hidden options

Apr 27 2009

Pimp your Browser

You choice of a web browser is a very personal thing. I’m sure that the decision is somehow indicative of your personality, but that’s not the kind of thing we cover here. Instead, I have a few picks to jazz up your browser (whichever one you use).

Camino

I have to admit, Camino is really growing on me. The native interface and speed are great. But as a veteran of Firefox, I’ve grown dependent on a few features. Fortunately, free software fills in the gaps. Add themes to Camino with CaminIcon (Panther version here) has a limited but refreshing selection of themes. Camino may not support user scripts, but CamiScript brings all kinds of useful features to the browser via a script menu. You’ll want to visit the script repository for dandy extras like spell check. And, our tweaking would not be complete without hidden options. CamiTools offers options to customize the search box and more.

Firefox

Firefox addons are conveniently grouped at the Firefox Addonssite at Mozilla.org. There you’ll find search engines to add to the search box, extensions to extend Firefox’s functionality and themes to dress it to yout pleasure. We’ve spent a lot of time here on Firefox extensions, so I’ll save the space today.

Safari

Now the third most popular browser behind IE and Firefox, Safari has speed and flexibility. And, thanks to AcidSearch and SafariSIA you have a couple ways to add in your search engines of choice for easy menu-bar access. While Safari doesn’t support user scripts, you can modify the appearance of pages using the SurfRabbit add-on. SurfRabbit allows you to remove and reshape items from webpages to streamline your browsing. And, like Camino, you can change the look of Safari with SafarIcon.

Opera

Recently set free, this fast browser integrates email integrates email in a fast client. Of course, to compete with the browsers above, Opera is also a customizable application. Opera themes are available here, along with customized panels, toolbars and icons. But, if you want in on the newest add-on, you will need the new beta. With it, you can add Opera desktop widgets and let Opera break out of the box.

So, however you surf, make sure you are propery equipped.

Brian

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Apr 27 2009

Super Stickies, Hidden Prefs and Scheduling

Secrets

We’ve all got them, and turns out so do our apps. Buried in .plist files, evoked with cryptic terminal commands these options are present in many of our most used apps.

The creators of Quicksilver bring us Secrets, an app built to dig up hidden options. It comes pre-configured with known hidden prefs from applications including the Finder, Safari and the Dock with more added as they are discovered by the community.

Scheduler for Macintosh

scheduler Super Stickies, Hidden Prefs and Scheduling

There are plenty of launchers that will fire up applications, webpages or documents with minimal effort. But Scheduler for Macintosh goes one more: it will launch all these items with no effort at all.

Using Scheduler you can queue the launch of webpages, applications or documents at boot, at a specific time or at a scheduled interval. You can even set up triggers to fire after a period of inactivity.

Additional features include script execution, audio alerts and hot key launching.

IceClean

iceclean Super Stickies, Hidden Prefs and Scheduling

Cocoa GUI’s for unix utilities are not new, but IceClean is worth a look for its features and streamlined interface. Clean up logs, Safari temp files and caches. There is also advanced tweaking of Spotlight and Dashboard.

SketchBox

Stickies are the universal stash for information of all kinds, but the electronic variety have lacked the versatility of their adhesive counterparts.

sketchbox Super Stickies, Hidden Prefs and Scheduling

Now, with SketchBox you can freehand drawings, organize and group stickies and schedule reminders. Intuitive drawing/text and alarm layers allow easy customization of your notes.

Brian

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May 7 2008

Mac Pilot 3 adds some enhancements …a couple hundred new features

macpilot 20080507 185711 Mac Pilot 3 adds some enhancements ...a couple hundred new featuresDo you like to tinker? Sure you do.

Koingo Software has unveiled Mac Pilot 3; a new version of their OS X tinker tool. Version 3 sees the addition of approximately two hundred new features and enhancements–yeah, that’s two hundred new features. If we update the feature tote board, the total number of features in Mac Pilot now exceeds six hundred.

What does Mac Pilot do? It allows you to access hidden options that customize the Dock, Finder, Safari, and numerous other Apple and third party applications with little more than a mouse click. You could probably access a lot of these options with Terminal commands or with a bunch of obscure freeware apps, but Mac Pilot rolls all that functionality into a nice neat little package.

Mac Pilot 3 is fully compatible with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, as well as Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. All features in the application come with documentation, and a reset function to reverse any unwanted changes which may have been made.

The upgrade to Mac Pilot 3 is free for users who had purchased Mac Pilot 1.x/2.x after October 31, 2007. Additionally, owners of Koingo Software’s Software CD or Utility Package get this update for free as well. If these conditions don’t apply, a small CDN$9.95 upgrade fee is required. New users can buy the product for CDN$19.95.

Note:

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