A more magical mouse
I received a Magic Mouse a few days ago and, at the risk of sounding like the dreaded Mac fanboi, I’m quite smitten with the device. It looks like something from the future that — in some science fiction way — was brought into our time.
But, of course, you can only sit and admire something for so long. So I picked it up and started using it.
I’ve never used a wireless mouse before, so that in itself took some getting used to. Once the novelty wore off a bit, I started to think about some of the criticisms I had read previously about Magic Mouse: tracking is too slow and it doesn’t have as many functions as its predecessor, Mighty Mouse. I felt confident, though, that Mac freeware would provide the solutions.
Tracking: At first it seemed normal, but then I wondered if it could go faster. According to the mouse’s preferences, the answer is no. Tracking is already cranked as high as it will go.
The solution is a third-party preference pane called MouseZoom. When you click on it, you see a slider that can be goosed up to 10 or, as noted, OS X Crazy Fast!!! I decided to go for the max, and I must admit I like it a lot better.
You can also fiddle around with settings in Terminal, although this is apparently just another way of doing what MouseZoom does. CNet has instructions if you prefer to go this route. (It does bug me a little that the MouseZoom pref pane is 32-bit.)
Missing functions: Many people have complained that there is no middle click with Magic Mouse. With Mighty Mouse, the button can be set up so that clicking on it will invoke Exposé or open a link in a new tab, among other things. These are both handy and I can see why they would be missed.
As it turns out there are a couple of freeware solutions, although they are both experimental at this point. MiddleClick was originally designed for MacBook track pads, but it also works for Magic Mouse. Once installed and running, you can give your mouse a light tap with three fingers and — by default — it will open links in a new tab.
But if the mouse can do that, you ask, why not other things you can do with a track pad? It turns out there is much more. SecondBar has created an app called BetterTouchTool that allows you to assign a multitude of functions to various swipes and clicks. For example, I set it up to show Exposé with a three-finger downward swipe and hide the current program with a two-finger upward swipe. Of course, the three-finger tap is also there.
BetterTouchTool is still very much in the preliminary stage, but the developer, Andreas Hegenberg, seems pumped and is putting out new versions almost daily. I look forward to his improvements. I found, for example, that the three-finger tap didn’t work as reliably as it did with MiddleClick. With the swipes, I would have to try a few times before they finally worked.
I’m not complaining, though. If these two apps are any indication, Magic Mouse has a great future ahead of it. More developers will jump in, and no doubt Apple will offer updates of its own.
With the tracking, on the other hand, Apple should move quickly to fulfil the need for speed demanded by many of its customers. We shouldn’t have to resort to the inelegance of MouseZoom or Terminal twiddling.
Update: MouseWizard is $2.50 shareware that, among other things, allows you to put your Mac to sleep by covering Magic Mouse with your hand.
Posted Thursday, November 12, 2009 in How-to
How to make Google ads show in Firefox
You may have thought you read that headline wrong. Why would anyone want to see ads — wouldn’t you rather make them go away?
This article is for web designers who need to make sure their designs work in various web browsers, including Firefox. A frustration that occasionally comes up is that ads from Google’s Adsense program don’t display in Firefox. There are a few solutions scattered around the web, but none of them worked for me, and I get the impression that a lot of other people have been left hanging.
Here are some typical answers:
1. You’ve got the Ad Block extension on. This is sometimes offered with a wink, because — duh! — how could you not figure this out for yourself? I’ve never used Ad Block, so that wasn’t the solution.
2. You’ve got Javascript turned off. How many people take the trouble to go into their preferences and turn off Javascript? I suppose it’s possible, but, really, if you’re smart enough to turn it off, you’re likely smart enough to know that it will affect your browsing experience. Again, this didn’t apply to me.
3. Clean out your cache and delete your cookies. This seems like a good all-purpose solution for a lot of problems. Apparently it works for for some people, but it didn’t for me.
4. An oblique mention of a file called userContent.css finally clued me in. This is a text file you can create using cascading style sheets to control what you see on various websites. One of the things you can do with a file of this type is instruct a web browser to block advertising. You can download one that does just this from Floppy Moose.
I’ve never used such a file for Firefox, but I have tried it for Safari. The great thing about Safari is that you can turn it off or on in the preferences under the Advanced tab where it refers to Style sheet. With Firefox, it’s simply installed in a certain folder and goes to work. As a last-ditch effort, I decided to see if userContent.css was in indeed in this folder — even though I never actually put it there.
And wouldn’t you know it, there it was in all its ad blocking glory. I have no idea how it got there, but I removed it and the ads came back. Hallelujah!
And where is that folder? home:Library:Application Support:Firefox:Profiles:profilename:randomstring.default:chrome: You can learn more at Floppy Moose. It’s also documented at mozilla.org.
