Viewing hidden system files usually requires Tinker Tools or viewing the file system through the Terminal, but a much easier way to browse the file system for hidden files is using OmniWeb. Simply type "/" as the url and all the files located at root will appear. You can even use OmniWeb as a file browser, albeit a limited feature file browser.

In this thread on the forums, 'stizz' posts about a problem with Mozilla. Basically, any site requiring a plug-in was failing with a message that read "QuickTime is missing software needed to perform this operation. Unfortunately, the software is not available on the QuickTime server".

After some off-track attempts at help from yours truly, 'skel' came to the rescue with a pointer to the exact same problem (but with a solution) on the front page of ResExcellence. Basically, if you set your disk cache to zero, then plug-ins that need to create temporary files will generate the above error message. QuickTime and Flash are two of the affected plug-ins.

So if you're using Mozilla, do not set the disk cache to zero until this bug is fixed! If you'd like to track the progress of the fix, you can watch bug 116562 on bugzilla.

OmniWeb is my browser of choice, but I've always been envious of Internet Explorer 5's ability to navigate links via the keyboard. Today I stumbled across a similar feature in OmniWeb 4.1sp36 (sneakypeek 36)! It may be in earlier versions as well - I don't know.

Press command-downarrow to move forward through links on a page (the currently selected link is outlined with a box) and command-uparrow to go the other way. Press the return key to "click" the link.

If you don't have it, you can get the latest beta ("sneakypeek") build of OmniWeb 4.1 from Omni's server.

We all know that we can now save any document as .pdf via Print -> Preview -> Save a Copy as.... In OmniWeb, there's (IMHO) a more elegant way: Hold down Shift-Option-S, go to the FILE menu and choose "SAVE AS PDF" right from the menu.

Note 1: "SAVE TO PDF" only shows up when you press the appropriate key sequence.
Note 2: When you're saving a picture the menu item changes to "SAVE AS TIFF".
Note 3: You can press the keys after activating the file menu.
Note 4: See the comments for a no-menu method of doing the same thing!

Hope this is not a duplicate tip and that some might find it useful.

[Editor's note: You can also save as PDF from any print dialog box by selecting the "Output Options" dialog box, clicking the "Save as File" checkbox, and then selecting PDF (or PostScript) as the format.]

Just thought I'd pass this on.. I recently was looking into where all the space on my OS X partition had gone.

I looked around and noticed that my ~/Library/Preferences/Explorer folder was around 400 MB (my cache is set to 5 MB). For some reason, the Download Cache was a 390 MB WAFF document. I trashed it, quit and restarted IE, which generated another Download Cache (only 4 KB), while keeping my download history intact.

I also checked my little brother's computer for the same thing, and he also had a relatively large file (~75 MB) there. We're both running 10.1.2, IE v 5.1.

[Editor's note: With the proliferation of browsers, cache can definitely take up a fair bit of drive space in a hurry. If you use multiple browsers, you should check each occasionally to see how much cache space they're each taking up.]

Mozilla has some preferences that are not listed in the Preferences panel of the app. Some of them are nevertheless quite useful, most notably (at least to me) the number of network connections that Mozilla will open.

To begin with, type about:config in the URL location field. Mozilla will now generate a page that lists all the prefs it understands and what values they have.

If you scroll down the page, you'll notice the settings that start with network.http. Mozilla uses relatively few concurrent connections per default (24 overall for all windows and 8 per server -- two persistent). Now if you happen to have a rather fast connection to the Internet and/or you are browsing mostly on a Intranet you can get Mozilla to use much more connections (if it needs to, that is).

Read the rest of the article if for the details on how to edit your Mozilla prefs file...

[Editor's note: Please read the comments for an important note about how to crate a new prefs file, as opposed to editing the master!]

This may be one of the harder-to-describe hints I've ever posted, but it's quite cool. If you use Mozilla, you should try using it with mouse gestures. What's a mouse gesture? Imagine moving between tabbed Mozilla windows with a quick drag down-up-left (or -right). Or jumping to your home page by sketching a tiny 'h' with the mouse. Or creating a new tab with a down-up-left-right motion. Sound interesting? It is!

Visit the Mouse Gestures home page for complete information on the shortcuts, and if it sounds like something you'd like to try, follow the simple one-click procedure on their installation page.

It took me a while to get used to using mouse gestures (kind of like learning to use a Palm Pilot), but once I did, they became second nature. They may not be for everyone, but they are an interesting study in interface design.

There was a tip mentioned earlier about holding option while clicking scroll arrows to move an entire page at a time. Well, with OmniWeb, if you have a scroll-wheel mouse with scroll button, there is no need to use the option key - just press the scroll wheel button while moving the wheel up or down. It does not seem to work in Mail or TextEdit, so it may be OW specific, rather than a Cocoa feature.

BTW, I'm using 4.1sp10 of OmniWeb, so it may be a new feature.

[Editor's note: Works as expected in OW 4.05 as well]

Although I use Mozilla as my current browser of choice, one of the gripes has been the lack of Java support in the OS X version. Last night, while browsing the Bugzilla bug tracking system, I found a very interesting link ... Patrick Beard of Netscape posted the URL to a Carbonized MRJ plug-in for use with Mozilla!

To use it, simply download the file, expand it and put the MRJPluginCarbon folder somewhere safe. Open this folder and command-option-drag the MRJPluginCarbon icon into the "/Library/Internet Plug-Ins" folder (to create an alias). I first tried my user's local Library folder, but it did not work there. After installing it in the root Library folder, Mozilla now happily displays Java applets! I tested it with trip.com's graphical flight tracker, and it worked perfectly! Prior to installing the plug-in, of course, all I'd see was the broken Java logo.

Please note that this is a development version, and may not work perfectly in all situations! It may even cause Bad Things to happen to your machine. It hasn't been officially released, but the URL was published on a public web site, so I'm reasonably comfortable that it's somewhat stable. As always, though, use at your own risk.

If you like searching with Google quickly and your prefered browser is OmniWeb, you will like this hint.

Go to 'Shortcuts' in the OmniWeb preferences and edit the first one (Shortcut = *, Destination URL = http://www.%@.com). Change the Destination URL to:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%@

Now you can type a search term directly in your OmniWeb location bar. OmniWeb will autocomplete it to a valid Google search. If you like to enter more than one serach term at once, use plus (+) to separate them.