Latest Posts in Mac OS X Hints

Customize Safari's RSS interface

If you read RSS feeds in Safari and find it hard to distinguish between unread and read articles—or if you have other gripes about Safari’s visual interface for RSS—it’s relatively simple to change that interface. All you need to do is create a CSS style sheet and tell Safari to use it.

For example, let’s say you want to highlight unread articles with an easy-to-spot green background. To do so, create a plain text file with the following text:

@media screen {
    div.apple-rss-unread {
       background-color: rgb(202, 255, 157) !important;
    }
}

Save that file somewhere convenient, giving it the file extention .css. Then, open Safari’s preferences panel, choose the Advanced tab, and use the Style Sheet pull-down menu to select the new file as your style sheet. After you restart Safari, you should see the new colors.

There’s a lot more you can do, using that style sheet. To find out what keys you can alter, look at Safari’s CSS file for RSS pages. That file is located at: System/Library/Frameworks/PubSub.framework/Versions/A/Resources/PubSubAgent.app/Contents/Resources/Main.css.

Browse Main.css to find the keys and syntax for modifiable page elements. You could edit that file directly, but it’s easier and safer to create a separate file and set it as your style sheet.

Thanks to Mac OS X Hints reader tedw for this tip.

Find parent folders in Finder search results

It’s basic, but handy: You probably already know that you can navigate to a file’s enclosing folder by selecting the file in the Finder, then selecting Go -> Enclosing Folder. That Go menu item also shows you a shortcut keystroke combo—Command-Up Arrow—that’ll do the same thing. But if you do a search in the Finder, then select one of the found files in the search results window, the Go -> Enclosing Folder menu item will be grayed out.

As an alternative, many of us use the Open Enclosing Folder item in the Finder’s contextual menu; you could also select the file, then double-click on its parent folder in the path list at the bottom of the search results window.

But it turns out you can also use that keyboard shortcut—Command-Up Arrow—in search results lists, even if its associated menu item is grayed out. Note that this also works in smart folders (which, after all, are only saved search results).

Create unique margins and text flows in Pages

Have you ever wanted to create a document where the margins follow graceful curves, or the text is broken up by a wandering invisible line that meanders down the page? If so, and if you use Pages, here’s a really simple way to create those effects.

For curved margins, you can do this simply by placing an oval (Insert -> Shape -> Oval) on your page. Click the Inspector button in the toolbar to show the Inspector window, then click on the Wrap tab (third from the left). With the oval still selected, click the ‘Floating (doesn’t move with text)’ button, and then check the ‘Object causes wrap’ box below that.

Make sure you can see the page layout in Pages (View -> Show Layout), then drag the oval to the edge of your page, sliding it past the margin as much as necessary to get the curve effect you’re looking for. Once it’s in position, click on the Graphic tab in the Inspector window, and set both the Fill and Stroke pop-up menus to None. This will make your oval invisible, but it will still affect the layout of the text. You can repeat this process on the other margins, and nothing says you have to use only ovals—feel free to experiment with other shapes.

But what about breaking apart your text with a meandering line? The process is the same, but the secret is to use pen tool—Insert -> Shape -> Draw with Pen. Draw a line with as much or little curvature as you like, positioned roughly where you’d like it to split your text. Click the mouse repeatedly to add points to the line; when done, click the first point again, or just press Escape.

Once the line is drawn, check that the Wrap tab has the line set to float and to cause wrap (just like with the oval), then move it to its final position. Finally, use the Graphic tab to set the Stroke pop-up menu to None (the Fill pop-up should already be at none) to make the line invisible.

You can also change the Extra Space setting in the Text Fit section of Wrap tab in the Inspector to make things flow more nicely. As seen in the above image (that’s a portion of a sample document filled with lorem ipsum placeholder text), the end result can be intriguing, and if used in the right way, can make a text-filled page a little less boring to view and read—just don’t overdo it.

Speed up operations in photo-laden Pages files

Here’s a simple speed-up tip for working with photo-laden documents in Pages. If you work with such documents, especially on older and/or memory-challenged Macs, you may find yourself looking at the spinning rainbow cursor entirely too often, such as after any little minor change, or when navigating from page to page.

If that’s the case, then try this simple fix: disable the page thumbnails that appear in the left-hand column of your document. Select View -> Page Thumbnails (or press Command-Option-P) to disable them—you should see a checkmark there to indicate that the thumbails are enabled.

