I'm beginning to like Leopard as time goes by and discovering a lot of great things with this latest OS from Apple. And so if you find any features that you stumbled upon, feel free to share: Here are my contributions: 1. You can turn off and on the 3D effect of the dock automatically using Automator by doing the following: a. Copy both scripts to a separate folder. b. Drag the folder to the dock to form a Stack. c. Then click the Automator script to change the look of your dock easily. 2. Change the color of the dock a. Ensure that you have write access to System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources b. Backup the original files of frontline.png, scurve images and indicator images. c. Create a different color scheme to replace the original png files. d. In terminal, type killall Dock then press Enter. Original 3D dock: Modified 3D dock: I'm in the process of coming up of an Automator to automate the process. [Thanks to Dan Lidral-Porter for the idea] 3. Running out of space in your dock? The solution is to add those certain applications to the header bar of the finder window. I haven't tried this while I was still using tiger.
How to have Hologram Effects on iChat & PhotoBooth: iChat: 1. Create the effect using Quartz Composer (sample file: HoloGit.qtz) and copy it to the folder /Library/Compositions/ 2. Launch iChat and it can be found in the Grid effects. PhotoBooth: 1. Right click or ctrl click to your PhotoBooth App and click "Show Package Contents" 2. Navigate to Contents > Resources 3. Copy the qtz file to this folder 4. Find the EffectsOrdering.plist file and open in TextEdit. 5. Find and replace the word "user backdrop1" with "/HoloGit" ==> without the quotes 6. Save the file and close all folders. 7. Open PhotoBooth, the Holo effect should be somewhere in the Grid effects. Note: Ensure to copy qtz file in the folder /Library/Compositions/ for the effect to reflect in PhotoBooth. Hollogram Effect Invisible Effect Enjoy! I tried doing it with my PB since day 1 I upgraded to Leopard but it simply didn't work, not enough resources. [Thanks to elbows and Zneo11 for the qtz files]
Expose & Spaces: 1. In the bird's eye view of Spaces (F8) then press (F9) will make all your 4 spaces to do Expose effect. 2. Assign specific apps to every space if you don't like switching between spaces frequently. One more thing, you can have more than 4 spaces but I think I'll stick with the default.
Amazing Leopard Spotlight! Spotlight, introduced in Tiger has just become more amazing in Leopard. Try these out: 1. Calculate on the fly - simply type in a mathematical query, like 1+1, or 234*12/21+(30*.1), and you'll find the answer to your mathematical question instantly. It so fast, I doubt I'll ever bring up the calculator ever again! 2. Look up a definition. Just type a word and Definition will be one of the results, directly below Top Hit. Mouse over Definition and a bubble will appear with the full dictionary entry. Click in the definition and Dictionary will launch with the word you looked up. BTW, just in case you didn't know it yet, just like in Tiger, Apple+space bar quickly launches Spotlight. Apple+return will select the Top Hit. Cool, isn't it?
Stack: I realized I have lots of icons lined up in my dock so I decided to group them together in a folder and boom....create them as Stack. Option 1: 1. Drag your Applications to newly created Folder (sample: Instant Messenger). Option 2: 1. Make an Alias of each Apps then drag them to the newly created Folder. Note: Sort them either by Name or Date Added, etc. If you want a specific icon to be on top of the Stack, rename it like _iChat and then sort by Name. Nice To Have: One thing that I like to see in future update is the ability to navigate a folder in a stack. Currently it just opens a new Finder window for you to go through the files. The beta version used to do that fancy navigation.
Re: Amazing Leopard Spotlight! Pretty cool indeed! Oh these features are part of my observation as posted in my review (no. 18). Just a thought.
Very very very cooool tip!!!!!! THE BLUE LEOPARD FLOATING HELP ARROW! I won't spoil the surprise for you. Try this. 1. Open any application (say Safari) 2. Click help, type something relevant to that app (say Tabs in Safari) 3. Mouse over the Menu Items under Search Results.... WATCH THE FLOATING BLUE ARROW! Works with virtually all of the apps I tried. Tried non-Apple stuff like YM and Firefox, still works! Leo
Hi Jerome, just clarifying. Are you suggesting that one should create a sub-folder in the Applications folder to group certain similar apps? Wouldn't that cause a problem come Software Update time (because SU will not find those apps in the default location)? Perhaps option 2 is more feasible, since it doesn't relocate the actual application.
If you have Dock Magnification turned off, you can temporarily turn it on by holding down Control-Shift while hovering the mouse over the dock. ;-)
you can also change the icon of your stack folder. just drop your desire icon into that folder, change its name to 1. then re-drop the folder into the dock.
YEY! thanks this is what im looking for all along, i have so many stack (7 folders) and they all look alike..
Finally a widget has been created to make your Dock 2D or 3D, no more tweaking via Terminal window , its called DockDoctor.
i don't know if this was also present in Tiger.. but hitting Control-F3 enables selection of Dock items by either typing the first few letters of the names of the icons, or navigating using the arrow keys then pressing Enter..
Address Book: You can modify the original picture attached to a specific Address Book contact for up to 6 groups by clicking the shutter camera icon while in "Edit Mode".
To Be able to use Airdisk for Time Machine 1) disconnect airport disk and plug into computer as a USB drive directly. 2) Set up time machine to use this volume. 3) In terminal cd to volume "cd /Volume/HDD" 4) In terminal "touch .com.apple.timemachine.supported" this will create an invisible file. 5) In terminal "sudo chown root:admin .com.apple.timemachine.supported" 6) In terminal "sudo chmod 1775 .com.apple.timemachine.supported" 7) In terminal "ls -l -a" the .com.apple.timemachine.supported file should be -rwxrwxr-t 8) eject disk, unplug from mac, plug into Airport. 9) mount at mac using connect to server in finder (command k) and afp://airportname.local./HDname 10) see if time machine now sees the drive and tries to use it.
