macBlogger - Apple Mac Blog

Macromedia made Captivate for Windows but they decided against developing a Mac version. Maybe they thought the screen capture marketplace on the Mac was too competitive?

Eh, well it ain’t.

I would have hoped that Apple would include a decent application which allows you to record your screen’s activity but alas they didn’t. I’m not sure why either. Especially when a lot of developers like to create video casts featuring themselves demonstrating their sites, etc…

The ideal features of the screen recording applicaiton should include;

• freeware or open source
• be able to record mouse movements and clicks
• be able to record voice
• export to avi, mov, fla, swf,
• be able to illustrate on the screen (ie. draw arrows on the screen)

Mmmm, is that a lot to ask for? If you don’t think so then you’ll probably love my last requirement. I would love if the application could swap between recording the desktop and recording through iSight at the actual user via a touch on the Mac remote control. Now that would be sweet.
Listed below are three applications which I’m going to test out in the coming days. It’s time to see if these guys are capable of satisfying my screen recording requirements….

Cam Studio 2 - Open Source

CamStudio is an open source screencast application cabable of capturing both audio and video directly of your PC screen - and store it for later playback. This is great for demonstrating how different applications, websites, etc. work and how to use their features. CamStudio outputs AVI files but is able to convert these to macromedia flash files (swf), so that the screencasts can easily be used on any website. Advanced features include adding of captions, video-in-video e.g. for narrator and CamStudio’s own loss-less codec, which provide sharp images while keeping the filesize to a minimum.

iShowU - 30 day demo - $20

ShowU allows you to capture and record anything you can see on your screen, along with audio from a compatible source (like a microphone) as well as any audio from the mac itself.

Snapz Pro X - Demo - $69

Snapz Pro X allows you to effortlessly record anything on your screen, saving it as a QuickTime® movie or screenshot that can be emailed, put up on the web, or passed around however you want. Snapz Pro X 2.x costs $69.

Here are some further selections available from Pure Mac. If you can recommend a better screen recording application, then please do so. Like I said earlier, I haven’t actually tried any of these applications myself but once I do, I will post my recommendations.

Whatever screen recording application you decide to run with, be sure to check out the following three helpful applications. Backdrop fills your desktop with a blank background screen so that your cluttered desktop won’t obscure your screen captures . FlySketch allows you to draw on the screen in a similar why to which a blackboard would work and finally, Boinx allows you to highlight your mouse movements on the screen so that the viewers can follow what’s going on a bit easier.

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!

It’s not only possible, but it’s pretty easy and darn fun! Here’s what you need to do…

First, open up Terminal (Applications –> Utilities –> Terminal) and type in the following, exactly as you see here:
defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES

You can just copy and paste from this Web page if you’re concerned that you might type in something incorrectly, of course.

You’ll get another regular system prompt within Terminal if it works, there’s no other output to the defaults program.

Now log out of your account by choosing Apple –> Log Out, and log in again (You need to restart Dashboard or do a killall Dock).

Ready for the fun now? Press f12 to bring Dashboard up, then drag one of your Dashboard widgets around. While you’re still dragging it around (that’s critical: keep that mouse button down!) press f12 again.

Poof! Your Dashboard vanishes, but the widget’s still visible. Move it to where-ever you want on your screen and it’s there, running, fully functional, without the rest of Dashboard around!

You’ll notice that it lives above everything else on your screen (at least, I don’t know how to push it behind other app windows) so I think you’ll have the best results with small widgets that can be tucked into a corner or lined up neatly on an edge.

To move the widget back into the Dashboard world, reverse the trick: begin dragging the widget, then, while still keeping the mouse button down, press f12, then let go of the mouse button. The widget will be restored to its regular Dashboard layer.

I just got this nice tip in my email and posted it on my personal blog aswell as to macblogger.
As people adjust to Safari 3, I wanted to share a little addition that’s helped me work more quickly: a cursor change depending upon a link’s target. If the link will open as is in a new tab, the cursor doesn’t change. If it will open in a new window, however, the cursor will change to a crosshair.

Open ~/Library » Application Support » Safari » userContent.css and add the following, then save:

/* Change cursor for links that open in new window */

:link[target="_blank"],

:visited[target="_blank"],

:link[target="_new"],

:visited[target="_new"] {cursor: crosshair; }

This works for Safari 2 as well — just create a file named mystyle.css (or whatever you like, ending in .css) somewhere on your hard drive, then visit the Advanced tab in Safari’s Preferences, click the Style Sheet pop-up menu, and point it to the .css file you just created. It should also work for any other browser that supports the cursor property and custom style sheets.

If you are a recent migrant from Windows to Mac you have probably spent some time staring at your keyboard in search of the ‘Print Screen’ button, I know I did.

Screenshot Plus is a free dashboard widget which allows you to effortlessly take screenshots of:

• your entire desktop
• a highlighted window/finder
• it allows you to cut out a selection of the screen aswell

Screenshot plus can export in png, tiff, jpg, jp2, pdf, gif, bmp, or pict file types.Mac OS X does come with built in screenshot capabilities but the system isn’t as intuitive as you would expect. It’s quite ridiculous actually. You have the following keyboard button powered methods available to you when taking a screenshot in Mac OS X:

• Command-Shift-3: Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it as a file on the desktop
• Command-Shift-4, then select an area: Take a screenshot of an area and save it as a file on the desktop
• Command-Shift-4, then space, then click a window: Take a screenshot of a window and save it as a file on the desktop
• Command-Control-Shift-3: Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it to the clipboard
• Command-Control-Shift-4, then select an area: Take a screenshot of an area and save it to the clipboard
• Command-Control-Shift-4, then space, then click a window: Take a screenshot of a window and save it to the clipboard

I copied the above commands from the excellent Mac Rumors website. I’m sure you’ll agree that installing the screenshot plus widget is far easier than running the above commands.