Once disabled, scrolling and making changes should be much snappier. Even on a faster Mac, I’ve noticed that Pages seems generally more responsive with the thumbnails disabled. The downside of this workaround, of course, is that you don’t have the thumbnails available for speedy navigation around your document. Given there’s a keyboard shortcut, though, it’s easy to toggle them back on when you need to see them, then toggle them off again when done.

Identify causes of large Time Machine backups

Time Machine, OS X 10.5’s built-in backup solution, normally runs reliably and trouble-free for me. So much so that it has become my always-there backup solution, and I rarely think about it unless I need to retrieve a recently-deleted file from the archive. Sometimes, though, Time Machine seems to lose its mind, and instead of small, fast hourly updates, I’ll see hourly runs that take many many minutes to complete. Beyond the time required for each hourly run, this issue meant my Time Machine drive was rapidly filling with data, leading to a shorter history for keeping multiple copies of files.

One possible cause of repeated large hourly backups is TechTool Pro 5’s Directory Backup feature, which creates a copy of each hard drive’s catalog (a file that tracks the files on the drive). I found out the hard way that if you have this feature enabled (it’s found on the Directory Backup tab of the TechTool Protection System Preferences panel), you will get continual huge hourly Time Machine backups. In my case, I was seeing in excess of 2GB on each and every backup.

You can either disable this feature (on the previously-mentioned Directory Backup tab), or alternatively, exclude the folder that holds the backups from Time Machine. (If you choose this solution, you’ll want to regularly back those files up to another device; backed up catalog files aren’t much good if the drive they’re on dies.)

To do this, open the Time Machine System Preferences panel and click on the Options button. In the window that appears, click the plus sign, then select your user’s Library -> Application Support -> TechTool Protection folder in the file selection dialog. Click Exclude, then click Done to make Time Machine leave this folder out of its backups.

What if you’re not sure about the cause of your large backups? You can keep an eye on the backups yourself, or use any of a number of third party tools, including Time Tracker, timedog, or Macworld Gems winner Back-in-Time.

While it’d be nice to get more information directly from Time Machine about what’s happening with backups, the above tools can help you figure out just what went into any given backup. With that information, you can then decide whether or not to exclude the offending files and folders from future Time Machine backups.

Scale applications to fit smaller screens

If you use OS X on a Mac with a small screen—be that a 12-inch PowerBook G4 or a modified PC netbook of some sort—one of the biggest challenges is that OS X really wasn’t designed for small screens.

Some applications may not even install, due to checks on screen resolution. Today’s hint won’t help with those limitations, but it will help with those programs whose windows and dialogs may extend off the screen, making them impossible to use. How do such programs become usable? By forcing them to appear at a smaller-than-100 percent scale, thereby letting you see those parts of their windows that would otherwise be off the screen.

The secret to this hint is a little-known scaling factor (controlled by the AppleDisplayScaleFactor variable) that can be applied either to every program you launch, or to individual programs on a case-by-case basis. By default, the scaling factor is 100 percent, meaning every program displays its windows at their normal sizes. But you can easily change this default to anything you like.

As an example, consider the following screenshot of Slashdot loaded on my 12-inch PowerBook G4. (You can also load the full size version to see the quality of the scaling—but be forewarned, it’s 2,100-by-800 and 348KB in size!)

On the left is the unaltered Slashdot site in Safari, and to see it all, I have to expand the browser window to cover my full screen. Even then, I can read just about two full stories. On the right is the same site, but after I applied a scaling factor of 78 percent to Safari. Notice that I can now read three full stories, and see a good portion of my desktop. The text is still easy to read, and I like the ability to see some of my desktop (or other program windows) while browsing.

This trick isn’t limited to Macs with small screens—it will work on any Mac running OS X 10.4 or newer. So if you ever run into a program that you feel is just taking up too much of your screen, feel free to use this hint to shrink it down to size—or alternatively, to make an app larger by increasing its scale factor (good for programs with horrendously small, non-adjustable fonts).

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Temporarily turn Terminal translucent

I spend a fair bit of time in Terminal, and I occasionally want to see what’s behind the Terminal window. There are many ways to do this, of course. I can move it out of the way, use Exposé, minimize it, or resize it. I could also use Terminal’s preferences to make the window itself permanently translucent, letting me always see what’s behind the window.

