Latest Posts in Mac Gems

MercuryMover 2.0

A couple years ago—it’s difficult to believe it’s been that long—I covered MondoMouse (), a great utility that lets you move or resize any window by holding down a couple modifier keys and then moving the mouse cursor—no more having to “grab” a thin title bar or a tiny resize corner. It even works if the target window is partially hidden behind other windows. MondoMouse remains one of my favorite Gems, and I still use it every day.

But what if you don’t want to use the mouse at all? In other words, what if you’re a keyboard-focused person who likes to keep your fingers on the keys? Then you’ll want to turn to Helium Foot Software’s $20 MercuryMover. This useful OS X add-on lets you move and resize the active window using keyboard shortcuts.

Once you’ve chosen the target window—likely using Mac OS X’s own keyboard shortcuts, given that you’re avoiding the mouse—you activate MercuryMover by pressing your desired key combo; the default is Control+Command+Up Arrow. This brings up MercuryMover’s helpful onscreen display (see image below), which in addition to explaining the available options, also shows the size and onscreen position of the active window. Pressing any of the arrow keys moves the active window in that direction; each press moves the window one pixel. Pressing Shift+arrow moves the window 10 pixels; Option+arrow moves it 100 pixels; and Command-arrow moves the window all the way to the edge of the screen. (If you have multiple displays, pressing Command+arrow towards the second display initially moves the window against the edge of the current screen; pressing Command+arrow again moves it to the far edge of the next screen.) Once the window is in the desired location, you press Escape to exit MercuryMover. It’s a simple and convenient way to quickly reposition a window.

WindowShade X Revisited

Over the many years we’ve been writing about great low-cost software, one of the most popular products—with both readers and Gems writers—has been Unsanity’s WindowShade X. This “haxie,” as Unsanity calls its system-enhancement utilities, brings back one of the favorite features of Mac OS 9: windowshade-style window minimizing. With WindowShade X installed, double-clicking the title bar of a window no longer minimizes the window to the Dock; instead, the entire window “rolls up”—complete with audio effect—into the title bar, which remains in place.

This is a great way to keep windows visible and accessible without blocking your view of other onscreen items. It’s also a handy way to quickly view something behind a window: double-click for a better view, and then double-click again to restore the window. Although Exposé, introduced in Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther), reduced the utility of this windowshade feature somewhat, it still has its advantages.

Unfortunately, Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) broke WindowShade X, forcing fans to muddle through without it. Granted, most people got by just fine. But as someone who started “windowshading” when the feature first debuted as part of System 7.5 (actually before that, via third-party INITs), and used WindowShade in OS X for years, by the time Leopard was released I’d been using this functionality for nearly two decades! That’s some serious muscle memory to overcome, and, in fact, as recently as a couple weeks ago I still found myself wanting to “roll up” windows.

Comply Tips

Earlier this week, I told you about an inexpensive accessory for making Apple’s stock earbuds more comfortable and secure. To continue on that theme, today’s Gem is an accessory for enhancing many third-party headphones.

A popular audio upgrade for the iPod or iPhone is a set of in-ear-canal headphones: ones that fit inside your ear canals (thus the nickname canalphones), much like earplugs. Because they seal out external noise, these headphones let you enjoy your music at lower volumes than traditional headphones and earbuds. In addition, most true in-ear-canal headphones come from vendors that focus on sound quality; good ones can be pricey, but they also provide great sound quality.

But one drawback to canalphones is comfort. As we explained in our primer on in-ear-canal headphones:

BudFits

Although I usually focus on software in Mac Gems, I occasionally highlight hardware or an accessory that’s inexpensive or an especially-good value. Today’s Gem meets both criteria.

We often recommend upgrading from Apple’s stock earbuds as one of the best investments you can make for your iPod or iPhone. But it’s only fair to mention that, as earbuds go, Apple’s headphones offer decent sound quality. In fact, many of the people who end up buying other headphones may be satisfied with the sound of Apple’s ‘buds—they just can’t stand the fit. For some, Apple’s earbuds simply don’t stay in; for others, they’re uncomfortable.

A potential solution is Innovelis’ $9 BudFits, simple around-the-ear clips, made of stiff, rubbery material, that hold Apple’s earbuds in place. Available in clear, white, or black, each BudFit provides a short tube, into which you snap the stem of one of Apple’s earbuds, cable-end up. You then press the headphone cable into a groove on the clip; this wraps the cable over and behind your ear, which I find makes the cable less likely to get in the way or get caught on things.

Promising Prospect: Fantasktik 1.1

A complaint I hear from many Windows switchers—and even some longtime Mac users—is that the Dock shows only programs, not windows in those programs. (Yes, you can right-click on any program icon in the Dock to see a list of its open windows, but I’m talking about what’s normally visible.) In other words, that the Dock doesn’t act more like Windows’ Task Bar.

If you count yourself among the dissatisfied, Dockland Software’s new $10 Fantasktik 1.1 offers a solution. Fantasktik adds a thin, well, task bar to your screen that includes a button for every window, with windows grouped by program. Click on a window’s button to switch to that window. Double-click on a program icon to hide its windows’ buttons; the number of open windows for each program is displayed in a small badge on the program icon. Double-click again to reveal the window buttons.

