Jay Cool - Geek

This page is a collection of Tips and Tricks I have collected over time. I put them here more or less for myself so I would not forget where and what they were, but I thought someone else might make use of one or two - so here they are.

How to build a better website:

Make use of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and visit their Tips for Webmasters page.

How to put DOUBLE ARROWS at the top and bottom of windows (Mac OSX):

Open a terminal window and enter the following:

defaults write "Apple Global Domain" AppleScrollBarVariant DoubleBoth

Quickly Open Any Folder in Terminal (Mac OSX):

If you work in Terminal, you're probaly used to the Finder shuffle -- what happens when you're working many levels down in your folder hierarchy in the Finder, and realize you need to open the folder in Terminal. So you switch to Terminal, type cd, press the spacebar, switch back to the Finder, and then drag the desired folder into the open Terminal window.

If you do this alot, you might prefer an easier solution. First, download the Open In Terminal script and place it somewhere safe (where you won't accidentally delete it). Now drag this script into your sidebar, Dock, or toolbar.

Now when you need to do the above, you have a Drag-And-Drop Terminal! To make your new shortcut look more at home in the sidebar, give it a custom Terminal-style icon. Find a free one you like at Xicons or the Icon Factory, and then copy and paste it into your script using the Get Info dialogue box.

How to change the position of titles in Apple's iMovie (Mac OSX):

You can change where some titles appear by clicking on the title in the Preview window and dragging it to a new location -- from the middle of the window to the bottom, for example. To find out which titles support this feature, move your cursor into the Preview window after you've selected iMovie's Title tab. If the cursor changes to a crosshair, you can modify the title's location.

This trick also works with iMovie's Scale Down transition and a few effects. Select Scale Down, and then click anywhere in the Preview window and the effect will scale down to that point. Click in the Preview window to change where the Electricity, Fairy Dust, and Lens Flare effects occur.

Voice-Control Your Address Book (Mac OSX):

Panther includes some spiffy new -- and often overlooked -- voice-recognition features. For example, if you enable voice recognition in the Speech system preferences pane, you can hold down Escape and say, "Mail to Steve Jobs." Your Mac will then to to Address Book and address an email to Steve-o in your default mail application.

If you say "Phone Steve Jobs," your Mac will display the big guy's main phone number in large text onscreen.

Go from Your Address Book to MapQuest (Mac OSX):

If you click and hold the address title in an Address Book contact, you will get a menu that among other things, will allow you to jump right to a MapQuest map of that address.

Quickly Shut-Down/Restart (Mac OSX):

If you press Command-Eject, you will get a selection dialogue that pops-up asking if you want to RESTART, SHUTDOWN or CANCEL. A handy quick alternative to using the Apple menu to shut down and restart your Mac.