After a couple of weeks of getting to know Mac OS X I finally decided to install the ruby on rails development environment. I found some of the guides out there a bit flakey so I have compiled this guide for dummies. I wont go as far as to install MySQL on this occasion but may do so if anyone would like to see that in the future. Another topic that I might cover will be the installation of Apache and Mongrel as a replacement for the default webrick server which ships as a development application server with the rails framework. For now your getting how to install ruby on rails!

The first step is to take a visit to the Apple developer’s website where with a small search you will find a download for ‘XCode‘ This is a pretty hefty download (around 200 MB) so if you’re on a dialup connection, forget it.

The next step in this fairly painless process is to setup your system paths. This is is also pretty straight forward. Open up a terminal window and type in the following commands.

touch .bash_profile
sudo open .bash_profile - at this point you might be asked to enter in your admin password.

You will now be presented with your profiles file. This is where you can setup your sytem’s paths. Add the following line into this file.

export PATH=”/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/mysql/bin:/usr/local/sbin:$PATH”

Easy stuff so far eh? Save this file and then close it down. The next step is to download a few packages which are going to allow us to turn your Mac into a Ruby on rails environment.

Download Readline , Ruby and finally ruby gems. Save them all to your desktop and extract them there.

We will now copy these files into a more appropriate directory. Follow these commands to do so:

sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/src
sudo chgrp admin /usr/local/src
sudo chmod -R 775 /usr/local/src

Now copy the files into the directory you have just created(your file names may be different depending on the versions you download):

mv ~/Desktop/readline-5.2 /usr/local/src/readline-5.2
mv ~/Desktop/ruby-1.8.6 /usr/local/src/ruby-1.8.6
mv ~/Desktop/rubygems-0.9.2 /usr/local/src/rubygems-0.9.2

The next phase of our mission is to install Readline. The GNU Readline library provides a set of functions for use by applications that allow users to edit command lines as they are typed in. Both Emacs and vi editing modes are available. The Readline library includes additional functions to maintain a list of previously-entered command lines, to recall and perhaps reedit those lines, and perform csh-like history expansion on previous commands.

Use the following commands to install it:

cd /usr/local/src/readline-5.2
./configure –prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install

Now we need to install ruby. I dont think I need to go into any detail on the ruby language. If you’re installing it, Im going to assume that you have some knowledge of it already. All I’ll say is that it is superb

Assuming you have been able to take care of the above commands then fire off the following commands in your terminal to install it:

cd /usr/local/src/ruby-1.8.6
./configure –prefix=/usr/local –enable-pthread –with-readline-dir=/usr/local
make
sudo make install
sudo make install-doc

The next stage is to install ruby gems:

cd /usr/local/src/rubygems-0.9.2
sudo /usr/local/bin/ruby setup.rb
sudo gem update –system

Almost there. The last step is to install the rails framework on top of what we have so easily done so far:

sudo gem install rails –include-dependencies

That’s it!!!! All thats left to do is check that we have install them properly and that they work.

type:

ruby -v

If you get a response with the version of ruby installed then you have installed ruby.

type:

rails -v

As above, if you get a response then you have come a long way in your quest of developing your first rails application.

You have bought this beautiful new MacBook, but you are not sure you dare put your confidential documents on it.

Maybe you are afraid the machine gets stolen, maybe you don’t want your colleagues to have access to your financial data and private correspondation or maybe it’s stuff your children need not see and talk about. Or you have some large documents which you wish to put on CD, but should remain confidential.

If you have such a need for secured data then Mac OSX is your friend. OSX has the built-in capability to create encrypted disk image (dmg) which are just files but can mount like a CD. They are familiar since most software comes in the form of a dmg, usually a non-encrypted image of course.

In this article I’ll show you how to create such an encrypted image. I have included some screenshots of my Dutch version of OS X, but I have tried to use the english terms in my description.

You start with opening Disk Utility in Programs->Utilities.

Select the “New Disk Image” icon, as accentuated in blue on the screenshot. You will see a “Save As” dialog in which you can specify the name of the dmg file, the size, and the encryption to use. As the default is no encryption you should select AES-128. The size is entirely up to you, default sizes range from 2.5 MB to 8 GB, and there is an option for custom sizes.

Press OK and you will be prompted for the password with which to protect your disk image.

Press OK again and you’ll have to wait a bit until the image is finished. The image is then immediately visible in both Disk Utility and the Finder.

If you don’t need to image to be accessible anymore, “eject” it in the finder. If you wish to mount it again, click on the dmg image and you will be prompted for the password.

As with most OS X technologies it’s easy to use if you know it’s there. There are just so many usefull features. So if you know some other gems for OS X, don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

Duncan Riley of Techcrunch is after writing about Apple’s intention to intergrate iTunes into Bebo.

From Wednesday, Bebo’s 8.8m users in the UK and Ireland will be able to buy music directly from the profile of any musician who has a Bebo profile and whose music is available on iTunes.

It will be the first time Apple has linked iTunes to a social networking site.

More information available from FT.com .

Nice move by Apple to tap into Bebo’s popularity which includes an archive of more than half a million bands.