I thought this was cool. The MacTips widget was featured on the iCreate CD as one of their top widgets.

If you'd like to check it out it's issue #54. Here are some shots:

Speaking of the widget, expect a new release very soon. There are lots of new features so I need some beta testers. If you'd like to try the new widget and provide feedback shoot me an e-mail at (brad at mactips dot org).

Doing one more poll to gauge the response from everyone.

What level of tips would you like to see?

If you can't see the poll you may have to click the title to vote.

[poll=19]

Cyerduck is a great application for uploading and downloading files using FTP. It manages to be customizable while remaining fast and light-weight. Version 3.03b introduces some great new features.

Don't let the cute icon fool you--Cyberduck will handle most of your FTP needs. Here are 9 reasons why you should be using Cyberduck.

9. Upload from the Widget

Cyberduck has a great widget that lets you upload from your Dashboard. This widget is useful because it's small enough to stay out of the way, but smart enough to use your existing bookmarks. The widget also looks nice.

8. Applescript Support

Like many applications, Cyberduck supports Applescript. It even comes with some standard scripts like uploading from iPhoto and uploading screenshots. All of these scripts come bundled with Cyberduck in the Extras folder.

Read the Readme.txt to learn more about using these.

7. Preferences Galore

Cyberduck provides dozens of preferences for customizing your experience.

You can:

• Change the browser's appearance
• Save your workspace
• Use Keychain for managing passwords
• Manage how transfers work
• ...and much more

6. Limit Bandwidth and Connections

Limiting bandwidth at the global level is extremely easy. Open up Preferences and switch to the Bandwidth tab. Here you can set the maximum bandwidth Cyberduck can use at anytime.

Setting a bandwidth limit at the transfer level is even easier. Open up the Transfers Window by pressing Command+T. Select the transfer you want to limit and select the bandwidth limit in the bottom right hand corner. This ensures the selected transfer will not exceed the limit you set.

Limiting the max number of connections is just as easy. This setting is located right next to the bandwidth limit. In the below example I allow Cyberduck to have 4 transfers simultaneously.

5. Easy Uploads with Drag-n-Drop

Drag-n-drop is one of the fastest ways to upload files with Cyberduck. Generally speaking you can upload files from any application by dragging the files on to the dock icon or the main browser window.

This uploads the selected files to the currently active FTP connection.

You can also drag files onto Cyberduck while its closed. When this is done, Cyberduck reconnects to your latest FTP connection.

Cyberduck used to allow dragging files on to a bookmark. Unfortunately this is not the case anymore. Cyberduck 3 removed the bookmarks drawer, and you can no longer drag-n-drop to a specific bookmark. Bummer.

4. Quick Changes with External Editors

If you need to make a quick change to a file, using an external editor is a great way to do this. Cyberduck allows you to edit a file remotely as if it were stored on your local filesystem.

To do this Control+Click a file and select Edit With followed by your text editor.

As soon as your done making changes, save the file and Cyberduck automatically uploads the file. Quick and easy.

There's also a way to set a default text editor inside Preferences -> General. If you set this preferences, instead of Control+Clicking, you can press Command+K to edit the currently selected file.

Note: I wouldn't recommend doing this all the time. I've had file uploads fail which resulted in a corrupted file. This should be used for small changes and only when you already have a backup.

3. Amazon S3 Support

Amazon S3 is a great service for storing and serving information. The idea is you pay as you go, and only pay for what you need. If you need 10MB, fine. If you need 10TB, S3 can handle that as well.

One problem however, is S3 doesn't support FTP--so S3 clients for OS X (S3 Browser and JungleDisk) are lacking in many ways.

Fortunately, CyberDuck now supports S3--so quickly managing your buckets (folders) is extremely simple:

The interface for Cyberduck is much friendlier than S3 Browser or Jungle Disk, making managing S3 files fast and easy.

2. Quick Look With Files

The coolest new features in Cyberduck 3 is quick look support. That's right, you can quick look remote files on an FTP server with Cyberduck.

Press space on any file and you will see a quick look window pop up nearly instantly.

Just like in Finder, you can scroll through items by pressing the Up/Down arrow keys.

Need to make sure an image is correct before you download it? Cyberduck quick look is what you're looking for!

1. It's Free!

The #1 reason to use Cyberduck--it's free.

Cyberduck is free to use, but if you find it useful consider donating. It takes hard work to create software like this--and the developers deserve to be compensated.

Cyberduck has always been my favorite FTP application. It accomplishes exactly what I need without extra features getting in the way.

That being said, version 3 is faster and added some great features that give the paid alternatives (YummyFTP or Transmit) a run for their money.

Download Cyberduck today!

Reader Alex Hwang recently wrote in about GLTerminal, a Terminal.app replacement that recreates a terminal from 20 years ago.

