12/21/98
Only 40% of ResExcellence readers have moved up to the free StuffIt Expander upgrade. Why is that?
I know the Polling Place script still isn't right, and I hope to fix it by the next update, but I'm going to squeeze in one more question: "Do you believe in Santa?"
This is a little different! Head over to anti-pope.org and see their Pagan Macintosh interface collection. There are icons, desktop patterns, and K-Schemes all somehow related to ...well...paganism!
kjeldESIGN has posted 5 sets of nicely designed icons on the following topics: Dinosaurs, Cereal characters, endangered species, and Fat Albert's gang!
Previously, we talked about AppleScripts to position icons on the desktop. Apple has published a TIL with more detailed information on icon priority, and a detailed script to place icons.
Modify Apple's CD/DVD drivers to mount third party drives.
Several readers emailed to point out an excellenct article in c't Magazine that showed how to use ResEdit on Apple CD/DVD drivers to make them recognize any CD ROM drives - not just Apple's.
One drawback was the fact you had to keep two copies of the CD extension active: the original one for Apple's drives, and a modified version for non-Apple drives.
Thanks to Anthony Saxton, the author of ClipDragon and President of the Las Vegas Macintosh Users Group (VMUG), it's now posible to have a single modified driver work with both Apple CD drives, and any other SCSI CD ROM drive. (Continued...)
ResExcellence will be taking some time off for the Holidays.
The next action-packed update will be January 4th.
12/18/98
My favorite newsreader has been updated. MacSoup 2.4 has been released. This is the first version that's PowerPC native, and it also supports Apple's Appearance Manger.
The AppleScript Sourcebook has recieved a massive update. It's an excellent place to start your search for information. The site is easy to navigate from the Table of Contents.
Epoch Icons has released a set of 25 icons based on MacOS X. In addition, there's a new Fantasy set, "Heroes of Might and Magic II" with 70 icons.
Michael Dicker has started a collection of replacement system icons that he has converted to the easy to use 8Tuner format.
If you have some free time, you can wade through over 400 free Desktop pictures at Snap-Shot.com. There are 5 major categories from which to choose.
Change the splash screen in Real Audio Player 5.0. This little edit helps you find and change the logo that's present while waiting to connect to a streaming video site.
12/16/98
Adding to the list of Holiday elements for your Mac are new icons from IconPLUS. As a bonus, they've included some desktop patterns to liven up your computer.
Jeremy asks this AppleScript question:
I was wondering if you could provide a script to place in Start Up items that would open a folder, and position it so that it became a pop-up folder. I have recently set up an iMac for a friend and her entire family is totally new to computers. In order to help them I've made three folders containing aliases of their applications, games, and personal files. These fodlers are in another folder called •POP-UP FOLDERS which sits in the HD. Every so often I get a frantic phone call saying that they've lost the games, or something. I thought if I had a script to do all this at startup, it would solve many problems.
This script was primarily made by recording actions with the Script Editor:
tell application "Finder"
activate
select folder "Games" of startup disk
open selection
set popup of container window of folder "Games" of startup disk to true
close container window of folder "Games" of startup disk
-- the above line was added to close the popup window
end tell
You know you're getting old when:
Michael Munger dropped me a line to point out that I had already mentioned how to add additional names for the GoMac Start menu! That wasn't a mistake - it's part of ResExcellence's "Two for One Holiday Sale". :)
"But you know, the world is full of ideas. Maybe it's a little easier to copy. But it doesn't make the world a better place." -Steve Jobs referring to Antz vs. Bug's Life (or was it Windows vs. Macintosh!) source: an excellent San Francisco Examiner Magazine article
12/15/98 (a rare Tuesday update!)
Guillaume Gete let us know that Stephane Madrau, the author of SwitchRes, has released NoFinderZoom - a free extension to remove Zoom Rectangles.
You heard me correctly - a free extension to remove Zoom Rectangles!
Some of the recent User Contributions are stuffed with the new Stuffit Expander 5.0. The first poll in the new and improved Polling Place asks, "Are you using Stuffit 5.0?"
12/14/98
Here in Chicago, there is an old election day proverb, "Vote early, and vote often". Even today, controversy surrounds every poll as the judges discover that a number of people apparently rose from the dead to cast a ballot for the incumbent.
