HeySage

In this episode I will show you how to create custom icons for files, folders, applications or whatever you would like within OS X (difficulty = hard).

You may watch the this episode here or download it via iTunes

In the screencast I use a number of applications. Although I use two applications that are not free (illustrator and photoshop) this process can be done by using all freeware applications. You may use any image creation and/or manipulation application but you will need:

1. Icon Composer (a component of the apple developer tools which comes with you installation disc) and
2. Icns2Rsrc

Here we Go!

Photoshop Steps

1. Open a new document with the dimensions of 128X128. Create your image within that document. You must make sure that you are in an 8 bit RGB color space so that you can save your image as a CompuServe Gif.
2. Hit ⌘⇧S (File –> Save As) and select compuserve GIF from the drop down dialog box for format. Choose an appropriate name for you file and then click Save.
3. Click OK in the indexed Color dialog box and make sure that the Transparency box is checked (Transparency is not necessary but it sure does look a lot better!).
4. From the GIF Options dialog box, select normal.

Icon Composer (Macintosh HD/Developer/Applications/Utilities/Icon Composer)

1. Open Icon Composer
2. Drag and drop the GIF file that you just created into each of the boxes in the image composer.
3. For the lower resolution icon versions you will get an alert asking if you would like to use a scaled down version. Select the Use Scaled Version button.

4. This warning will be followed by another warning asking if you would like to extract the mask. If you want your transparency preserved choose extract Mask.

   It is worth noting that you could create different versions of your image for each of the Icon sizes and drag those into the Icon Composer. This works fine, the only downside is that it is more time consuming.

5. Choose File–>Save and choose an appropriate name and click Save.

Icns2Rsrc

1. Hit ⌘O or File Open
2. Navigate to the icns file that you just created via Icon Composer and click Open
3. In the Enregistrer Sous: dialog box Choose a name and a location to save your file to.

Finder

1. Choose the application, file, folder or whatever you would like to change the icon of and get Info. You can do this by clicking on the icon to highlight it and then hitting ⌘I. Select the .rsrc file that you just created and get info on that.
2. In the Get info dialog box for the rsrc file, select the icon in the top left corner. It will have a blue highlight once selected. Key ⌘C to copy the icon.
3. Go to the info pane for the file or folder that you would like to change the icon for and select the icon in the top left corner and hit ⌘V (paste).

That’s it. You are done!

Technorati Tags: Custom Icons in OS X, Icons, OS X

I’ll keep this one short and sweet. There will be now show this week. I have had a long and arduous work schedule the past few weeks and I will not be able to put out an episode this week. I will post a show next week at the regular time. See you then!

Technorati Tags: No HeySage Show

In this episode I show you some of the new features of the Safari 3.0 Beta as well as some of my favorite old features. This seems particularly relevant with the announcement of the Safari 3.0 Beta for Windows and OS X.4 at the World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco.

You may watch this episode small (low bandwidth) or large (high bandwidth).

In no particular here are some of my favorite features of Safari (2.0 and 3.0).

1. Like most modern web browsers, Safari offers Tabbed Browsing: You may create a new tab by hitting ⌘T (⌃T Windows) in Safari. You are then free to enter any URL or even use keyboard shortcuts to access bookmarks located in your bookmarks bar. For example ⌘1 will load the first bookmark in the book marks bar (as of now this does not work in windows).

   Other ways to create new tabs include: ⌘clicking (⌃clicking windows) on a link to open a new tab with the link you clicked, ⌘⇧clicking (⌃⇧clicking windows) a link to create and select a tab of the selected URL, and dragging links to the Tabs bar.

2. Using the tab key to select text fields: You can use the ⇥ key to select text fields and drop down menus in any web page. You can take this a step further by using ⌥ and ⇥ to select links any given web page (OS X only). Like the rest of OS X, ⇧⇥ will select text fields in the reverse direction and ⇧⌥⇥ (OS X only) will select links in the reverse order.
3. Using the space bar to select items from drop down menus (OS X only): As you tab through a site you may open drop down dialogue boxes by hitting the space bar. You may select any given element by typing in the first few letters of the item and you can select it by hitting the ⌅ (enter) key. From here you can ⇥ on to your next form element.
4. HTML mail via Safari and Mail.app (sorry windows users): You can send HTML easily via Safari and Mail. All you need to do is navigate to the desired HTML page in Safari and hit ⌘I. Mail will launch and the contents of the HTML doc will be loaded as your mail message. The page title will even populate the Subject header. This is very valuable and makes sending HTML messages a breeze. You can even launch HTML documents from your hard drive and mail the contents without posting the page to a web server.

