Wanting to quickly resize bunches of digital camera images, I found the available shareware apps a bit overkill and spendy for the task, and wondered if there was anything similar to BeOS' Tracker add-ons that would let me do the job directly from the file management interface. As mentioned in a previous hint, you can download Toolbar Scripts for OSX that integrate directly into the Finder. Lo and behold, Apple offers a free "Scale by %" script that does exactly what I needed.

Place the script in ~/Library/Scripts. In Finder, use View -> Customize Toolbar. Drag the "Scale by %" script from ~/Library/Scripts onto the toolbar. Navigate to a folder full of images you want resized, click the Scale By toolbar icon, and enter the scale factor into the dialog. Bingo - hundreds of images resized with two clicks, without opening a separate app.

Warning: The script will overwrite the original images, rather than writing out new filenames. If you want to save the original images, be sure to make a copy of the folder before beginning. It should be possible to modify the script to fix this.

A co-worker of mine found the following information somewhere on the web...

If you make a PNG image (editor: TIFF also works) with the RGB values 0,16,0 and set it as your desktop picture (the hint he saw recommended using a 1 pixel by 1 pixel PNG) then your DVD player can play on your desktop. Start a DVD and then hide the player!

This also works with the Terminal app. You can set your Terminal background to RGB values of 0,16,0 (with no transparency, unfortunately) and whatever the DVD player is showing will play through the background.

[Editor's note: This little trick will NOT work on NVidia cards; much as ATI's can't take screenshots, NVidia's can't play DVDs with the colored window trick.]

I keep my 'Favorites' folder in the dock. Recently it has become so overcrowded that the "click and hold down the button" listing went off the top of the screen.

I've written a Perl script that sorts the 'Favorites' folder (~/Library/Favorites) into A-Z subfolders, thus keeping things more compact. Make sure you save the file with its unix line endings.

[Editor's note: Although I haven't installed this yet myself, the script is very straightforward -- great idea, Rob! Make sure you make the script file executable (chmod 755 script_name) in order to use it.]

If you are like me your Desktop is often cluttered with way too many windows. I use the Hide command or its option-click counterpart quite a bit to free up screen space and clutter. Command-option-clicking in the Dock is also handy for hiding all. For one app, however, that's not always best either.

With a few simple Interface Builder connections you can add a Hide App dock menu item to almost any Cocoa application. Sadly I couldn't get this to work with a few Apple apps I use often. The Terminal is one, Mail is another.

If you have the Developer Tools installed and would like to add a "Hide Application" dock menu to your favorite Cocoa applicaiton, read the rest of the article.

[Editor's note: I followed these instructions and they worked perfectly for the app I tested (Okito Composer). Even if you're not interested in a new "Hide" dock menu, this is a great tutorial that shows how easy it is to modify an applications behavior with InterfaceBuilder.]

If you want to tile the background image of all windows that look like "General", you can edit the following file with PropertyList Editor (or pico or vi or BBEdit etc):

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist

Search for 'icnv' and you should find a section that looks like this:

<key>icnv</key>
<dict>
  ... lines not shown ...
  <key>BackgroundFlags</key>
  <integer>0</integer>
  ... lines not shown ...
</dict>

Change the "0" below "BackgroundFlags" to a "1" (and save the change!) and then either logout and login or relaunch the Finder. When you do so, the image you place in the Global View Options will be tiled in the background of the Finder windows.

Sebastien

[Editor's note: This is distinct from the previous tip that discussed tiling desktop images, although closely related! In order to see the keys discussed, first go to the Finder, open a new Finder window, set it to view by icon, and specify a background image. You should now have the BackgroundFlags key in the com.apple.finder.plist file.]

You can edit the com.apple.desktop.plist file so your background image will be tiled if it is not already.

Just go into the com.apple.desktop.plist (in your user's Library/Preferences directory) file with pico or your favorite text editor and remove the key for placement as well as the string for it. Take out these lines:

<key>Placement</key>
<string>Crop</string>

Then save the file, log out and log back in. Your background should now be tiled.

NOTE: Your background must have been set before you logged in. If you set a new background, you will have to log out and log back in before this will work. I don't know why. Also, I am working on finding a good way to do this with the defaults command.

[Editor's note: I have not tried this myself yet, but if you try it and it doesn't work, you should be able to delete the plist file and the system will create a new one for you.]

If you are in the icon or list view, then you can move around the whole content by pressing command-option and then click-hold with your mouse. You can´t see the effect if all the files are visible.

/Joakim Andersson

I just noticed this today, I don't think it has been posted. In OS 10.0-10.04 if you changed the desktop pic, it would mirror across two (or more) monitors.

In 10.1 you can now independantly change desktops for each monitor through the Desktop System Prefs (as in OS 9).

[Editor's note: Ah the lucky ones with dual monitors! ;-)]

I do love the Dock ? it combines the best features of the windows taskbar and the Application switcher. One thing i sorely miss from OS9, however is having a trashcan on the desktop. Until now. Luckily for me (and I suspect other users to) Apple has made provisions for putting a trash can back in its rightful place. In the Terminal type:

cd ~/Library/Preferences/

to change to your preferences directory (the ~ is a shortcut for "/Users/your_username"). Then type:

sudo pico com.apple.finder.plist

and enter your root password. Scroll down and look for a line about 1/4 of the way down that reads "Finder Has.Trash". Simply change the tag below it from false to true, relaunch the Finder, and presto! A desktop trashcan!

A friend of mine just sent this to me:

"I don't know if you've seen references to creating your own .cshrc file anywhere. I've been playing with it a bit. The way to do it is to edit the /etc/csh.cshrc file. If you do this one, the aliases you add are usable by all users - including root and sudo-ed uses. I added this:

alias bbopen "open -a '/Applications/Text/BBEdit 6.1/BBEdit 6.1 for OS X'"

which makes the command "bbopen FILENAME" (without quotes, FILENAME is the name of the file) open any file you want. Note that my path to BBEdit may not be yours."

...and I was just getting to tolerate pico, too, but I LOVE by BBEdit.