Entries Tagged as “Software”
iTunes 10.4 Rule Sets
I use a very simple star rating system for tagging my music. I combine it with a more sophisticated smart playlist system using "Sets of Rules" to build more complex playlists.
Sometime around the iTunes 10.4 update Apple removed the sub set rule button from the playlist builder. I freaked out. Probably because I have seen Apple pull the plug on features that I really love. I started to freak out because I was afraid this was one of those features that they killed off.
Fortunately the feature is still there, it's just hidden. I decided to blog about it, simply because I could not find any mention of it myself when I searched for the answer.
In the older versions of iTunes, you added a rule set by clicking the ellipsis button after the plus and minus buttons. In iTunes 10.4 you have to hold the Option key down to change the plus button into the ellipsis button.
→ Respond NowTags: General · Software
IRC Accounts With Adium
When Adium 1.4 was released I got really excited because 1.4 brought with it built in support for IRC. I downloaded the current version immediately and tried to connect to some of my favorite channels only find my self stuck after entering my server information. I would get either a connection error or a chat window with a message of "
Received CTCP 'VERSION' (to YOUR_USERNAME) from Evdrone" I tried running a few commands at this point but was going no where fast.
Turns out the solution is pretty easy, but not very obvious. At least not to me anyway. Unfortunatly the Adium website gives no instruction on how connect, so I thought I would put together a quick guide for accessing IRC with Adium in case others out there are having the same problem.
- Add a New Account to Adium 1.4 or later
- Add your screen name or username
- hostname: irc.servername.com
- Click Ok
- A chat window will appear. (This is the part that confused me.) Don't bother trying to run commands here.
- Instead go to the File Menu, and choose "Join Group Chat"
- Enter #your_channel_name. Click join, now your in.
Screenshots
→ Respond NowTags: General · Software
LESS/SCSS Syntax Highlighting in Dreamweaver
I started using less css a short while ago and really like having variables and nesting options for css. The only real downside was Dreamweaver's inability to apply syntax highlighting to files it does not understand. Thankfully the solution is pretty easy and takes only a few seconds.
NOTE: This technique modifies the core configuration files used by Dreamweaver so be sure to make a copy of the file and store it in a safe place until your certain things are working correctly.
We will be modifying the document called MMDocumentTypes.xml located here:
Macintosh HD/Applications/Adobe Dreamweaver CS?/configuration/DocumentTypes/MMDocumentTypes.xml
Windows users, the configuration file is called the same thing, and is located here:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Dreamweaver CS?\Configuration\DocumentTypes\MMDocumentTypes.xml
Edit the file in a plain text editor. You can use Dreamweaver if you like. You will need to restart Dreamweaver before the changes take effect.
Do a find for "CSS" and modify the either macfileextension="css" and/or winfileextension="css" to include the less file extension. it should look like macfileextension="css,less" when your done.
Also note. If you use Sass you can also add in the scss extension and use the longer scss notations, but the shorter sass extension offers no syntax highlighting since it does not contain the curly braces like css does.
Now save the file and restart Dreamweaver and open your less file and you will see all the syntax highlighting just as you would with traditional css.
→ Respond NowTags: CSS · Software
Redesigning the Desktop Calendar
Most people use a calendar of one form or another in their day to day lives. With so many people using calendars I am really surprised that nobody has gotten annoyed by their functionality to the point where they felt that they needed to rewrite the way calendars work. Maybe I am alone on this idea but stay with me.
It seems to me that the computer calendar was simply a copy of the old paper calendar. The ones that hang on the wall in your cubical with the last month still in view because you never look at the thing except when you finally remember to flip the thing to the next month. Yeah that one.
It seems to me that when designing the desktop calendar programmers took the tried and true route. They built the calendar to look just like our old trusty friend the paper calendar. Granted they gave us more views like week view, day view, and even year view. But I think their needs to be one more view. "Rolling Month View"
Rolling Month View is for people who like the birds eye view of the month, but also want to see the next three or four weeks in addition to the current week. The problem with the traditional calendar system is that if I am at the end of the current month I have to click over to the next calendar month to see what's going on in two weeks. flipping back and forth counting days, trying not to count those extra days that are dimmed out but added in there to complete the boxes in the grid.
I just want to see what's happening in the next week or two. I never care about what happened last week unless the police are asking me "Where were you on the night of…" Anyway, you get the point.
Below is a screen shot of my calendar for the month of May. Assuming today was the 25th of May, it is nearing the end of the month. Granted I can see a few days ahead, but what if I want to see what's happening the week after? I have to toggle to the next month. Meanwhile the calendar is happy to show me what I did 4 weeks ago. What a waste of space! And totally useless in my opinion.
Rolling Month View might be the solution. It continues to roll the calendar forward a week at a time so you always have the next two or three weeks ahead of you displayed in the familiar monthly grid view.
Here is a very rough screenshot for conceptual purposes. There is probably a nicer way to do the rolling calendar, but this took me all of 1 minute to put together. The point is, it makes sense even if the presentation needs some work.
If your a developer for Apple, or know a developer for Apple, can you please get this worked into the next version of iCal? I will love you long time.
→ Respond NowTags: Design · Opinions & Rants · Software · usability
Reconnecting Mac OS X 10.6.3 to Windows Shares
When Apple released their update for 10.6.3 it caused mac's to stop seeing or being able to connect to windows shared drives on the network. If you had a shortcut saved, you could still connect to those windows shares, however if you lost your shortcut—or were starting fresh—it seamed there was nothing you could do.
Previous versions of OS X showed your windows computers in your sidebar listed in the "SHARED" section. But not in 10.6.3. The other method of connecting to shared drives is to go to the "GO" menu and select "Connect to Server" (CMD-K) type in the IP address and hit Connect. For some reason Apple has defaulted the connection type to afp, which is a mac networking protocol. This results in an IP address like afp://192.168.0.10 That will not work for connecting to windows shares.
The solution is simple, change the afp:// protocol to smb:// and life will be good.
→ Respond NowTags: General · Software