New Features in Safari 3.0

1. The ability to rearrange tabs: It is nice to be able to finally do this. All you need to do is click on the tab and drag it to your desired location in the tabs bar.
2. The ability to ⌘click and ⌘⇧click bookmarks that reside in folders in the bookmarks bar to open the link in a new tab: This feature has been in firefox for some time now and it is a much needed addition to the 3.0 beta (once again, sorry windows users, this feature does not appear to work within the windows version).
3. Moving tabs to new windows and vice versa: To make a new window from any tab all you need to do is click the tab and drag it down. A thumbnail of the page will appear. On both windows and OS X you can hold the shift key while letting go of the left mouse button to slow down the animation process. This is a great introduction for windows users to the eye candy that has been known to mac users for some time.
4. Resizable Text Input Fields: As of version 3.0 you can resize text input boxes within Safari. This can be quite helpful if you are planning on composing a length comment. To resize a text box just click the bottom right hand corner and drag it to you hearts content.
5. ⌃click (right click) the page header to navigate directories on the web site’s server: This can be very helpful if you get lost in a complex web site. Simply right click (⌃click) the page title at the top of the browser to view the directories of the site you are visiting.
6. Web Inspector: As of version 3.0 you can right click (⌃click) a link and select inspect element to bring up the web inspector. This tool allows you to view the node, style, metrcs and properties of the selected element. This is a wonderful tool for anybody that dabbles in web development or design. For this feature to appear you must have the Debug menu activated. You can activate the debug menu by typing the following command into the terminal:

defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1

Hopefully you gain something from this Safari overview. I have tried every browser out there and continually return to Safari. If you have not given it a try I encourage you to do so!

Technorati Tags: Safari 3.0, Safari Beta, Safari 101

In this episode I show you how to create custom alarms in OS X. In this example I extract an .m4a audio file from an adium sound package, convert it to an .aif, and then place the file in the proper directory. To wrap it up I make an iCal event with the sound as an alarm.

You can watch this episode here.

One of the my favorite things about OS X is the ability to customize things. With that in mind, I really enjoy using custom alarms. I have many alarms that I have accumulated over the years and I really enjoy them. I find them much more satisfying than the standard 10 or so alarms that ship with OS X (basso, submarine, etc.). Keep in mind that these alarms can be used in any application that uses alarms or system wide.

So before we get started lets discuss what exactly a custom alarm is. Well, all it is, is a .aif audio file. That means that you can create a custom alarm be converting any audio file into an .aif and placing it into the proper directory (~/library/sounds). Here are the steps.

1. Find a sound file and convert it to an .aif. In this example I use Quicktime Pro but it could easily be done using iTunes. To convert the non .aif file into a .aif using Quicktime simply open the file with Quicktime and chose file–>Export (⌘E), select Sound to AIF from the drop down menu in the export dialog box and then click Save (⌅).

   In iTunes (the default application for .m4a files) you need to go into preferences (iTunes –> Preferences or ⌘,) and select the advanced tab. Then select the importing tab and select AIFF encoder from the Import Using drop down menu and click OK. Then select the song or sound of choice and click advanced from the iTunes menu and then select convert to AIFF.

2. Now you need to take the audio file and place it into the sounds directory (~/library/sounds) in the library folder. To do so, in the Finder, go to your home folder (⌘⇧H) and double click the library folder. Then open the sounds folder (if it does not exist create the Sounds folder within the library directory) and place the new file into that folder.

3. All that is left to do is close any application that you would like to use the alarm in and reopen it. From this point on the alarm will be available in any application.

It is worth noting that there are a lot of really cool sounds within the package contents of various applications. To find them,

1. Right click (⌃click) the application or folder or whatever and choose show package contents.
2. Open the resources folder.
3. Look for sounds. There is usually a sound folder within the resources folder The sounds may be buried within another application which requires you to show the package contents. Just look around you will find them. By doing this you can use any sound from and application be it Skype, Adium, or any app of your choosing.

If you have any questions, comments, or a request please feel free to contact me at info@heysage.com.

Technorati Tags: How to create custom alarms in OS X