The Dock is the primary method for launching applications in OS X. For me, Quicksilver replaces a lot of what I would normally do with the Dock, but I still find it to be an essential tool for my application needs.

By default, the Dock appears at the bottom of the screen. However, it can be repositioned to either the left or right sides of the screen. To do this, one would usually launch System Preferences from their Applications folder, select the Dock pane, and set the position to either left, bottom, or right. Another common method is to Control-Click on the divider used to resize the Dock, go to “Position,” and select whichever position you want.

MacTips user Alex Hwang submitted an alternative way to move the Dock around. Hold down Shift and then click on the divider and drag the divider across the screen. When you get near the left side, the bottom, or the right side of the screen, the Dock will pop into place there. This is much more convenient than going through a bunch of menus.

We have written many more tips on how to manipulate and customize the Dock to fit your needs and wishes. One of my favorites is a Terminal script for switching Leopard’s “shelf” dock back to a more traditional style. You can find everything else we’ve written about the Dock here.

Thanks to Alex Hwang for submitting this shortcut! Submit a tip to MacTips and maybe we will put it up!

The number of possible data fields in Address Book often seems endless. Everything from addresses and instant messenger screen names to the names of a contact’s brother or assistant are possible. One of the fields that I have only recently started playing around with is the Related Names field. This field allows you to link contacts together based on their relationships. You can add as many related names as you want to a contact. Once you have added a related name, you can open the related contact’s card by clicking on the field descriptor to the left of their name and selecting “Show [Name].”

While most features in any Apple program work completely intuitively and intelligently, one part of the Related Names field is not. It is actually quite stupid. If you want to set up a relationship like husband and wife or mother and child, you have to manually edit both of the contacts and set up the Related Names field! This flaw really cripples this feature in Address Book, but luckily, tl.software has a great freeware plug-in for the application that solves the issue.

This plug-in is Relationship Completer, a great tool that does exactly what it says: it completes relationships. Once you install Relationship Completer by placing the plug-in file in ~/Library/Address Book Plug-ins and restarting Address Book, the plug-in will add another item to the contextual menu that pops up when you click on the field title to the left of the related name. Clicking the new item will add automate adding the Related Names field to the related contact in the appropriate format (brother to sibling, father to child, spouse to spouse). Hopefully OS X 10.6 or OS 11 will include an improved Address Book which automatically does this, but Relationship Completer is the best solution at the moment.

I have always been a big fan of Address Book and all its related plug-ins. Most of its features and a handful of plug-ins were covered in Get the Most Out of Address Book, and we also have a few articles on integrating Address Book with Mutt and with Adium. Hawk Wings also has a large archive of Address Book tips worth looking at. (That’s where I found Relationship Completer!)

[Via Hawk Wings]

Notice something different about the above, Safari menu bar? If you look in between Bookmarks and Window, you’ll see a menu that most of you, probably don’t have. It’s called Develop and in my opinion, it’s one of the coolest features that Safari has.

In order to activate this menu, hit command + , to bring up Safari’s preferences. Then click on the Advanced tab and click the checkbox next to “Show Develop menu in menu bar”. This activates the Develop menu and when you click it, you are presented with the menu below.

This little menu is neat for a lot of reasons. First, if you’re stuck on a slow connection, you can choose to browse the web without bandwidth-hogging images. Also, if you’re attempting to read a site which has annoying text styles, you now have the option of disabling them. My favorite part about this menu, however, is the ability to emulate other browsers by clicking User Agent and selecting from a wide variety of browsers ranging from Internet Explorer (shudder) to FIrefox, or Safari for the iPhone (which you can use to take advantage of “free iPhone content”), and everything in between.

Take the following situation into consideration: “We’re sorry but you are using an unsupported browser”. Just a few clicks of your mouse and that problem is solved. In the off chance that this does not work, don’t bother opening up FireFox and pasting the URL; just click Open Page With, and select the required browser.

I’m pleased to announce a new version of the MacTips Widget is available: Download v2.1.

There are some big changes in this version, like:

Smaller Logo and Ability for Widget to Get Much Smaller

Plus you can remove the search bar and post dates. Expect more options here in the future.

Show Only Titles

In addition to shortening articles, you can also show only titles by moving the article length slider (on the back) to zero. This is demonstrated below:

New MacTech Tab

We’ve also added a new MacTech tab for some great Mac news. Also note, using the search on the MacTech tab will also take you to the MacTech’s search engine.

New Back Design

The back has been spruced up a little. and now uses a much smaller image (4KB vs 100KB).

Also added the show search field and show post date fields for customizing the Widget a little more.

Other Small Features

You can scroll with:

• Up/Down Arrow Keys
• Home / End Keys
• Page Up / Down Keys

I will work on more keyboard accessibility issues in the future.

A couple of other smaller bugs were squished.

Let me know if you have any issues by using the contact information on the back of the widget.

Download here.

I’d love to hear any and all feature suggestions. Please send me an e-mail with ideas using the info on the back of the widget.

Enjoy!

