I know we’ve had some issues with the server and things like that over the last few weeks, but next week, I am taking a vacation I have had scheduled for a while, so there will be no updates on MacTips while I am gone. I just wanted to give everyone a heads up.

I will return on Nov. 11th, and the tips will resume. If you have a tip that you’d like to share, please send them to me at michael (at) applegazette (dot) com - and I’ll be happy to post them (and include a link back to your site as well).

Thanks everyone - I’ll see you on the 11th.

Occationally you may find some PDFs that do not start on page one, or that show up at a different zoom than you expected. When this happens you may find that moving to page one, resetting your zoom, then saving the file doesn’t actually fix the problem.

If this is an issue you’ve run into, there is a fix for Acrobat Pro owners.

1) Open your PDF and choose Document > Extract Pages to extract all the pages one by one
2) Select File > Create PDF > Merge Files into a Single PDF.
3) Drag and drop your individual files and then use File Size LARGER > Combine Files > Save

via macosxhints

There is also another, more cumbersome way to do this for those that don’t have Acrobat Pro.

1) Open your PDF file in Previews
2) Select every page of your document except the first page then select Edit > Delete
3) Save the one remaining page as an individual PDF
4) Repeat for every page of your document
5) Open the first page PDF file in Preview, then drag all other pages into your sidebar
6) Save As.

That’s not ideal for long documents, but if you’re looking at something short, and you don’t have Acrobat Pro this method can work.

Dock Spaces is an application that does something I wanted Apple to do from the beginning with Leopard when “Spaces” was announced.

Dock Spaces is a free application (donations accepted) that will let you create a custom dock for each of your spaces in Leopard. This is a feature that finally makes space useful to me, and I can’t thank creator Patrick Jamelo enough.

You can click here to get Dock Spaces

If you make lots of notes in TextEdit, saving them can be tedious. Luckily, MacOSXHints has written an Applescript that can help speed this up.

This script will take the first paragraph of your document and use that to name the file - then save it to your Documents folder.

To use this script you’ll need to save it to your user’s Library>Scripts>Applications>TextEdit folder (in Leopard). You will then be able to access the script from the Scripts menu within TextEdit.

The entire script is available after the jump.
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Box.net is a great online back-up tool (we have mentioned it before). With their service (which you can try for free) you can store you files on their servers, then access them from anywhere. Very much like iDisk from Apple. If you can keep your back ups under 1 GB, you can actually use their service completely free.

They have released a new iPhone App that now allows you to access all your files directly from your iPhone, and you can even back-up your photos from the iPhone directly to your Box.net account.

This is a great, FREE, way to access your files directly on your iPhone - and to back up your photos as well.

Check it out at Box.net. You can get the iPhone App here.

Just a quick note, the Mactips.org widget should be fixed now, and I have updated the contact information on the site to reflect my current contact information to make it easier to get in touch.

To all of you who have helped with your feedback to get this corrected, I greatly appreciate your help.

If you have any suggestions for Tips for the sight, please send them to michael (at) applegazette (dot) com.

Thanks again everyone!

If you’re looking for a way to make your documents a little more reader friendly on your iPhone, MacOSXHints has a good tip for making things a little easier to read.

1. In Page Setup, I created a page 3.5 inches wide by 300 inches long.

2. After printing my library to the PDF, I opened the PDF on my Mac in Preview.

3. Choose File » Save as, and saved a copy. I left the Format pop-up menu set to PDF, and set the Quartz Filter pop-up to Reduce File Size.

Over the past few days there has been some server trouble with MacTips.org. I haven’t been able to access my login and the site wasn’t working properly on the back-end, which made it impossible to update.

As you can see that has been corrected.

I have also received at least one report that the MacTips Widget was not working properly. Since we don’t have the source code for the widget at this time - that’s something that’s going to be hard to fix if many of you are having problems. SO - if you ARE having problems with the widget please let us know.

I’m hoping any trouble with the widget will have ended up being related to the server issues, and will hopefully be corrected now.

One feature of Safari that is often over looked is the ability to open multiple sites at one time with just a few clicks. So, if you have group of sites you visit every morning, you can easily load all of them at once in just one click.

To set them up all you have to do is:

1) Make sure the Bookmarks Bar is visible. If you don’t see it select View>Show Bookmarks Bar
2) Click on the Bookmarks icon in the bar to bring up your bookmarks.
3) In the Bookmarks Bar create a new folder (”Apple News” for example)
4) Add you favorite links into the folder
5) You’ll see the folder in your Bookmarks Bar - all you have to do is click it.

All the sites within that folder will open into tabs and load at once. Be forewarned, however, they will replace any open tabs you have - so be sure you’re done with those other tabs, or open a new window before launching your bookmarked sites.

If you’re interested in developing on the iPhone there are more and more resources popping up online since the NDA was lifted earlier this month.

The latest is “Apps Amuck” a great development resource for aspiring iPhone App makers. The site is designed to show new developers how to begin developing for the iPhone one step at a time.

All month long they are creating simple iPhone Applications, offering up the source code, and teaching you how they work. You can download the source code for each app and play around with the code, to learn hands on.

Click Here to check out the site.