Linux on Treo 650 gets real - Engadget

Engadget is reporting that somebody has GPE Linux running on a Treo 650! I recently played with the Treo 700 at the Verizon kiosk at Circuit City. It has awesome functionality from what I could tell. But I would love to be able to run a more dynamic OS on my Treo. I question the stability of Linux on the Treo, though the article implies no problems. I wonder if it would affect my phone service with Cingular or are those two different aspects of the device?

Firefox: Switch Tabs with Keyboard

I was reading some comments on Flickr when somebody mentioned using Control+Option+Command+8 to polarize the screen. This is part of Mac OS X's "Universal Access" options found in system preferences.

So started playing around with this Control + Option + Command + ___ a little more. I found that if I hold the three buttons and press a number, it will select that corresponding tab on Firefox. For example, if I hold Control + Option + Command + 2, it will select the 2nd tab in the row.

What Safari could learn from Firefox

I am a huge fax of Mac OS X, but I'll save that rant for antoher post. Part of my love of Mac OS X is how the OS creates such a strong and unique interface with Cocoa programs. For example, the ability to use the Dicionary application within any Cocoa program by using Command-Shift-D or the ability to duplicate any piece of highlighted text immediately onto a stickie by using Command-Shift-Y. However, when it comes to Safari, there are a few things that keep me going back to Firefox.

Tabs: Firefox has a great setting where all new windows are opened in Tabs. This is great because after I've been poking around the internet, going from Wikipedia to Flickr and all over the place, I don't have a bunch of open browser windows cascading across my desktop. Cascading should be left for style sheets and Apple should implement automatic Tab opening for new window links in Safari. I should note that I just recently learned that Command-Shift-Arrow will take you from tab to tab without using that mouse. I'm a card carrying member of the Keyboard Is Faster Society (KIFS), so this is great news.

Find: Firefox has a great find feature that opens a status bar at the bottom of the page. The function will start searching and highlighting possible finds as you start typing. This helps because I might only need to type a few letters of what I'm looking for and Firefox has already found what I'm looking for. Also, unlike in Safari, which uses a separate pop-up window that goes away after it has completed one search cycle, Firefox's find feature will stay on the bottom of the browser ready for action until you tell it to go away.

Icon: OK, I know this is a trivial point to bring up, but with Apple being so desisgn conscious and Apple consumers looking for that type of forward edge design, the Firefox (and Thunderbird) logo are just cool. Much cooler than a compass (and a stamp). Although, to Apple's credit, if I were going to design a compass icon, it would probably look like Safari's.

Speed: Alright, lets get down to the most important feature. Of all the browsers in use today, Safari is amongst the slowest, if not the slowest. Firefox on the other hand is immediatly fast righ out the box, but with the aid of FasterFox, it leaves Safari in the proverbial dust.

Extensions: Extensions, and to a lesser extent, Themes, are few and far between for Safari. One of the main draws for the Firefox community is the ability to take a browser and add as many bells and whistles as you want - even Abe Vigodas status. Safari has a few addable features, but nothing to the breadth and depth as Firefox. Apple might want to throw a little money at this problem as those individuals who want to create browser extenions are already doing it for all of the indie-browsers.

This captures some of the main reasons I'm constantly switching back and forth between Safari and Firefox. If I had to pick one browser I would probably pick Firefox for all of the features, customizations and optimizations that are available, but I would mourn the loss of Safari like I would a good friend. Hopefully, the engineers in Cupertino are paying attention to all the million+ downloads of alternative browers and start implementing in-house features that can start to compete.

Verify Preferences with Terminal

Macworld has an excellent article about necessary preventative maintence for any Mac owner. One of the tips I found useful was how to verify Preferences using the Terminal.

Mac OS X stores preference information in XML files which can, over time, become corrupted. This leads to all sorts of calamities that most Mac owners don't want to deal with. Verifying these XML files can greatly decrease the possibility of this happening.
Macworld suggests the best time to do this task is when you "notice unexpected behavior, such as crashes, menu corruption, or other oddities."

Your Mac's preference information is stored in .plist files - text files saved in predictablel XML format. This makes finding corrupt files easy.

To check the XML preferences files in Mac OS X 10.2 and laterr, open Terminal and type the following:

sudo plutil -s ~/Library/Preferences/*.plilst

Press Enter. You might get a quick lecture from your Mac: "We trust you have received the usual lecture from the local System Administrator. It usually boils down to these three things:

• #1) Respect the privacy of others.


• #2) Think before you type.


• #3) With great powerr comes great responsibility.

Type in your password.

in the prceding code, -s tells plutil to suppress output of a successful test, so if you see output, you'll kknow that it's frorm an errorr. You need to use sudo because some preference files, such as those from Micromat's TechTool, are owned by the system even thought they reside in the Preferences folder in your user folder.

Stickie Notes

Automatially create stickie notes on your desktop pre-filled with text highlighted from another program.

Highlight the selected text. press Command-Shift-Y.

A new stickie note will appear on your desktop containing the selelcted text.

Window Shot

To take a picture of just the contents of a finder window, do the following

Press Command-Shift-4, release, Spacebar. This brings up a tiny camera icon in place of the mouse pointer. Than click on the desired window, hear the camera shutter sound and a new Picture icon is placed on your desktop of that Window.

Screen Shot

Want to take a screen shot of your Mac desktop?

Press Command-Shift-3. You'll hear a photo sound and a new file will appear on your desktop, probably labled Picture 1.