Below are 5 user submitted Mac Tips. Submit your own tip and get some traffic to your blog.

5. More Custom Icons

Alex Writes:

I’ve always liked the new Finder, Dashboard and Trash icons float has, but http://interfacelift.com/icons-mac/details.php?id=1420 has some great Finder icons to spiff up my dock, http://interfacelift.com/icons-mac/details.php?id=1408 has some gorgeous trash icons, and http://interfacelift.com/icons-mac/details.php?id=1886 has some very cool dashboard icons.

If you like icons you should also check out these Indiana Jones icons from IconFactory (thanks Pirillo).

View our old post on Using Custom Icons in OS X.

4. Quick Equalizer in iTunes

Alex writes:

I found out that clicking the play button in iTunes a little bit to the left of the main thing on the top with the time and the Song name and the artist shows a cool sound thingy with the audio being measured.

3. Freeze a Window While Minimizing

We’ve talked about using slow motion while minimizing before. This builds on that by killing the dock in the middle of minimizing and making the window get stuck in this state.

shpountik writes:

You can make any window curve. To do this you should enter the following command in Terminal:

$ killall Dock

while minimizing this window (with Shift pressed).

View the video below for the effect (e-mail RSS click the title to see):

While this isn’t entirely useful it’s a neat trick.

2. Take Screenshots of DVD’s

Ductapeinnovations writes:

To take a screenshot with DVD player open, use the terminal. Just type in

screencapture -i ~/Desktop/dvd.png

Of course replace dvd.png with the desired filename and Desktopwith the desired folder. For more info: Random Tech.

The complete steps are:

1. In Terminal type: screencapture -i ~/Desktop/dvd.png
2. Control+Tab to DVD
3. Use cursor to select DVD picture
4. Open dvd.png on your desktop

This is a good tip, but an even easier method I think is using VLC. It’s the best video player on any platform. It will play anything and it doesn’t have restrictions on taking screenshots of videos. Oh, and it’s free.

1. More Finder Shortcuts

Robby writes:

Two other ⌥-⌘-mouse click keyboard shortcuts for OS X exist that I’m aware of besides the one you wrote about on May 15th - click on a Dock Icon to hide all other applications.

1. ⌥-⌘-click on the Toolbar Button in a Finder window with the Toolbar showing to get the Customize Toolbar dialog box. ⌘-click on it cycles you through the different Toolbar views.

2. ⌥-⌘-double-click on a file name in a Finder window closes that window and opens the file in a new window.

I was able to get the second one working, but not the first one. Anybody else?

The second one is great for keeping your Finder windows in order.

Submit a Mac Tip

I thought it would be interesting to list multiple user submitted tips in one entry instead of many smaller entries.

What are your thoughts on this method?

Submit a Mac Tip and get some traffic to your blog–or just help contribute to the community!

The System Preferences panel has many overlooked settings. Here are my favorite 5.

5. Smooth Scrolling

One small but important feature I found inside System Preferences -> Appearance is called Use smooth scrolling.

Enabling smooth scrolling makes the page glide up and down the screen without any rigidness.

This only applies when using the page up/down, spacebar and home/end keys while navigating a page.

The difference here is subtle, but I’m a fan. I often use the spacebar while reading news feeds and it’s made the experience surprisingly better.

4. Great Screensavers Custom & Built-in

OS X has some great screensavers built right in. There’s the standard Flurry screensaver:

But there’s also iTunes Artwork, RSS Visualizer and Word of the Day:

Leopard added Arabesque, a vibrant grid of blurring dots, to the collection:

But you can also use custom screensavers. Apple also has a good variety of these, along with Google.

One really cool screensaver I found is called Lotsawater. It renders a cool water effect over your desktop:

3. Easily Search and Find

This isn’t so much a preference as it is a feature of System Preferences.

Finding preferences is extremely easy–even if you don’t know where to look.

The search box knows all of the options inside the panels, and will take you to the correct place when you hit enter.

2. Customize Default Alert Sound Effect

I wish I would have thought about customizing this setting sooner. The default Funk sound effect that plays as an alert is downright terrible compared to Morse.

There are a dozen alert sounds, so I suggest finding the one that best fits you inside System Preferences -> Sound -> Sound Effects.

1. Customizing Global Keyboard Shortcuts

Inside System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Keyboard Shortcuts you will find a list of global keyboard shortcuts you may want to change or disable entirely.

For example I find it annoying to have Front Row set to Command+Escape. Sometimes while pressing Command+` I slip and Front Row pops up and completely interrupts my workflow.

The solution here is either changing or disabling the Front Row keyboard shortcut.

You can set many other keyboard shortcuts here, including:

• Look up in dictionary shortcut
• Take Screenshot with your keyboard
• Super Zoom
• Invert screen colors
• and many more…

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.

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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!

As some of you may know, iTunes began offering a special 99¢ movie once a week, starting about a month ago. As you can tell from the widget above, some of the movies can be quite excellent!

The way I keep up with these specials is through the 99Rental.com Dashboard widget. It’s worked very well and is very much worth a try.

[ 99Rental.com]