). I tried just about everything I could think of - made sure that the Internet pref pane had my preferred client and account info, changed the user.js "Open With" to match the existing prefs.js (which points to Classic Communicator?), cut and pasted the source from the bugzilla page to eliminate typos, etc. All that I've succeeded in doing is disabling mailto: links all together ... is anyone else able to get this working?]
