Mac OS X Tip of the Week: Forcing a Document on an App
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As you already know, you can open any document by dragging it to its application&#146;s icon on the Dock. Now if you want to open a document by dragging it to a docked app that doesn&#146;t want to open it, did you know that you can coax the app to do so?
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Learn how to use Comments to help you keep track of your files in Finder windows by checking out the latest Mac OS X killer tip at the Apple Pro/ site. [Oct 20]
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Last week, Computerworld offered up a list of 15 things in Apple's Mac OS X that needed changing. This week, it's the readers' turn.
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OpenDocument took another step away from obscurity Tuesday, as Apple confirmed that Mac OS X version 10.5 -- known as "Leopard" -- will natively support ODF files, alongside Microsoft's Word 2007 formats. Apple had previously added support for the format in its Pages word processing application.
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What to make of the Macworld keynote, where the line is between geeky interest and geeky obsession.... What are the things that tie us all together as geeks? Plus, a song! Enjoy!
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PHP Magazine has a new link today to a tutorial covering Building and Installing PHP, Apache on Mac OS X 10.3.5 with GD
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Paper-folding distraction while downloading XP SP2
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Keynote Kathy Sierra gives designers the antidote for apps that can't read faces, movement, tone or anything: Give users a way to express themselves. Plus: TV panel goes rogue. In Listening Post.
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Did you know that Mac OS X offers a simple way to increase the width of a column in Column View? It does, and it couldnât be simpler. Find out how to automatically expand a single column â or every Column View column at once â in the latest Tip of the Week.
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Citing security concerns, Microsoft prevents Mac users from running the OS on their machines. But is security the real reason here? By the Associated Press
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On the Mac, in a Frontier or OPML Editor script. sys.unixShellCommand("open http://scripting.com/") I want to be able to find this tidbit later in Google. Please ignore.
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A few weeks ago I suggested you try a new Internet browser, Firefox. And many of you did. You liked it, for the most part. One thing I forgot to mention was Apple Macintosh users need to be running OS X to
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Blog: Does it make sense to have multiple document standards? Upcoming votes consider this and other technical factors.
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Okay I've been writing about OPML reading lists here for years. I'm now on my second implementation, so maybe this time I'll get it right.  But there's something cool that happens when (hypothetically) the entire installed base of podcatchers supports OPML reading lists. All of a sudden the subscription problem goes poof! Ask anyone who's worked on a RSS reader, for that matter, ask anyone who's used one, what a PITA it is to subscribe to a feed. All those little buttons, or copying and pasting, and looking at urls, and trying to figure out whether you want this format or that format. It's a miracle anyone actually subscribes to feeds it's so damned complicated. Before you blame anyone, it's not actually anyone's fault. It's a result of the market not being a monopoly. The only way to solve the problem is if everyone uses the same web app to manage subscriptions. And we know that's not going to happen any time soon. Or, if every reader supports OPML reading lists. Now that might actually happen, even though it's not very likely. But podcasting, that's a whole other story. According to many people there's only one podcatcher, iTunes. So that's simplified the problem. For example, look at this page of NY Times podcasts, and how they handle it.   See the Subscribe button? Nice. Except for one thing. It really should say "Subscribe in iTunes" because that's what it does. And it works, because in many people's minds, iTunes is the only way to subscribe to a podcast. And it could stay that simple if Apple would do one thing, offer the option of publishing the OPML automatically to a publicly accessible web address, so the user could continue to use Apple's server to handle subscriptions, even if they're using a different podcatcher (for example one that runs on a Nokia N800). It would be the mark of a truly great company if they did that. Maybe they are that great. Otheriwse at some point we're going to ask the NY TImes to change their page. And they may not be too happy about that. Wouldn't blame them if they were. Moral of the story: If we can centralize the subscription process, and move it out of one reader or another, and get the readers to all support subscription to reading lists, the awful ugly issue will go away for users. It's one of the oldest tradeoffs in the tech business, to make it simple for users, the vendors have to give up some power.
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Tired of the clutter on your desktop? The latest Mac OS X killer tip shows you how you can use Expos&#233;, one of the coolest features of Mac OS X, to clean it up &#151; instantly. [Nov 17]
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iWork â08 provides âa solid deal for anyone needing an affordable office suite for the Mac,â according to Elsa Wenzel . She praises the new writing and layout tools in Pages â08, including the contextual Format Bar, Change Tracking, automatic list formatting, and the abundance of page templates. Wenzel points out that âKeynote â08 adds some smart features that PowerPoint lacks. Itâs also a breeze to figure out from the get-go.â And she notes that âNumbers reveals ease-of-use novelties that competitive tools donât provide,â concluding that âthe majority of users who rely upon spreadsheets as one-size-fits-all tools for household and light office work should be pleased to have a new option for Macs.â
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The next stop on my tour of development projects is to ship some new software that runs inside the OPML Editor. The software is designed to run on a Mac Mini that's attached to a big screen HD-TV. So the way the OPML Editor boots up now is inappropriate for this application. It presents a dialog and opens a weblog editing window. Instead this app interfaces through a web browser, and runs in the background.  So I need to come up with a way to not run the startup code for the weblog editor. I'll be taking my notes here, so that later when I want to do the same thing for another project I'll know how to do it. And since the OPML Editor is open source, the notes can apply to other people's projects if they want to do something similar.  1. How do you create a plain text file using the software Apple ships with the Mac OS? The TextEdit app doesn't have that option, amazingly. I found one very ugly way to do it. Open a .txt file. Then the options on the Save dialog give you a way to save as plain text. The real answer: It's a preference. 2. The OPML Editor will have an opmlStartupCommands.txt file in the application folder. The first line will set user.prefs.flStartupDotOpml to false. dotOpmlThread.script watches for this, and if it's present and set false, it won't start up. 3. Add this to the to-do list. I need to get Bonjour working inside the OPML Editor, with the minimum of fuss.