Open a new 'factory default' shell in Terminal

I serendipitously discovered this after partially botching the command-N shortcut to open a new shell window in Terminal.app recently: Command-Option-N will open a new shell without loading the settings from your stored window settings (dimensions, background and text colors, cursor style, etc), using the default 80x24, black on white settings instead. [robg adds: This is actually documented, sort of, but hidden. Hold down Option before selecting the File menu, and you'll see that New Shell has become New Factory Default Shell. However, as Terminal lacks the "live updating" of menu items seen in many other apps (ie Finder), I hadn't discovered this one yet. My usual routine is to activate the menu, then press and hold the various keyboard combinations to see if any of the options change. In Terminal, none of them change, but that's because the menus don't update in real time. You have to hold Option first to see this command -- which, as best I can tell, is the only ...

published on Monday, the 13. August 2007, macosxhints

Use AppleScript to select specific tabs in Safari 3

One thing that really bugs me about Safari is the inability to have a keyboard shortcut for each tab. In Firefox, you can use Command-1 to get the first tab, Command-2 to get the second tab, and so on. (You can cycle between all open tabs with Command-{ and Command-}, but you can't just to a specific tab.) With the release of Safari 3, there is now AppleScript support for selecting tabs. To select tab 1 you can do this: tell front window of app "Safari" to set current tab to tab 1 I wrote nine similar scripts for tabs one through nine, and a script for activating the last tab. These go in ~/Library » Scripts » Applications » Safari. Then I assigned each script to a trigger in Quicksilver that is only available when Safari is active. If you have the scripts menu active, you should be able to assign keyboard shortcuts to each file. However, these shortcuts don't work for me within Safari for some reason. Perhaps someone else can figure this one out. The f...

published on Wednesday, the 1. August 2007, macosxhints

Quick Tip of the Week: Capturing Screen Shots

If you?ve ever wanted to grab a screen shot, you?ll definitely want to watch the video Quick Tip of the Week. It shows you the keyboard shortcuts you can use to capture a single window, the entire desktop, or a portion of it that you define. From creating PDFs in any application to using the built-in Dictionary to viewing multiple Inspectors in Pages, the Quick Tip of the Week shows you how to get more out of Mac OS X, iWork, Mail, iLife, and other Mac applications.

published on Monday, the 23. July 2007, apple-hot-news

Entourage Quick Delete 1.0

As powerful as Microsoft Entourage is, you would think that something as simple as the Delete Key would be a no-brainer. Think again! For some reason, the developers have decided that just hitting Delete is far too obvious. If you want to get rid of a task, for example, you have to first select the task and hit Cmd-Delete. This brings up a Warning Dialog, which then lectures you on all the dangers of ‘deleting'! This script lets you by-pass all of that by coupling a convenient keyboard shortcut with a system alert that is accessible from the keyboard (i.e. ENTER = 'OK', ESC = 'CANCEL'). For detailed instructions on install/etc. I recommend checking out the script's web page at http://www.earth2adam.com/ento...

published on Sunday, the 15. July 2007, scriptbuilders

Entourage GTD: Quick Delete 1.0

As powerful as Microsoft Entourage is, you would think that something as simple as the Delete Key would be a no-brainer. Think again! For some reason, the developers have decided that just hitting Delete is far too obvious. If you want to get rid of a task, for example, you have to first select the task and hit Cmd-Delete. This brings up a Warning Dialog, which then lectures you on all the dangers of ‘deleting'! This script lets you by-pass all of that by coupling a convenient keyboard shortcut with a system alert that is accessible from the keyboard (i.e. ENTER = 'OK', ESC = 'CANCEL'). For detailed instructions on install/etc. I recommend checking out the script's web page at http://www.earth2adam.com/ento...

published on Sunday, the 15. July 2007, scriptbuilders

Quick Delete 1.0

As powerful as Microsoft Entourage is, you would think that something as simple as the Delete Key would be a no-brainer. Think again! For some reason, the developers have decided that just hitting Delete is far too obvious. If you want to get rid of a task, for example, you have to first select the task and hit Cmd-Delete. This brings up a Warning Dialog, which then lectures you on all the dangers of ‘deleting'! This script lets you by-pass all of that by coupling a convenient keyboard shortcut with a system alert that is accessible from the keyboard (i.e. ENTER = 'OK', ESC = 'CANCEL'). For detailed instructions on install/etc. I recommend checking out the script's web page at http://www.earth2adam.com/ento...

published on Saturday, the 14. July 2007, scriptbuilders

Visual cues for bookmark keyboard shortcuts in browsers

I try to do as much as possible from my keyboard using shortcuts, because I think it's more efficient than using a mouse. As such, I frequently employ the Safari (and Camino, not sure about Firefox) keyboard shortcut Command-(1 through 9) that triggers your Bookmark Bar bookmarks. The problem is this actually slows me down because I can never tell at a quick glance whether a particular bookmark is Command-4 versus Command-5, or Command-6 versus Command-7, etc. Here's the fix: in the Mac OS Character Palette (under the International icon in your menu bar), select the All Characters view from the View drop-down. Select the by Category tab, and then under the Symbols section in the left frame, select Numbers and Number Symbols. Scroll about two-thirds of the way down and look for the rows of seemingly-normal number characters right below the fractions. The first row of 0-9 are actually superscript characters, and the second row are subscript (I prefer subscript, but e...

published on Wednesday, the 11. July 2007, macosxhints

Improve response of some AppleScripts called by Butler

I have stay open AppleScript application with a number of handlers that control my Mac mini-based home theater setup. These turn on or off different components, etc. I use keyboard shortcuts through Butler (among other methods) to call these handlers with scripts like:tell application "HTPC" to power_tv()However, some of these routines were running slowly when called via Butler, but not when the same trigger script was run in Script Editor. I'm not sure of the details, but it has something to do with Butler's AppleScript runtime assumptions and how it waits for responses. The fix was to tell Butler not to wait for any script response:ignoring application responses tell application "HTPC" to power_tv()end ignoringI don't think this will improve all scripts run from Butler, only those that invoke some additional AppleScript calls outside of Butler. They particularly affected scripts with ...

published on Tuesday, the 10. July 2007, macosxhints

VMWare releases Fusion for Mac Release Candidate 1.0

VMWare Fusion for Mac has reached the home stretch with release candidate 1.0 out in beta. It comes with improved Unity support, Boot Camp support, keyboard shortcuts, and more. With only a couple of months until it's scheduled to hit the final release, it looks like this is what we can expect to get for our money.Read More...

published on Thursday, the 5. July 2007, ars-technica