All of these methods work, but now, thanks to an anonymous Mac OS X Hints tipster, I’ve got another very easy-to-use solution in my tool kit. The following works if you’re running OS X 10.5 or newer, you’ve got Terminal’s tab bar visible (View -> Show Tab Bar), and you’re only using one tab. That may sound like a lot of limitations, but I’m almost always only working in one tab in Terminal, so this hint works well for me.

To see what’s behind your single-tab Terminal window, just click-and-hold on the tab and then pull it straight down. This is the motion you’d use to split one tab off into its own window in a multi-tabbed Terminal window. But when you have just one tab and pull downwards, something interesting happens—the window turns nearly transparent, and will remain so for as long as you hold the mouse button down, as seen in this screenshot.

Once you’re done viewing whatever it is you wanted to see, just release the mouse button to return your Terminal window to its normal state. I find this method, once you get used to it, to be a very fast and easy way to glance at something behind the Terminal window.

Solve an iChat login issue on certain routers

I’ve had the benefit of FIOS high-speed net access at home for a few years now, and have been thrilled with the reliability and speed. A few months back, however, the Verizon-provided router died. So I purchased a WNR3500 Gigagbit Router as a replacement.

While this router worked quite well for almost everything, there was one annoying problem: I couldn’t reliably login to iChat (using a MobileMe AIM account). Sometimes it would work, but more often than not, it would connect then disconnect rapidly, over and over again, leading to a message from AIM stating I’d attempted to login too many times, and I’d have to wait a while before trying again.

After much searching, and with some help from the Mac OS X Hints readership, I found this Apple support document, which perfectly described my problem. Thankfully, the fix provided there also works perfectly—just change the AIM server port (in iChat’s preferences) to 443, the port for https connections. Make sure you’re logged out of iChat, then go to Accounts -> Server Settings, and change the port from whatever it is (5190) to 443, then close iChat’s preferences. (You’ll need to make this same change on any Mac on your network, of course.)

I’m not sure what’s going on with the Netgear and the default port; it may be related to some of the firewall features in the router, but I really don’t know. In any event, this change fixed the problem—iChat is now fully functional. If you’re running into the repeated login/logout issue with iChat, more than likely, a simple port change will fix the problem.

Use Preview in 10.5 to invert colors

If you ever need to invert the colors in an image, you probably do so in your usual image editing application. If that program is Photoshop, and it’s running, no problem…but if it’s not running, you’re in for a bit of a wait while the program loads.

As an alternative, at least if you’re running OS X 10.5 or later, consider using Preview. Open the image in Preview, then select Tools -> Adjust Color to open the floating color adjustment panel. On that panel, notice the sliders for Black Level and White Level.

To invert the image, simply move the Black Level slider all the way to the right, and the White Level slider all the way to the left. You can play with various levels of color inversion, too, by varying how much you move each slider.

You may also find the results more pleasing if you lower the Brightness setting from its default level.

Preview won’t ever replace a high-end photo editing application, but in its latest incarnation, it’s a surprisingly powerful program. Thanks to Mac OS X Hints reader Lukas Machata for pointing out this somewhat-hidden feature.

Rename open files

What do you do if you’re working on a document, and decide you’d really like to rename it? One option is to use File -> Save As to create a new file with your desired name, and then switch to the Finder and delete the old version of the file. You can also close the file, switch to the Finder, rename the file, and then reopen it.

While both these methods work, in many programs there’s a third option: you can just rename the file while editing it. This trick has worked in the Mac OS for many years, but not everyone knows it’s possible. Note that this trick may not work in every application, so it falls into the ‘try it with a test file first’ category.

For now, try it with TextEdit. Create a new document, put some text into it, and name it My test file. Leave the file open in TextEdit, and then rename it. You could do this by switching to the Finder, navigating to where you saved the file, then renaming it there. But you can use another old Mac OS trick to simplify the process.

Command-click (in OS X 10.5, you can also use Control-click) on the file name in the TextEdit window title area, and a drop-down menu will appear showing the path to the saved file. Select the folder containing the saved file from the drop-down menu, and that folder will open in the Finder.

Now rename the file and switch back to TextEdit. Notice that the file name in the window title area reflects the new name. That’s all there is to it. If you’re curious as to why this works, it’s because well-written Mac OS applications track files by their reference (a pointer to their storage location) instead of by their path (which would include the file name). A renamed file has the same reference as it did under its previous name, but its path will be different.

While this won’t work in all applications, it does work in many, and can be a nice little time-saver when you need to rename the file you’re currently working with. Thanks to Mac OS X Hints reader calitinilo for reminding me of this long-standing Mac OS feature.