GLTerminal accomplishes this by:

• Allowing you to change the screen brightness
• Allowing you to "curve" the text so that the edges wrap backwards
• Allowing you to make the screen flicker
• Emulating a baud rate for painfully slow speeds

While GLTerminal doesn't have nearly as many features as Terminal.app--it's strangely comforting. Something about using GLTerminal makes command line work much more enjoyable.

Leopard requires a special version, but everyone else should be fine with the default download.

Also remember you can full-screen GLTerminal with Command+Enter for the full effect.

A couple weeks ago I stumbled on Phun, a Physics simulator built by Emil Ernerfeldt for his thesis project.

Phun acts as a physics playground. Inside Phun you can setup simulations and run them with all sorts of variables, such as gravity and air friction.

Phun even supports water! While it is a little rough around the edges, Phun is extremely--well...fun!

If I had this in school I probably would have done much better in Physics. At least I would have been more entertained.

Here's a quick demo I put together showing a couple different simulations.

(Note: E-mail/RSS subscribers may have to click through to view video)

Download Phun for OS X.

Lately I've made it a habit to memorize many of the keyboard shortcuts for manipulating text. These shortcuts can generally be used across any Cocoa application and are great for increasing your productivity.

Download the Text Keyboard Shortcuts Cheat Sheet in PDF format.

Do you see any shortcuts that are missing?

Have you ever wanted to remove items in your Finder's sidebar? Here's a quick and easy way: Click Finder -> Preferences... -> Sidebar and you'll see the window below:

Simply uncheck any unwanted items.

Finally you can easily hide search items, shared servers and that pesky iDisk icon.

After our last tip on quickly switching windows in Photoshop, you all suggested I do more. So I recently found three handy tips that saved me time.

Duplicating Slices with Option

Creating slices can be a pain to make over and over again, thankfully there's a quicker way. Select a slice with Command+Click then Option+Click to duplicate it. Too easy!

Hold Shift and Change Values in Increments of 10

Any field you can change with your keys (up and down) you can also change in increments of 10 by holding shift. So instead of 70...71...72 it would be 70..80..90.

You can also scroll your mouse wheel to change the value.

Organize Windows with Workspaces

One of the most frustrating aspects of using Photoshop is maintaining all of those tiny windows. Workspaces solve this headache by providing the ability to save and load window locations.

They also come with a couple default workspaces (Basic & Legacy) that work nicely

There you have it, 3 tips for improving productivity in Photoshop.

What do you think of multiple smaller tips like this? Good/Bad?

I thought it would be interesting to see everyone else's desktops.

To take a screenshot of your desktop, press Command+Shift+3.

This saves an image of your active screen straight to your desktop. The filename generally starts with "Picture".

To upload your screenshot, head on over to http://www.mactips.org/uploader.php.

Copy/Paste the code from the text box into the comment field.

Here's my desktop, what's yours?

(Note: The thumbnails link to the full-sized images, which can be very large. Files may take a moment to download.)

A few months ago Travis wrote a great post on installing MacPorts. If you've never heard of MacPorts:

The MacPorts Project is an open-source community initiative to design an easy-to-use system for compiling, installing, and upgrading either command-line, X11 or Aqua based open-source software on the Mac OS X operating system.

MacPorts makes it extremely easy to find and install tools.

As an example, let's install wget.

First, we search by typing

port search wget

We can see here there are 3 packages that match wget. We want the one named wget in net/wget.

Let's find out some more information before we install:

port info wget

We get the following package information:

wget 1.11.2, net/wget (Variants: universal, no_ssl)

http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/

GNU Wget is a free software package for retrieving files using HTTP, HTTPS and FTP, the most widely-used Internet protocols. It is a non-interactive commandline tool, so it may easily be called from scripts, cron jobs, terminals without Xsupport, etc.

Library Dependencies: openssl, gettext

Platforms: darwin freebsd

Now to install we type:

sudo port install wget

You should see something like the output below. Ports will automatically install every dependency so your install times will vary.

Additional Commands

Update

sudo port update wget

Uninstall

sudo port uninstall wget

Update Packages: Retrieves the latest package information

sudo port selfupdate

Installed Packages: A current list of installed packages

sudo port installed

MacPorts are Great

Note: You should always exercise caution when using the sudo command. You can mess up your system if you don't know what you're doing.

MacPorts is a great solution for installing common Mac applications and utilities. It's much more efficient and works quite well. One downside is MacPorts doesn't have as extensive collection as say FreeBSD Ports, so there are some holes.

Also, the ports are often a release or two behind (Firefox is at 2.0)--so don't expect the latest version for many of these packages. For the most part these are known stable releases.

If you're not comfortable with the terminal, there is a GUI solution Porticus. I haven't tried it, so I would use at your own risk.

What are your favorite MacPorts packages?

Mine are wget and lynx.