My mac software/tweak recommendations v1

Yesterday I decided it was time to backup my laptop and reinstall leopard.

The following guide is the steps I’ve taken to get my Macbook Pro back to how it was set up before the format. I primarily use my laptop for web development so a lot of this stuff wont be useful to some people, a lot of the stuff is also just down to personal preference but I’ll include it anyway.

I will keep this list updated with anything new I add to my mac.

Also some of the stuff is Macbook Pro only, sorry about that.

I’ll start with a few of the OS settings I changed.

Enabled the 2 finger right click options in the ‘Trackpad’ section of the Keyboard & Mouse preferences
Changed the appearance to ‘Graphite’ and set the highlight color to a nice green
Reversed the fn key so you have to hold it to change the volume etc.
Customised the Finder toolbar so the actions menu is displayed
Set Itunes to use /Music/ as its folder
Installed all of the updates (there were flippin loads)

Applications

Ok now for the list of application I installed. The order they’re displayed is the order I installed them, which is really just the order that I remembered them.

I will also include the bundles – plugins – ad-ons and scripts that I think are useful for each application.

Some of these things will be explained in more detail at the bottom of the page.

Key:
£ means it costs money (usually not much though)
Purple underline means it’s useful for web development/design
Pink underline means it’s a link to more information provided at the bottom
+ is a link to a free alternate application.

Quicksilver – A flawless application launcher.

Set the hotkey to Command + Enter
Installed the BezelHUD theme
Setup an action for posting to twitter

Firefox – Possibly the best web browser available.

Set the download folder to /Download/ instead of the desktop
Changed a few of the about:config settings
Installed Web Developer Toolbar
Installed Firebug
Installed StumbleUpon – Mainly for ‘Web Development’ and ‘osx’
Installed Adblock Plus

Thunderbird is to email what Firefox is to the web.

Set the layout to vertical view

TextMate – The best text editor ever made. £

Turned line numbers on. View -> Gutter -> Line Numbers
GetBundle – a simple way to install TextMate bundles
Monokai – just a theme that I quite like (save link as then open)

Transmit – My FTP client of choice. £+

CSSEdit – A brilliant CSS editor. £

ColorSchemer Studio – Useful way to experemnt with colours. I can play with this for hours. £

MAMP – Really easy way to manage apache/MySQL/PHP and other server stuff

CocoaMySQL – A great application for managing MySQL databases. An essential app.

Plainview – Easy to use lightweight To-Do list application

Plainview – A really well made fullscreen browser

MindNode – A great mindmapping application

App Zapper – ‘The uninstaller Apple forgot.’ an essential app. £

Adium – a great IM app that works with a lot of protocols.

Installed growl when I was prompted after running Adium for the first time
Installed the MGS2 Soundset – The standard Adium sounds annoy the hell out of me
Installed the HUD theme because it’s very nice
Installed the White Bars status icons because they go really with wit the HUD theme
I’ve also set each contact’s alias to their first and last names so it’s easy to tell who people are

Skype – Good for voice and video chats

Quinn – Basically an amazing version of Tetris. (Just realised I forgot to backup my highscores. damn)

Reggy – Beautiful regular expressions tester.

iShowU – Good app for making screencasts. £

CandyBar – Used to change system Icons.

NewsFire – Really good RSS reader. It’s now free too!

Stuffit Expander – Another missing program for mac.

Utilities

These are apps and things that sit in the menu bar and make life just that little bit easier.

Visor – Quake style terminal that slides down from the top of the screen.
- I’ve got mine set to slide down with the F12 key. I’ve disabled the Dashboard so the key’s free to map.
Fluid – Allows you to turn your favorite websites into standalone applications. Damn useful
Caffeine – Keeps your computer awake.

FuzzyClock – Displays the time in how you would speak it, eg. “Twentyfive past two”.
Flip4Mac – Lets you play windows media files using Quicktime.
Little Snitch – Allows you to monitor/allow/block incoming and outgoing connections made by programs.
You Control:Tunes – A brilliant little remote control for itunes for the menu bar. The list of features is endless.
smcFanControl – Allows you to control a Macbook Pro’s fan speeds.

