I’m not alone
by leon on November 14, 2007
Seems that i’m not the only the one that isn’t a fan of the old IE browser. This is the icon for the Mac only CSSEdit.
(By the way look in the bottom left corner)
It made me smile non the less. Oh and IE/Windows fans, don’t bother with any silly comments!!
Pretty up those stacks!
by leon on November 14, 2007
Here is a REALLY simple way to tidy up your stacks in Leopard. The basis for the idea was found over at XD’s blog. By default the stack will show the icon of the newest entry to the containing folder. The basic idea is to use a nice icon to always show in the stack, rather than the cluttered ‘mess‘ you see at present. We could simply add an icon and rename the icon to ‘aa’ and select sort by name for the stack. This isn’t exactly perfect as the whole idea of stacks is to show the most recent items of a folder for quick retreival. The original idea was to edit the files attributes via the terminal and change the modified date to one in the future. I found a tool that can basically do this and is a lot easier. Its called FileXaminer and is shareware (you get a 14day trial, which is more than enough time to change all of the dates of the icons).
Tip, select sort by date by right clicking on the icon in the dock rather than inside the folder.
To download the icons, click here. Ive also included a set of Adobe CS3 style icons!!
Thanks to XD for this!!
Go away IE!
by leon on November 14, 2007
I’ve written a little script for all you Firefox fans out there that will detect the browser that the user is running. If it is anything apart from Firefox the user will be prompted to download a copy of Firefox. They do ofcourse have the option to carry on using their current browser to view the site.
There is also a version that uses a cookie to bypass the check each time the user tries to view your site.
The script can be modified to let more browsers in. At the moment the script is only written in asp.net (sorry I don’t know PHP) but if there any PHP guys out there that would like to re-write this then please feel free.
Download the source files here.
It’s here (literally)!
by leon on October 26, 2007
Enough said!!
Thats my Leopard disk right there on my MacBook today at about half two. Thats right – before it was officially released. I pre-ordered and it was delivered by special delivery.
This is my first blog entry written in Leopard, and what a breeze it was to install. It was as simple as: put the disk in, click install and sit back and relax. No troubled updates, hardware upgrades or re-formatting of disks for me (aka Vista). In all it took about 45 mins (although it did say 3hrs 38 when it first started)!
At the moment, Time Machine is working in the background making sure i’m backed up (wow is all I can say). The interface is so much better than the preview on the Apple site. Anyway, I won’t go on too much about how great Leopard is – i’ll let you judge for yourself. All that is left to say is, this is one amazing upgrade and well worth the money. (I’ve not even mentioned Coverflow, Spaces and Web Clips yet!!)
Are you ready?
by leon on October 23, 2007
Are you ready for the most hyped software release of the century (I have no supported facts on this, but considering that the personal computers haven’t been mainstream for that long, and this is the best there has been so far, its a pretty safe conclusion)? No doubt blogs worldwide will go mental with reviews and posts about Leopard, filling up places such as Digg with repetitive headlines about new features. I will try and refrain from posting such blogs (although technically I suppose this one counts as such a post). Oh well, not long to go now, the weekend will be taken up, wasting hours messing with Leopard!
Proof (if needed) that IE7 is rubbish!
by leon on October 17, 2007
So I thought that with the release of IE7 some of the bugs would be fixed. Who was I kidding? I recently found some code to create an RSS feed from a database, set it up and got it working. Brilliant I thought. But like every web designer checked to see if it was cross browser compliant. There is a PDF of the screen shots I took of the feed in various browsers and environments to test it here. I don’t think I even need to say that IE failed. Oh and by the way, I checked the feed to see if it had errors and it didn’t so why the hell doesn’t it work. Just for interest this is a breakdown:
Works in:
- Firefox
- Camino
- Opera
- Safari
- iGoogle
Doesn’t work in:
- IE
Pretty conclusive?
Perfection gets better – Back to my Mac
by leon on October 17, 2007
Just when you thought that Leopard was perfect with its 300+ new innovations Apple decides to give us another treat in the form of ‘Back to my Mac’. Put simply it allows you to control and view your Mac from any other Mac (running Leopard) via your .Mac account. Without going into too much detail i’ll allow you to read Apple’s rather stunning review. This is just another reason why Apple is beating Microsoft – a better OS with even better add-ons.
Front Row in Leopard
by leon on October 17, 2007
Just a quick note. On the Apple site, it states that you must have an Apple Remote in order to use Front Row in Leopard. This may be a bit of a bummer for you guys that don’t own one. Fear not, Front Row is always there and can be accesed by hitting Command + Esc. You may already know this, but I thought i’d share it anyway. I wonder why Apple haven’t publised this?
By the way the Command button is the one with the ⌘ logo. You could also press F1, depending on the age of your machine.
If you do have an Apple Remote, head here to see some nifty little functions you may not know you can do with it.
Also this blog is brilliant for adding functions to Front Row, such as internet radio. Cheers guys.
OS X Portable Apps
by leon on October 16, 2007
You may of heard of Portable Apps for Windows which allows you to run portable versions of your favourite software such as Thunderbird, Firefox, Audacity and VLC. Now there is a Mac version which allows many more apps for download.
A 512MB stick should suffice to run the majority of apps. Unlike the Portable Apps for Windows there isn’t a polished GUI to select the apps, however there is a sync tool that allows you to sync between portable and local applications.
By the way, Portable Apps for windows allows you to run Mac Classic 7.0.1 from a stick
Two more great Growl plug-ins
by leon on October 16, 2007
This is just a link for two great plugins for Growl that notify you when there is a change in either Thunderbird or Firefox.
In Thunderbird, Growl displays a notification when new mail is recieved, and in Firefox displays when downloads are complete (clicking on the notification, opens up the download manager).
Growl Plugins for: Thunderbird and Firefox
Hope you enjoy!