Submit Hint Search The Forums LinksStatsPollsHeadlinesRSS
14,000 hints and counting!

10.4: Easily add the date to the menubar System 10.4
Tiger only hintDate and Time pictureWant to see the date in the menubar, as seen at right? Start by opening the International Preferences panel, and clicking the Formats tab.

In the Dates section, click Customize. Click the Show pop-up and select your choice of Short, Medium, etc. Now place the elements you want in the small "work area," by dragging and dropping them from the Date Elements section. Once placed, you can click on some elements to see other options (Wednesday or Wed, for instance). Once you've built the date string you want, click once in the work area, and hit Command-A then Command-C to select the string and copy it. Now click Cancel to close the window without making any changes.

In the Times section, click Customize, and set the Show pop-up to Medium. In the small work area below the pop-up, place the curser where you want the date elements to start, and click to position the cursor. Now hit Command-V to paste the elements you just copied. You can further add characters and spaces to customize the look. If you want to remove an element (i.e. the year), click on it and use the Delete key. Click OK, and you'll see the results in the menubar.

[robg adds: There are some older hints that explain how to do this for pre-10.4 systems (10.3, 10.2, 10.1), but this is by far the easiest version I've seen yet. After some frustration, I realized that the settings in the Date & Time panel apply to the clock -- so if you have "Show day of the week" selected there, then it will always appear with the time, regardless of your settings in the International panel. To get rid of the date, just edit the Medium clock format and remove the fields you added. Finally, only the Medium clock setting will show your changes -- this is the one that OS X is using to display the clock in the menubar, it seems.]
  Post a comment  •  Comments (47)  
  • Currently 3.70 / 5
  You rated: 4 / 5 (10 votes cast)
 
[87,115 views]  View Printable Version
10.4: Non-installed corrupt fonts may choke Spotlight System 10.4
Tiger only hintI did a clean install of Tiger on a friend's 1.5GHz PowerBook. Initially everything looked great, 10.4 is even faster than 10.3.9. Then I started building the home folder, adding documents, photos and music. Still great. Then I added a folder for some older software, including fonts. Within minutes, CPU activity was hitting 90% according to MenuMeters. Activity Monitor showed two processes using most of the CPU: ATSServer and mdimport.

Spotlight was indexing the new material, and when it hit the old fonts, some of which were likely corrupt, ATSServer started thrashing and eating CPU time. I grabbed all the old fonts and threw them into the trash and emptied it. Remember, these fonts weren't installed in any fonts folder. They were just sitting in an archive folder for possible future use, simply on the machine.

Here's the interesting part: as the trash emptied, I could see CPU usage ramping down in Activity Monitor, like a fire going out. When the trash was almost empty, I got a message saying (three font names) couldn't be deleted because they were in use. I waited a few moments, emptied the trash again, and the three remaining fonts were deleted. Since then, the system has been fast, stable, and trouble-free. CPU usage is typically just a couple percent at idle. Kudos to Apple for an outstanding new OS X!
  Post a comment  •  Comments (5)  
  • Currently 1.00 / 5
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  (1 vote cast)
 
[8,707 views]  View Printable Version
10.4: Get UK TV listings with Safari's RSS viewer System 10.4
Tiger only hintThere are going to be quite a few of these "uses of the RSS viewer" tips for Safari, so I thought I would get in there and detail one of the neatest ones: seeing UK TV listings.

Here's how I did it...
  1. Create a bookmark folder called "tv" or whatever you like
  2. Put the following bookmarks into the folder:
  3. Click on the new "tv" bookmarks folder and select View All RSS Articles from the drop down method (or use this shortcut).
  4. Click on the right-hand link in the RSS viewer navigation area titled Sort By, and set it to Titled.
Nice simple, ad-free TV listings. You could simplify this process by just bookmarking: this link, which is all of them in one go.

