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Is it just me or is the below message confusing to anyone else?

Okay, so Adium has been updated. - Grand.
Do I want to allow the updated version to use the same keychain settings as the previous version? - Yes.

So what should I click? Don’t Change or Change All?

I want to keep my settings so I should click Don’t Change as that probably means Don’t Change any settings …. or …… should I click Change All because that could mean to change all the keychain settings from the old version to settings I would like to use in the new version….Mmmm.

What did I do?

I clicked on Change All and it used my settings from the previous client.

Could they not just supply a Yes or No option instead of Don’t Change / Change All? System messages should be clear and concise and not confuse the user. I would have expected the rule of thumb of suppling a yes/no solution to a question to be followed in this instance.

Is the system message in this instance delivered by the Operating System or Adium?

Either way, it’s a crap user experience. The primary reason I clicked on Change All instead of Don’t Change is because Apple consistently place the positive button (yes, confirm) to the right of the negative button (no, cancel). Besides from that, I was in limbo and dreading having to remember my passwords for my messengers in case I bolloxed up.

I realise that Filezilla is still very much in early beta and as a result is very very buggy on the Mac. I’m constantly having issues with Filezilla crashing whenever I attempt to use the breadcrumb folder navigation. It seems that when I try to return to the root of the server the entire application fails and I get the spinning beachball of death before being prompted to reopen Filezilla because, guess what, it failed.

I noticed another issue today when using Filezilla. It doesn’t handle hidden files very well at all.

While doing a bit of web development this afternoon, I had to edit my server’s .htaccess file. For security purposes this file is hidden when you view your server’s root using Filezilla. In order to display the .htaccess file you need to click on Server and select ‘Display Hidden Files’ within Filezilla’s menu bar. Once you have activated this feature, you should notice the .htaccess file is viewable within the right pane (the right pane contains the files hosted on your server). All good so far.

I downloaded the .htaccess file to a folder named htaccess on my desktop. But when I enter the directory via Finder there is no file to be seen. I thought I may have made a mistake so I downloaded the file again, and again. Nothing showing. I had a rummage around Finder’s preferences and checked the view options but there was no option there to display any hidden files or folders. Eventually I opened up Textmate, my text editor, and noticed that there is an option to ‘open hidden files’ when you browse for a file to open. I opened the file and did my editing and saved the file.

Okay, so this isn’t ideal but at least I managed to edit the file after going around the roundabout way.

Now I want to re-upload the .htaccess file using Filezilla.

Filezilla doesn’t want to play though. It doesn’t display the hidden file locally on my Mac. This is because Filezilla inherits the Mac’s default Finder settings with regards to displaying hidden files and folders. Brilliant, I love feeling secure on my Mac!! It really helps my productivity!

So how do I upload a hidden file?

I googled around the Inter Web and came across a post by Rob Griffiths about running a terminal command to display hidden files/folders on your Mac. The post advises you to open terminal and to run the command - defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES -. Rob states that you will need to restart Finder in order for the changes to come to effect.

To make the command take effect, you need to restart the Finder. One way to do this is to hold down the Option key, then click and hold on the Finder icon in the Dock. When the contextual menu appears, select Relaunch and the Finder will restart.

If you tire of the dimmed folders and other downsides, just open Terminal and repeat the command, but change YES to NO, then press Return again. You’ll need to relaunch the Finder again, but when you do, everything will be back to normal.

So does this work? Yup, it sure does. And the proof is in the pudding. The pudding in this case being this screenshot of the .htaccess file on display within Filezilla’s local view (left pane within Filezilla).

This is fustrating as hell though. Now every system file is on full display. I only want specific files to be shown and I also want more control and to be able to interact with Finder in a more intituative manner. As far as I can tell there is no option to enable the display of hidden files for specific local directories. This is a right nightmare. There must be an application out there which can alter the display of files and folders in a much simplier way than running commands such as the one Rob posted?

And there is…

Show Hidden Files 1.5 is a small application which executes code similar to Rob’s to either display hidden files or hide displayed files. When you execute the file it refreshes screen so that is a bit annoying but only a little bit.

Jason Guthrie encountered the same exact problem with displaying .htaccess files. The difference between his encounter and mine is that he actually wrote an automator script to counteract the problem.
Apologies for going on a bit of a rant and I realise that it’s not entirely Filezilla’s fault. It would however make my life a lot simplier if Filezilla provided an option to overide the display of local hidden files.

Apologies for not blogging recently, but work has been hectic
Anyhow..

