I haven't seen many people using the built-in Keyboard Shortcuts feature in OS X, maybe because there are so many full-featured third-party apps out there that do it better. Still, it's good for the quick and simple commands that Apple doesn't already have keymapped.
For example, I noticed in iTunes 7 that the main iTunes window no longer has a default keymapping, nor does the equalizer.
- Open System Preferences.
- Click on Keyboard & Mouse.
- Select the Keyboard Shortcuts tab.
- Scroll to the bottom and select "Application Keyboard Shortcuts".
- Click the plus button to add a new shortcut.
- Select your app and type the menu command you want to run.
- Close and re-open your app, if it was still running.
In the effort to post more regularly, I'm going to start posting these "Good Word" tidbits. The idea is to spread the word of various code tips and tricks that many people may not be aware of. (If you've heard of one before, or use it frequently, give yourself a big pat on the back.) I may or may not post the pros and cons of techniques, but will try to link to some supplementary material.
PNGs are often a favorite file format for icons, button images and all sorts of things. Transparent PNGs are transparent on ANY background color; fantastic for when your background color changes with the season, for example. PNG transparency support is already well-supported in Mozilla (Firefox, Safari), Opera, IE5 for Mac and a few others. Where doesn't it work? IE.
Here's the trick. IE has these semi-useless visual filters, one of which is AlphaImageLoader. Here's how to use it.
<div style="width: 10px;
height: 10px;
position: relative;
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src='image.png', sizingMethod='crop');"></div>
Messy to use inline, of course. Ideally, you would call the PNG as a background image from your stylesheet and drop the filter call in your IE-only stylesheet.
More info: Cross-Browser Variable Opacity with PNG: A Real Solution [A List Apart]
A la Ask's similar post:
Here's some valuables from my Dashboard:
- Dolor Sit Amet - Effortless lorem ipsum generator.
- Galleria - Search through the oodles of color palettes from ColorSchemer.com
- ColourMod - Color picker that spits out HEX.
- CSSTweak - Optimize your stylesheets.
- CSS Cheat Sheet - Is what it is. Quick 'n handy.
- WidgetTerm - Great for all sorts of handy uses. I use mine for SVN commands.
- DashTunes - A mini iTunes which allows for rating.
- Sound Volume - Between this and DashTunes, I can close the iTunes window and still have quite a bit of control over music stuff.
- Transmit - Good for those repeated image uploads. Requires Transmit.
- Ma.gnolia Ma.rker - Having recently discovered Ma.gnolia, I use the bookmarklet to mark sites in a rush, but I use this cute widget when I have time to edit details & tags in the moment.
If you haven't found Well Styled's Color Scheme Generator yet, you should hop on over there and try it out. It makes for a nice bookmark when you're looking for a quick hex color choice and need to shift around with various hues and such on the fly. Other spendid choices include:
- Visibone's Color Lab
- Also, if you're smart enough to be using OS X, you can use the already-installed DigiColor Meter's color picker to pick up RGB and HEX codes from colors anywhere on your desktop. (/Applications/Utilities/DigiColor Meter)
The problem when you take two weeks off of coding is that doing real work again is like trying to solve an equation while your brain thaws out of cryogenic sleep. Sluggish, to say the least.