In keeping with that age old tradition, it appears we had a little ballot stuffing of our own here at ResExcellence. All week long, the results of the previous poll, "Do you generally register the shareware you use?" ran at 80% Yes - 20% No. Then suddenly on Sunday evening, the No vote started rapidly rising. It appeared as if the dead were determined to vote!
It's my fault that I didn't have IP checking activated in the voting script. And while I have the crackers address, I'll assume it was all just a wacky good time for some bored reader, so no action will be taken.
In the meantime, the Polling Place is closed for repairs until I update the script this evening.
Jeremiah Morris from Weedhopper Press has just released Appearance Hopper! This handy utility provides an easy to use inteface for adding large and small system fonts to the Appearance Control Panel. Jeremiah wrote the original templates used at ResExcellence for the previous edit to add the fonts.
The long awaited icon editor from the laborers at the IconFactory has been released! IconBuilder 2.0, by Craig Hockenberry, is a Photoshop filter that uses transparency layers to create the ultimate 32 bit icons.
Ho, Ho, Ho! Before you know it, Old Saint Nick will be squeezing down the chimney. When you're done decorating the tree, I've collected some links to help you decorate your Mac! (Don't forget the Christmas MOSS listed below!)
Today's new additions to the User Contributions page:
The Sherlock Resizing Hack shows you how to use ResEdit to make the plugin window resizable.
Dave Warker, the author of Snow, has also a written Desktop Screenshots: a little extension that redirects screen snapshots to the desktop.
GoMac: rename the Start menu and change the side graphic. Somehow, we're going to squeeze a few more edits out of GoMac! These two were submitted by Anthony Saxton and Steve Wolf. (Continued...)
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12/11/98
 Today Boys and Girls, we're going to have a special guest to answer some of your questions.
Look! Up in the sky! It's a blimp... it's the Space Shuttle... NO!
It's AppleScript Man!
Our first question is from little Jimmy. "AppleScript Man, I know if I look at the dictionaries in Scripting Additions, I can use Monitor Depth to adjust my screen depth, but gosh, is there any way for me to adjust the screen size too?"
AppleScript Man: Well little Jimmy, you're in luck! One of my crime fighting buddies, Jon Pugh, has written a collection of swell scripting additions called "Jon's Commands". Here's how to use them to adjust the screen size. (Continued...)
....
Suzie likes to use some of those groovy new desktop pictures that have icon docks. She likes to move her icons to all the right places. The problem is, once she restarts her computer, the hard disks and some of the other icons move around and it looks all yucky. Is there anyway you can save the day AppleScript Man?
AppleScript Man: Why sure! If you pull Apple's Script Editor out of your utility belt and set it to record, you can move those troublesome icons right-where-you-want-'em. Then save the script as an Application and place it in the Startup Items Folder. When you restart the computer - Zowwie! Those super charged icons will zip back into place. (Continued...)
....
Coach Wilson submitted this question before he went off to football practice: "Ya know AppleScript Man, one of the big drawbacks of AppleScript is that you just can't make a darn menu selection. Surely a tough guy like you can solve this puzzle!"
AppleScript Man: Absolutely! and don't call me Shirley! AWOL Software, the folks that make the neato utility, Virtual Desktop, also make the handy-dandy scripting addition - Menu Events! While it may not work in every situation, it may be just the ammo you need.
...
That's all the time we have today for AppleScript Man. So if you will take out your spiral notebooks, we have a few other topics to cover...
Thanks to John Baltutis for bringing to my attention the fact that ResExcellence was having some major display problems in older browsers! If you were affected last week, I apologize, and everything should be working as well as it did before (whatever that may mean).
MacPlaza has posted their latest installment of "Hints & Tips - No Themes? Get the most out of Kaleidoscope!". Learn how to better organize and tweak you schemes. Author Greg Landweber joins in with some little known secrets.
12/9/98
The latest version of T-Minus Ten has been released. It allows you to schedule events at a specific time, and assign actions to keystrokes. You can read a previous review by ResExcellence.
