The Mac Desktop explained

As you many of you guys might have known, I have bought myself an aluminium MacBook last November (almost right after launch) because the old Acer is showing signs of serious degradation (ICU). Going from Windows Xp to OS X represents a huge shift in terms on habits and working styles. In general, i can say that I like the OSX interface better than Windows.

This post will start a series of posts introducing as well as providing insight into the workings of an OSX desktop.

The Mac Desktop

In it's pristine state the OSX desktop will look like the illustration above, minus the icons other than "Casper Jen's Mac" and a few changed icons in the docks at the bottom of the screenie. The basic elements are outlines in the diagram below. These elements will be elaborated in the next sections.

The Dock

The most prominent feature of the Mac desktop is the dock. The dock functions like Window's quick launch bar and contains shortcuts to applications put in there by the user as well as applications that are current running/minimized.

Generally, applications that are currently running will show up with a blue dot unser it's icon. In my case, the running applications are (from left) Finder, Firefox, Adium, iTunes etc etc.

You will notice that there is a separator to the middle right of the dock. To the right of the separator are 2 "stacks". These are shortcuts to important folders which the user would like to have quick access to. This feature will be elaborated in a later post.

Further to the right are 5 minimized windows of the applications that are running. The good thing about this feature is that it provides a real time view of the applications. This really helps a lot if you are waiting for a feature to complete it's process and are working on another thing at the same time.

The last icon is the "Trash" icon. it functions exactly like the recycle bin in windows.

The Menu

The top bar of the OSX contains two elements, the menu and the taskbar. The menu is where most functions of a running program are put into. It functions similarly to the "file" menu under windows. In OSX, the "file" menu will always be on the top bar as illustrated in the following pictures:

 

The Apple button contains the most common system functions like logout, system shutdown, system standby, system configuration menu. 

The next element is the application menu. This will always be presented as the name of the application. This menu typically contains the "about:" element and the preferences menu.

The next elements are the families "File, edit, view..." elements that every application will always have. These elements may differ with different applications and functions exactly like their windows' counterparts. 

Taskbar

The Taskbar lies to the right side of the top bar and functions similarly to windows' taskbar. They both contain similar elements like time, battery level indicator, network connections etc etc etc.

The rightmost icon (the microscope) represents the spotlight search function of the OSX. Clicking on this icon enables the user to search the system for their needed files and folders as well as starting applications. This function will also be elaborated in a future post.

Icons
The Icons also serve similar function like in windows. Since they are pretty much the same I won't elaborate much on it in this post.



















This concludes the introduction to the Mac OSX desktop. In the next few posts I will elaborate on the various sections of the default user interface, and hopefully reveal a few hidden gems as well..

Wish you all a very happy Wesak and Mothers' day.

seehua

Howto: Hack your Windows Live Messenger

Hello to the world.

Now that I finally got the mood to write again, I will be writing yet another tutorial that I think will be useful for you out there who would like to have fun playing with messenger.

This hack involves using a software called Mess Patch to help circumvent the limitation imposed by the program on the users.

Without further ado, let's go to the first step of the process:

First, go to the website http://mess.be

When the page is loaded, click on the link to the Mess Patch at the left side of the page...

and download the program.

you will be brought to a new page, and the download prompt will appear.

Save the program to somewhere in your computer...

Open the zip archive, and run the program in the archive. Select patch messenger and press next.

Here is the important part. There will be a dizzying array of options available for you guys to customize your messenger.

Here are the options that I've used on my own Live Messenger:

General Options:

• Enable Winamp support for now playing feature (if you want to show what your song are you playing through Winamp)
• Distinguish Idle from Away users (good to distinguish people who are really away and those who just left their msn alone for too long)
• Enable Multi-Line Nicknames

Main window:

• Allow status change when signing in (good if i want to be shown as away right after I signed in)
• Boost personal messages to 500 characters
• Disable song links
• Remove advertisement banner

Conversation window options

• Disable nudge protection (if you want to be able to nudge your friends indefinitely)
• remove bottom text advertisement

If you have selected any of the options that involves removing the advertisement links, you will see this page. Here you can decide to remove them anyway or not.

Select the "show thumbnail display pictures in the contacts list" option if you want to be able to view your friends avatars right there in messenger itself.

The second option should be self-explanatory enough.

I don't use tab-serve, so i just select the option "I don't want to use TabServe in this prompt.

Press Next, and the patching process will begin.

At the end, press close and Windows Live Messenger will be started again.

Enjoy Nudging your friends when they cannot retaliate.

Hope that helps. Till the next post, c'ya

seehua

Tech Support

Tech support isn't a job full of glamour. Often we have to deal with situations that cannot be troubleshooted at all because of the lack of symtoms. At other times we have to deal with users who won't tell us everything because 'he had something to hide,' leaving us to make our own conclusions about the 'problem,' and cause even more problems along the way.

Still, that doesn't stop us from compiling up funny stories and put them together so that the others might benefit from it. Just yesterday I had read two articles gathered from Slashdot, for the laughs and lessons, and now, I would like to share it with you guys. Enjoy ;)

Infoworld: Stupid user tricks: Eleven IT Horror Stories
Infoworld: More stupider user tricks: IT Horror Stories Redux

I think I should start to compile my own stories and the solutions just for our reference in the future.

seehua

Launchy

Launchy is a small utility that enables the users to start programs or open up files faster. Usually when we need to start the programs in windows, we will need to click on the start menu, go to the 'all programs' button, and then go to the selected programs' menu and then only we click on the icon to start it.

With Launchy, we just need to use a specific keyboard shortcut (alt+space) in my case, type in part of the program name, and press enter, and the program will be activated, or the file that you've selected will be opened in it's default application.

Of course, Launchy can be programmed to do lots of other things rather than just launching programs, to get to know more of it, please visit their homepage at www.launchy.net

seehua

Texter

Hello and welcome to this second blog of mine. This will be my first productive post written for this blog. And in this post, I would like to introduce to you all a very useful software known as Texter

Texter is a text substitution utility that helps you to replace substitutions with words that you've defined. An example will be replacing ttyl with talk to you later. As you guys might have imagined, this will help you guys save countless keystrokes over a course of time. A more complete introduction is available at texter's homepage. Do give it a try and have fun playing with it there ;)

 

seehua

Hello World!

Hello and welcome to my 2nd blog.

This blog in particular will focus more on my area of interest: Computers, Softwares, Gadgets and sometimes games. I will discuss more about technical stuffs (reviews, guides etc) in the aforementioned areas over here rather in my other blog which will now focus more on current issues as well as my personal experience and realizations in life.

Well, that's all from me for now, and wish you all the best out there, no matter what you guys are doing ;)

seehua