Tip: See bleb.org's RSS page for some nice tips on how to use the RSS feeds and get tommorow's telly and all the satellite channels, etc.
  Post a comment  •  Comments (9)  
  • Currently 2.00 / 5
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  (2 votes cast)
 
[11,559 views]  View Printable Version
10.4: Enable PullTab After clean 10.4 install System 10.4
Tiger only hintWithout the freeware Command-Tab override tool PullTab, I go crazy. Quark mostly, but with other apps as well (PhotoShop, Illustrator, etc.).

To make a long story short, when I installed 10.4 on my iBook, I simply did an upgrade install (what'd'ya want!? I was excited to use Tiger). But on my Desktop I did a format and clean install. Put simply, on my iBook, PullTab showed the dock in the APE Preference pane, and on my Desktop it did not.

The simple solution is:
  1. Click the Temporarily Disable button in the APE pref pane (disabling APE for one log out)
  2. Log out and log back in
  3. Again, log out and log back in
PullTab should now show the Dock in the APE pref pane, and Command-Tab should be disabled. Hope this helps all of the Command-Tab haters/PullTab lovers out there.
  Post a comment  •  Comments (0)  
  • Currently 1.50 / 5
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  (2 votes cast)
 
[6,148 views]  View Printable Version
10.4: Use Automator to batch add Spotlight comments System 10.4
Tiger only hintAfter installing 10.4, I noticed that every file now has a Spotlight Comments field attached to it (visible in the Get Info window), and was regretting that most of my existing files don't have comments. It's one thing to put comments on files as they are created, but to go back through and put information about which project or whatever files should be indexed with for the thousands of files already on my computer, wow, what a pain. On the other hand, like many people, related files are often in related locations. This means you can use Automator to batch-add comments to files in related locations. Just use the following sequence:

Ask for Finder Items
Get Folder Contents
Add Spotlight Comments to Finder Items

You will probably want to use the "Repeat for each subfolder found" option for Get Folder Contents. The only problem I have is I can't figure out how to get Automator to let me dynamically update the contents of the Spotlight comments I'm adding each time I run the workflow. Instead, I have to modify the appropriate field in the workflow before I run it each time.
  Post a comment  •  Comments (11)  
  • Currently 2.00 / 5
  You rated: 3 / 5 (4 votes cast)
 
[14,870 views]  View Printable Version
10.4: Change the Stickies widget's default settings System 10.4
Tiger only hintI like the Stickies widget, but I don't want a yellow page and that horrible 18-point Marker Felt font as the default. It took a bit of tinkering, but I found what to change:

Make a backup of the Stickies widget (in /Library/Widgets) first, in case you make a mistake. Open Stickies.js inside the Stickies widget (Control-click on the Stickies widget and select Show Package Contents), and in the first set of variables, change find var autofont = true; and change true to false. This will override the huge 18-point text. Next, find the function loaded () string (about 3/4ths of the way down the document) and change the gCurrentFontSize from 18pt to whatever you prefer (I chose 10px). Also change the gCurrentFont to your preferred font. Save and close the new JavaScript file.

Open Stickies.css and change the background image URL in the first line to your favourite colour background image (located in the Images folder of the package). Also change the font attributes in the .auto-div section (beneath the backgound image line) to your favoured size and typeface. That's it for the CSS file, so save and close.

Next open the Stickies.html file and find the var font and var size lines, and change the Marker felt and 18px to what you want. Save this and close.

If you test the progress of the Stickies widget in the Dashboard, you should find that the default font and size have changed, but when you drag the sticky out of the dashboard, the background is still yellow until last minute. This can be changed by replacing the image Default.png file found in the root package folder with one of the images from the Images folder.