Here's a little known page from Apple that lists all the error code numbers and what they mean. (Ahhh! so I had an overflow into an odd memory address! Now I get it!)
clip2icns 1.1.1 has been released. In addition to fixing a bug, this latest version comes with a Photoshop Action (macro script) that takes a layer and its mask and copies them to the clipboard, ready to be imported into clip2icns.
 It's amazing the things you find in the "CD Extras" folder of the MacOS 8.5 CD!
OSA Menu is a great way to organize your AppleScripts by application. It sticks a little script icon in the menu bar that allows you to record actions and place them in an application specific folder. This beats the heck out of tossing all your scripts in the Apple Menu!
The latest version can always be found at Leonard's Software.
While the days of making a null-modem cable are a distant memory, some of you may find this page interesting. it details how to interface a Mac to all kinds of scientific equipment using an RS-232 port. (Do you long for the days when Kermit meant more than a green frog?)
If you have an extra 60 megs of hard disk space, the Golgotha game project is disolving. As a kind gesture, they are releasing over 2000 textures to the public. After browsing, you just need to download and sort through them. While some are graphics that were meant to become monsters, weapons, or objects in the game, there are many images that make great industrial desktop patterns. (Thanks a.g.m)
Here's a page that shows you how to use Wish I Were and ResEdit to trick MacOS 8.5 into installing on 68k machines with PPC upgrade cards.
This has nothing to do with anything ResExcellence usually covers, but this site is so cool - The Cookie Jar. They list hundreds of songs in MIDI file format. These can be imported into Quicktime, or use Holiday Lights from Tiger Technologies (shareware) to add Christmas lights and play holiday midi files. You can also play, remix, and reassign instruments with Arnold's Midi Player.
Some elves stuck these User Contributions under my tree ,and I opened them early:
Some of these files are in the newer StuffIt 5.0 format. Download the free utility from Alladin Systems.
"sniff, sniff...Is that smoke!" - an RS-232 nightmare
12/7/98
Before perusing ResExcellence today, why not start downloading MacOS 8.5.1. The 3 meg Macbinary is here.
The content of my recent email has been so heated, the fan on my Powerbook kicks in as soon as I launch Eudora! What has upset the normally quiet ResExcellence readership?
The suggestion that Themes are slower than Schemes.
Several emails have questioned the motives of Arlo Rose and Eric Reid, since they are both positively alligned with Kaleidoscope. As a disinterested third party, I decided to run my own tests. I encourage you to do the same and email me the results.
In the best attempt to weigh Apple's against Apple's, I compared the Hi-Tech Theme, and a cloned Hi-Tech Scheme, against the default Platinum. All the tests were performed 6 times and the last 3 times were averaged for a final result.
|
Test
|
Hi-Tech Theme |
Hi-Tech Scheme |
Apple's Platinum |
| Scroll a 361k BBEdit document |
239.5
|
240
|
184
|
Scroll Finder window through
155 large icons |
6.9
|
6.7
|
5.4
|
Scroll Finder window through
155 list items with mini-icons |
16
|
10.2
|
7.7
|
| Display 20 pictures in JPegView 1 |
7.5
|
9.7
|
6.5
|
| Scroll a submenu with 155 items 2 |
6.9
|
4.7
|
3.1
|
1. How long it took for JPegView to open 20 windows, and draws the first picture.
2. The contents of folder viewed with a FinderPop contextual menu. |
While a couple of the tests were close, Kaleidoscope was faster than Themes in several of the tests. The default Platinum Theme easily won every test.
Then there was this email regarding corrupt icons:
My name is Bill. I am a Mac Technician for an advertising agency in Minneapolis, MN. I'm writing about what Arlo Rose said about icons degrading and causing a crash when running a theme. We too have experienced this, but there is a way to correct the corruption caused by the crash. Use TechTool to completely delete and rebuild the desktop. Since Apple's routine for rebuilding the desktop does not do a completely thorough job, it dosent seem to correct this problem.
Since I use the Platinum Theme and neither Kaleidoscope or other Themes, I consider myself neutral in the Scheme vs. Theme debate, but I do have this comment. If I was Steve Jobs, and my programmers couldn't create Theme API's that would trounce a piece of shareware co-written by a former employee, I wouldn't be too happy about it!
Send me your thoughts.