Commands & Scripts

These are just some useful commands & scripts that do a few cool tricks.

I’ll try to add more to this list over time.

Recent Applications Stack

Create a stack on the dock that contains the last 10 used applications. All one line

	defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add '{ "tile-data" = { "list-type" = 1; }; "tile-type" = "recents-tile"; }'

Disable the Dashboard

The Dashboard is probably the one thing I never use. So I’ve disabled it to free up the F12 key for Visor

	defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES

Can be enabled again using NO as the value

Show Full Path In Finder:

This is a useful tweak to display the current folder path in the Title of a finder window.

defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES

Restart the Finder using the command ‘killall Finder’

Post updates to twitter using Quicksilver

This is a really useful applescript that allows you to update twitter using Quicksilver.

I’ve not been able to locate the original source of this version but I think it’s the best available. I’m not too keen on the one that uses the key chain.

		using terms from application "Quicksilver"
			on process text tweet
				set wordcount to do shell script "echo " & quoted form of tweet & " | wc -c"
				set wordcount to do shell script "echo " & quoted form of wordcount & " | sed 's/^[ 	]*//'"
				if wordcount as integer > 140 then
					my growlRegister()
					growlNotify("Tweet too long", "(" & wordcount & ") characters")
					return nothing
				end if
				set twitter_key_account to "YOUR_EMAIL"
				set twitter_key_pass to "YOUR_PASSWORD"
				set twitter_login to quoted form of (twitter_key_account & ":" & twitter_key_pass)
				set twitter_status to quoted form of ("status=" & tweet)
				set results to do shell script "curl --user " & twitter_login & " -F " & twitter_status & " http://twitter.com/statuses/update.json"
				-- display dialog results
				my growlRegister()

				growlNotify("Tweet Sent", tweet)

				tell application "System Events"
					if exists process "iChat" then
						tell application "iChat"
							set the status message to tweet
						end tell
					end if
				end tell

			end process text
		end using terms from

		using terms from application "GrowlHelperApp"
			-- Register Growl
			on growlRegister()
				tell application "GrowlHelperApp"
					register as application "Tweet" all notifications {"Alert"} default notifications {"Alert"} icon of application "Twitterrific.app"
				end tell
			end growlRegister

			-- Notify using Growl
			-- Example: growlNotify("This is an Alert","This is a test of the Growl Alert System")
			on growlNotify(grrTitle, grrDescription)
				tell application "GrowlHelperApp"
					notify with name "Alert" title grrTitle description grrDescription application name "Tweet"
				end tell
			end growlNotify
		end using terms from

To get it working with Quicksilver you need to do the following:

Paste the code above into a text editor and change the YOUR_EMAIL and YOUR_PASSWORD to your twitter email and password

Or you can just save and edit this file

Save the code in a file called something like Tweet.scpt in the folder ~/Library/Application Support/Quicksilver/Actions
(make it if it doesn’t exist)
Set a trigger using the Quicksilver preferences page. Just search for the Tweet.scpt and set the to Ctrl+Opt+Cmd+T or whatever you prefer
Restart Quicksilver using the shortcut Cmd+Crl+Q

Firefox about:config tweaks

Because sharing is caring!

Open search in a new tab
browser.search.openintab = true

Set the list of address bar results to something smaller than 12
browser.urlbar.maxRichResults = 5

Enable spellchecking for textareas and boxes
layout.spellcheckDefault = 2

Disable blinking text
browser.blink_allowed = False

Enable middle mouse button pasting
middlemouse.paste = True

Disable the delay when installing addon
security.dialog_enable_delay = 0

Add more recently closed tabs
browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo = 15

Disable select whole url with single click
browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll = True

Enable address bar autocomplete
browser.urlbar.autoFill = True