[robg adds: I haven't tested this one...]
  Post a comment  •  Comments (3)  
  • Currently 1.60 / 5
  You rated: 2 / 5 (5 votes cast)
 
[10,012 views]  View Printable Version
10.4: A possible fix for IP printing troubles System 10.4
Tiger only hintIn my office, we use IPP exclusively for networked printers. This includes an older HP LaserWriter MV4 and an Electronics for Imaging Fiery X3E. When I installed 10.4, it took me half a day to figure out how to print again! Configuring IPP was easy as usual, but for some reason, the new printer utility is not generating the correct Queue Name value. In fact, it appears to be generating it from the 'Name' you give the print spooler on your local machine, instead of requesting it from the printer itself.

To make a long story short, I tried using HP Jet Direct for the HP printer and voila, it just worked. I left the queue name blank, and simply put in the IP address and picked the correct PPD. Then I went ahead and tried the same thing with the Fiery Printer ... it also worked, though I'm not sure exactly why or what was different about HP Jet Direct as opposed to IPP.

So if you're having trouble getting your networked printer to work using IPP, try using HP Jet Direct instead ... your mileage may vary.
  Post a comment  •  Comments (3)  
  • Currently 1.00 / 5
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  (1 vote cast)
 
[6,174 views]  View Printable Version
10.4: Use new power management features System 10.4
Tiger only hintIn Tiger, there's a new option for extending your laptop's battery life. You can tell Tiger to automatically dim your display when the laptop's drawing from battery power. Just pop over to the "Energy Saver" prefs pane, choose Settings for: Battery, click Show Details, and select the Options pane. Finally, check the "Reduce the brightness of the built-in display when using this power source" checkbox.

Additionally, the pmset command-line utility has gained some new abilities. One of the nicest, in my opinion, is a simple way to find out if your machine is on battery or AC power:
$ pmset -g ps
Currenty drawing from 'AC Power'
 -InternalBattery-0     96%; AC attached; not charging
This can be a very handy thing to examine when setting up periodic scripts that are power-hungry -- you want to be sure that they won't start in the middle of that trans-Atlantic flight.
  Post a comment  •  Comments (10)  
  • Currently 2.75 / 5
  You rated: 2 / 5 (4 votes cast)
 
[13,220 views]  View Printable Version
10.4: Show date/time (and more) in the login window System 10.4
Tiger only hintI don't know if this worked in Panther or not, but if you click on the System Name (grey text just above the username/password form) on the Login Window, you can see different information, such as the installed OS version, the machine's serial number, and the current (updated) date and time:


Not the most useful thing in the world, but I've thought about trying to hack something to show the current date in that spot before. Looks like Apple beat me to it!

[robg adds: The above screenshot is from my machine. Unfortunately, the "click state" of the row defaults the next time you login, so you can't leave it on the date/time view...]
  Post a comment  •  Comments (11)  
  • Currently 2.67 / 5
  You rated: 3 / 5 (3 votes cast)
 
[13,341 views]  View Printable Version
10.4: A fix to force Spotlight to index iPhoto images System 10.4
Tiger only hintSpotlight should be able to find pictures in your iPhoto library, if you are using iPhoto 5.0.2 (or later, I presume). However, if you kept iLife up to date and upgraded to iPhoto 5.0.2 *before* installing Tiger, you'll find that Spotlight never finds any of your pictures. The fix is simple.
  1. Quit iPhoto
  2. Delete ~/Library/Pictures/iPhoto Library/iPhoto.ipspot
  3. Start iPhoto
  4. Use Spotlight to search for keywords or comments on your pictures.
Unfortunately, the file names Spotlight returns are not helpful in finding the right match from the Spotlight window. If iPhoto renamed the picture files, instead of leaving them named IMG_01234.JPG (or whatever your camera calls images), that would help.

The iPhoto.ipspot file just contains the path to your AlbumData.xml file and gets recreated (presumably after iPhoto has updated something else).

[robg adds: My iPhoto was upgraded prior to Tiger installation, but everything seems to be working fine. I have heard reports of no iPhoto indexing, though, so maybe this will help someone...]
  Post a comment  •  Comments (12)  
  • Currently 2.75 / 5
  You rated: 3 / 5 (4 votes cast)
 
[15,399 views]  View Printable Version