Oh, and one last thing: I’ve given this post a search-engine friendly headline in the hope that it will help others in the same boat.
Posted Monday, September 28, 2009 in How-to
iStat Menus installation mystery solved
I was disappointed when Snow Leopard broke iStat Menus, but even more disappointed when the new version of iStat Menus — which aims to fix the problem — wouldn’t install for me. So I was left waiting for the next update . . .
But then iTunes 9 came out — and it wouldn’t install either. Now I knew something had to be up with Snow Leopard. It was one thing for third party freeware not to install — but a flagship app from Apple?
After a bit of searching, I found this thread in the Apple support forums, and had a hunch in might be related. So I went into the Language & Text preference and clicked on the Input Sources tab. I unclicked the box beside the Canadian flag. If you’re having the same problem, I would suggest unclicking anything that seems international.
It turns out the installers were working, but the wrong type of keyboard input would prevent a dialogue from popping up to ask for your administrator password. Clearly, this is a bug in Snow Leopard. The good news is that I don’t have to wait for OS X 10.6.1 to get iStat Menus working. Or iTunes 9 for that matter.
Posted Wednesday, September 9, 2009 in How-to
AppleWorks and Snow Leopard
When Snow Leopard comes out, you’ll have the option of not installing Rosetta, a translator that allows you to run PowerPC programs on your Intel Mac. Doing this won’t save much space by itself, by it could encourage you to update or delete those PowerPC-only programs lurking on your hard drive. TUAW has an article urging you to do just that.
I fired up System Profiler and had a look at which programs are which on the thriftmac iMac — PowerPC, Universal (both) or Intel. There was a surprisingly large number in the PowerPC category, but the vast majority of them could be updated or turfed without much trouble. There were a couple, though, that I really wanted to keep: Cro Mag Rally (a game from Pangea) and AppleWorks. Yes, that’s right — AppleWorks.
It’s not just that I enjoy using the program. I do — it’s fast, easy and covers the basics. The bigger dilemma is what to do with all the hundreds of AppleWorks files that have sprouted over the years. Without Rosetta, AppleWorks won’t run. And without AppleWorks, those AppleWorks files won’t open — at least not easily.
There are two no-Rosetta solutions: one simple but pricey, and the other tedious but free.
Pages — part of Apple’s iWork suite — easily opens an AppleWorks file and keeps all the formatting. But that costs US$79. It’s a good program, but who wants to pay that much just to open some old files?
The free solution is to open the AppleWorks documents — before installing Snow Leopard without Rosetta — and save them as .rtf files. This allows you to open them in NeoOffice or OpenOffice with formatting — including pictures — intact. Bean and TextEdit also open them, but without pictures. Of course, if you have hundreds of AppleWorks documents, it’s going to be a drag to open them all and make the conversions. A good idea would be to delete a bunch you don’t need any more.
When all is said and done, you might want to just install Rosetta and be done with it. This way you can let AppleWorks slide and keep some cool games.
Posted Tuesday, August 18, 2009 in How-to
Virtually free
Parallels and VMWare Fusion at up to $90 a pop get most of the attention when it comes to solutions for running Windows at the same time as Mac OS X. Sure, you could use Apple’s included Boot Camp, but you have to reboot every time you want to switch platforms. So how does a freeware maven cope?
LowEndMac has the lowdown on how to use VirtualBox. As recently as a year ago, the Mac version of this free alternative wasn’t ready for prime time, but things have changed a lot since then.
VirtualBox is now backed by Sun Microsystems and an exploration of the website shows strong support from forums, mailing lists, bug tracking and IRC. Installation takes about half an hour. If you’re up to it, this is your freeware path of choice.
Update: Installation time corrected to about half an hour.
Posted Tuesday, July 22, 2008 in How-to
Getting the jump on GIMP
Wouldn’t it be great if there were a freeware version of Photoshop. Many point to GIMP as the answer, but there hasn’t exactly been a stampede in that direction. One reason is because you need to have X11 running at the same time. With Leopard this isn’t quite the nuisance it used to be, because X11 is now pre-installed. And it should be pointed out that even with X11 running, the interface — while not perfect — still looks pretty good.
Luckily, progress is being made on making GIMP more Mac-friendly over at the Wilber loves Apple project. Installation is easier and there is an active forum to help you along the way. They say a native version is in the works, but there is no word on when it will see the light of day.
Perhaps most daunting of all is that GIMP has a reputation for being hard to learn. Mac users are accustomed to jumping in and intuitively figuring out a program. You likely won’t be able to do this with GIMP, but there is help for those willing to persist. Tutorials and support forums abound, and you can find a good roundup of them at Techzilo. The tutorials are aimed at everyone from the beginner to the expert looking to create special effects.
Posted Saturday, July 19, 2008 in How-to
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