Everything is Gray » OS X

Configure Archive Utility in Mac OS X

James Barclay — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 06:46:41 +0000

Having recently purchased a new MacBook Pro and electing to skip the option of running Migration Assistant to transfer my data and settings, I noticed that a few applications were behaving differently. Over the years I’ve configured quite a few things on my Mac, and eventually I became accustomed to said customizations. One of the first things I noticed was that when I would unarchive a zip file, the compressed file would stay put. I remembered that a few years ago I learned of a cool way to configure Mac OS X’s built-in Archive Utility, (using a System Preference pane), so I immediately went digging. To do this, simply navigate to therootofyourharddrive/System/Library/CoreServices. From there right or control click on Archive Utility.app, and select “Show Package Contents.” A new window will open containing a folder named Contents, within which you’ll find Resources, and finally Archives.prefPane. Opening this preference pane will result in System Preferences.app asking if you’d like to install for all users or for this user only. Voila! Now you can tell Archive Utility to delete the archive after expanding it.

Check if your Mac is 64 bit

James Barclay — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:52:41 +0000

Here’s an easy way to determine whether or not your Mac is 64 bit capable. Open Terminal.app, which is located in /Applications/Utilities and type in

sysctl hw |grep 64bit.

If your machine is 64 bit capable, the result will be

hw.cpu64bit_capable: 1

If your machine is not 64 bit capable, the result will be

hw.cpu64bit_capable: 0

Tip source: OSXDaily.com

Snow Stack 3D CSS

James Barclay — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 03:36:30 +0000

A gentleman by the name of Charles Ying of Satine.org has developed a new 3D CSS visual effects demonstration called Snow Stack, which runs entirely on JavaScript, native WebKit CSS extensions, and XHTML/HTML. If you’re familiar with Cover Flow/Core Animation on the Mac you’ll immediately recognize Snow Stack. In order to run the demo you’ll need either the Snow Leopard Beta + Safari or Leopard + the latest nightly build of WebKit. Either way, it’s quite fascinating to think that this is all being done in the browser.

Cappuccino Web Framework

James Barclay — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 04:31:43 +0000

So lately I’ve been playing around with the Cappuccino web framework and a nifty little programming language called Objective-J. The Cappuccino framework allows you to create desktop class applications for the browser, and gives you the ability to run these applications on the desktop, (similar to Adobe AIR). One of the many benefits of being able to create applications that run on the desktop is having the ability to run the application while offline.

The interesting thing about Objective-J is that it is based on Objective-C, but any valid JavaScript code is accepted as valid Objective-J code. A fun way to look at it is that Objective-J is to JavaScript as Objective-C is to C.

Cappuccino is frequently compared to another JavaScript framework called SproutCore, which also allows you to build rich Mac-like applications for the browser, (just look at MobileMe). Both Cappuccino and SproutCore utilize the same icon set and window chrome as desktop Mac applications, which can look incredible.

If you’d like to see Cappuccino and Objective-J in action, take a look at 280 Slides, and if you’d like to learn more, read the tutorials on Cappuccino.org and download the sample application.

@end

I shed a tear for Quicksilver today

James Barclay — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 21:25:56 +0000

Today I uninstalled Quicksilver, in favor of using the LaunchBar 5 beta. It was late 2007 when developer Nicholas Jitkoff released the source to Google Code, and I’ve been hanging on tightly ever since. I understand that the project will continue to be updated, but I’ve come to my wits end, and am done struggling with the application for now. We’ll see how long this lasts…