By default, Fantasktik’s task bar appears either just below the menu bar or just above your Dock, depending on your setting. (If you have your Dock set to auto-hide, the bar appears at the bottom of the screen.) But by clicking-and-dragging either end, you can reposition the bar at any horizontal location. If you don’t want the task bar visible all the time, just click on either end and the entire bar will collapse into that end; alternatively, there’s an auto-hide feature that mimics the behavior of OS X’s Dock.

FunctionFlip 1.1

A nifty feature of Apple’s laptops, as well as the company’s latest keyboards, is that the function keys (F1 through F12), which often go unused, can perform useful alternate functions. For example, they let you control volume, screen brightness, and iTunes playback, and they provide quick access to Expose and Dashboard. You can choose, using the Keyboard & Mouse pane of System Preferences, whether you want these special functions to always take precedence over the function keys’ standard behavior, or if they should require the use of the fn key.

But what if you want only some of the function keys to adopt this special behavior? For example, what if you want quick access to volume and brightness controls, but you want the other F-keys to behave like standard F-keys? Kevin Gessner’s FunctionFlip 1.1 is the answer.

The first time you launch FunctionFlip, it displays its Settings window, where you tell it which special functions correspond to which F-keys on your particular keyboard. (Different Apple keyboards have slightly different key assignments.)

Bean 1.3.3

If you need more text-editing goodness than OS X’s own TextEdit provides, but don’t want to splurge for Apple’s iWork or Microsoft’s Office 2008, consider Bean 1.3.3, an easy-to-use, fast, rich-text editor that adds a number of features absent from TextEdit. Bean natively supports .rtf, .rtfd, .txt, .html, and .webarchive formats. It also uses the same OS X services as TextEdit to open .doc, .xml, .odt, and .docx files, although, as with TextEdit, some documents translate better than others. (You can see more about limitations with Word files here.)

To my eyes, Bean’s interface is cleaner and more accessible than TextEdit’s. But it’s the additional features that really make Bean unique. When writing, Bean gives you live-updated word and character counts, and a Get Info button provides useful statistics about the current document, including the number of lines, carriage returns, paragraphs, and pages; you can also select text to see the number of words and characters in the selection. And in addition to standard find/replace features, Bean lets you select text by font (style, family, size, or color), highlight color, ruler, or combinations of these attributes, making it easy to reformat matching sections of a document. Bean also makes it simple to match selected text to other parts of your document, and provides a few clever editing commands, such as Invert Selection.

AppleJack 1.5

As someone who’s written books and many articles on Mac troubleshooting, one of my favorite utilities has long been The Apotek’s AppleJack, a clever utility that lets you perform a number of troubleshooting procedures at startup—without requiring a Mac OS X or third-party CD or DVD. Unfortunately, Leopard rendered the previous version of AppleJack inoperable, so I’ve done without for nearly a year.

With the recent release of AppleJack 1.5 , you can now install and use the utility on Macs running Leopard (OS X 10.5), so today’s as good a time as any to revisit this essential troubleshooting tool.

Installing AppleJack requires an admin-level user account, as it modifies OS X’s startup process and makes a minor (and safe) tweak to the root account. Once installed, AppleJack is available in OS X’s single-user mode, accessed by holding down Command+S at startup. Just below the standard “If you want to make modifications to files” message, you see a new message instructing you to type applejack for troubleshooting assistance. Doing so brings up a textual menu of options, shown below; you simply type the desired number or letter and press return to perform that task.

Promising Prospect: FlexCal 1.0

Many Mac users take advantage of Mac OS X’s iCal program for keeping calendars and tracking tasks. But a common request I hear is for a way to add new events and to-dos without having to actually launch iCal.

One solution is Flexgames’ FlexCal 1.0. Once installed, you simply press your FlexCal keyboard shortcut—which you choose in a new FlexCal pane in System Preferences—to bring up a small, floating window for entering a new task; press the shortcut again to switch to a new-event window.

Timeline 2.1.3

If you ever have the need to make a visual timeline—for a presentation, as a teaching aid, or for use in a home movie—you’ll want to check out Bee Documents’ Timeline. This unique program makes it a snap to create an attractive timeline: First you choose from among seven templates, and then you choose the source for your timeline’s events. Clicking on Create Timeline lets you choose several options about your chosen data source, and then your timeline is created. Timeline automatically chooses the “best” layout for your events.

Supported data sources include your Address Book (for a timeline of birthdays), iCal (for calendar events), iPhoto or Aperture (for a timeline of photos based on date), iTunes (to view songs or albums by the last date played), and RSS feeds (for a timeline of articles by date). Another nifty option is System Profiler, which creates a timeline showing the dates and times you installed every Apple software update in a given time span. You can instead choose a blank timeline for adding events manually. (I had some problems with the iPhoto option, which sometimes didn’t find any photos in the selected date range.)

One you’ve created a timeline, you can customize it by choosing different fonts, colors, background images, and more. And, of course, you can easily add and delete events. Each event can have a title, date and time (or a date range), notes, a URL (a link to a Web page or a local file), and an image. A built-in photo browser makes it easy to add photos from your iPhoto library, or you can simply drag an image into an event; Timeline automatically scales the image to fit the timeline, or you can resize each image manually.