Spirited Away is one of those little applications which should really be a built in part of the Mac OS X operating system. The application basically automatically hides any applications/finder windows which are left open in the dock for x amount of seconds. I have Spirted Away configured to automatically hide anything I open, and consequently ignore for 60 seconds, minimised in the dock. It frees up space, and ensures your dock is kept as minimal as possible. It’s a neat little app (pardon the pun) and it’s free!

Since i always forget when they’re needed… here’s some of the os x boot keys that do stuff

Command-S Boot into Single User Mode
Command-V Boot using “Verbose” mode (shows all kernel and startup console messages)
X Reset startup disk selection and boot into Mac OS X Server
Shift Boot into “Safe Boot” mode, which runs Disk First Aid. A reboot will be required afterward.
Option Boot into Open Firmware to select a boot device
Command-Option-Shift-Delete Bypass internal harddrive on boot
T Boot into Firewire target disk mode
C Boot from the internal optical drive
N Start from the Network (NetBoot)
Command-Option-P-R Reset Parameter RAM (PRAM) and non-volatile RAM (NVRAM)
(mouse button) Eject (internal) removable media

ALSO: if you use open firmware password… you’ll need this:
Startup Manager -accessed by pressing the Option key during startup
Enter commands after starting up in Open Firmware -press Command-Option-O-F key combination during startup.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106482

How to troubleshoot a computer with Open Firmware Password enabled
If you cannot access the Open Firmware Password application and need to troubleshoot your computer by:

Resetting the PRAM
Starting up in Single-user mode
Starting up in Verbose mode
Starting from CD-ROM

Then follow these steps:

Start up into Open Firmware by pressing and holding the Command-Option-O-F key combination during startup.
At the Open Firmware prompt, type: reset-nvram
Press Return.
When prompted for your password, enter it and press the Return key. It responds OK.
At the Open Firmware prompt, type: reset-all
Press Return.

The computer restarts and you are now be able to reset the PRAM and startup in Single-user mode, Verbose mode, or from CD-ROM.

Recently a lot of Dutch ISP’s deceided (without warning) that they wanted to close port 25 connections other then to their own mailservers. By doing that they hope to reduce the spamload on the servers and lower the abuse complaints, and even worse ending up on a blacklist because one of their users fucked up.

But on the downside a lot of business clients who run their own SMTP server couldn’t send out mail anymore. A lot of clients had issues. Most of them solved this on my advice by changing their smtp port to a port above 1024, say 1025. Most of those ports aren’t blocked.

I had a problem, since i travel a lot with my mac i actually wanted the same but easy to install and easy to setup. I googled around and found what i was looking for, best of all it was free aswell: Rapido SMTP

What is Rapido SMTP?
This free utility helps Mac users set up a full SMTP mail server in less than a minute. In fact, RapidoSMTP allows you to turn on the Postfix SMTP server built into Mac OS X, which will allow you to send mail out the command line, from PHP, or from Mac OS X applications like Apple Mail, Eudora or Microsoft Entourage.

Installation
Installation is easy, just download the dmg file, and execute it. Be sure, if your isp blocks port 25, to change the post to a different number.

Is it possible with RapidoSMTP to setup an open relay?
NO. By default, we put the SMTP Open Relay as OFF. Like that, nobody can take control of your Mac and use it as a spam server.

Why RapidoSMTP is useful?
RapidoSMTP is useful for example when you move often with a laptop. You will no longer have to setup a different smtp server to send emails. But this product is also a great tool for developers. For PHP programmers, web designers, and other software developers, it’s often useful to set up a local SMTP server on the development machine and communicate with it through “localhost”. This is because you can let the local SMTP server do the job of communicating with a Smart Host, or set up the SSL connections, if required, or work with the DNS System, without your having to figure out what to do to effect these in your code. In your code, you simply talk to “localhost” and leave it to the Postfix Enabled-SMTP server to do the rest.

Testing your installation after installing and activating the SMTP server.
You can test this using Terminal. First, type in this command:

telnet localhost 25 (or if you set a different port telnet to that port)

If you see a :

Connected to localhost.
Escape character is ‘^]’.
220 iMac.local ESMTP Postfix

it means RapidoSMTP has successfully set up your Mac to send mail. You can type ‘quit’ at this point to get out of the telnet session. The in your mail.app set the outgoing smtp to 127.0.0.1 or localhost and you are done.

Questions ? Just ask me ! Robbert

A quick tip: Keep your download windows tidy. That will improve load time on both mac and windows.

Robbert