I even took a little heat for last week's poll on warez. Two-thirds of those who voted in the most recent poll have downloaded illegal software at one time or another. One reader felt that publishing the results would discourage Macintosh developers. I doubt I'm telling them anything they don't already know.
According to the most recent figures from the SPA, software piracy worldwide hovers around 40%, while in the U.S. the figure is 27% - the lowest of any country. Over the past three years, worldwide piracy has been declining, though it has remained fairly flat in the U.S.
On a related issue, this week's Polling Place asks, "Do you generally register shareware you consider useful?"
If I get mailbombed on this week's question, next week's poll will ask, "Which is your favorite Spice Girl?" :)
Don't get your hopes up. There's a file called "ResEdit 4.0" making the rounds. It's just a hacked up version of an old beta - 2.1b9.
As the full moon arrives, take it as a clear signal that it's time to stop by MacPlaza and vote on the "November's Best of KSA". They've narrowed down the best twelve schemes out of 100.
How about some User Contributions!
What is an FKey? When you take a screen snapshot using Command-Shift-3, you're invoking an FKey. These little pieces of code reside in the System suitcase as FKEY resources. There initial limitation was that you could only have 10 of them - keys 0 through 9.
Several utilities, KeyQuencer for example, can invoke an FKey that is not in the System suitcase. This allows you to assign them to any key combination.
12/4/98
Arlo Rose, formerly with Apple's User Interface group and now part of the Kaleidoscope team, recently said this about running Themes:
Eventually, after running your Mac for a while, you'll begin to notice that your icons degrade into blown up 16x16 black and white icons, and at some point they will default to generic ones. Somewhere in there, you're more than likely to have a crash that corrupts something to do with how the icons are displayed... and rebuilding the desktop doesn't do any good. The only solution I've found is to just not run Themes.
Oddly, Kaleidoscope doesn't have this problem, yet we go through the same Icon Services calls to replace the folders.
On a related note, Eric Reid has written an article for GUI-Junky comparing Themes vs. Schemes. Surprisingly, Schemes are speedier than Themes.
Stefan Haller, the author of MacSoup, the greatest offline newsreader, has posted some ResEdit modifications that add the following features:
- Change Colors and Styles in the Subject Window
- What characters deternine quoted text?
- Adjust Paper Margins
- Recognize additional E-Mail Addresses
- Assign domain name in Message-ID (to solve a Spamfilter problem)
MacPlaza has posted 4 great new desktop pictures by P. Kevin Boivin, bringing his total number of creations to 12. My Pick: "Whelan 4"
Even though I still get edit requests for System 7.x, I don't plan any more for the older system version.. Take a look at ResEdit World. This site contains info of many of the older edits.
While it hasn't been updated in a million years, Throbbers has a large selection of pulsating replacements for Netscape.
Add multiple color cursors with a single extension. Anthony Saxton, the author of Clip Dragon, developed this edit that modifies an old color cursor extension so that it handles multiple cursor replacements. (Continued...)
"I just hope we've made enough for the holiday rush"
-Steve Jobs referring to the iMac
12/2/98
Alan Salisch wants to know where to find the names of Contextual Menu Items. The first place to look is at the CM plug-ins inside of the Contextual Menu Items Folder. The menu names are most often stashed in STR# resources. In FinderPop, the menu names are stored in the STRs resources. By the way, take a look at the STR# resources in FinderPop for a list of "Thank You's" and a collection of drinking quotes!
If you want to change the name of a CM item that is generated by the Finder, you'll find the menu names in the fmn2 resources. This previous edit will give you an idea of what to look for.
Speaking of Previous Edits, ResExcellence is adding about 1000 new readers per month! While I love you all dearly, and will put in a good word with Santa for you, please be sure to take a peak at the Previous Edits page before you send a submit an idea! I'll bet many of your Christmas wishes have already been delivered. :)
Star Trek seems to be a common theme lately! IconPLUS just released a set of icons based on characters from Star Trek: The Next Generation. My favorite: Worf - Season I.
IconPLUS also has a great selection of tech-like fonts, desktop patterns, and pistures.
Rename the Help Menu in MacOS 8.5. We've done it before in MacOS 8.0, but the name of the Help menu is located somewhere else in the latest system version. (Continued...)
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