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Filed under: Utilities, Macintosh, Productivity

Switch applications in OS X just like you did in OS 9

If you were a Mac user during the pre-OS X days, back when the Dock was a twinkle in a UI designer's eye, you remember switching applications via the menubar. Open applications would all be listed, and you could select one to make it active, as well as selectively hiding and showing your apps. If that's the way you like your interface, you should check out ASM and multiXFinder.

These two apps offer OS 9-style app switching functionality, and there's not much different between them, except that ASM costs money and mutliXFinder is open source. One advantage ASM has is the ability to drill down and use each app's menu items, just like right-clicking on an icon in the OS X Dock. That's definitely useful, but leaving it out is an old-school touch that classic Mac OS aficionados can probably deal with.

[via Macworld Mac Gems]

Filed under: Design

Love Obama's slideshow? Here's how to copy it yourself.



Barack Obama's design team has garnered a lot of praise for their work on his campaign materials, including the official website. Heck, there have been entire articles devoted to praising their choice of typefaces. One of the cooler elements the Obama team has cooked up for their website is a slideshow-like animated list for front page navigation.

If you're a fan of this slideshow, and you want to create a similar effect on your own site, look no further than the aptly-named BarackSlideshow script. DevThought has come up with a bit of CSS and JavaScript that loads images and animation effects almost identical to the originals. Some users in the comment thread are reporting browser or plug-in specific issues with the script, so your mileage may vary.

Filed under: Features, Linux, Open Source, How-Tos

Flipping the Linux switch: Cairo-Dock is pain free eye candy

Cairo panel, really freakin' smallIt's a weird phenomenon. Nearly every computer platform steals another one's look. Vista gets accused of trying to look too much like OS X. Linux desktops get accused of trying to look like Vista (except when they're accused of ripping off OS X).

Well, okay, we guess really what that proves is that there's at least something distinctive and cutting edge about OS X's look. Love it or hate it, everyone seems to think everyone else is ultimately copying it.

There's no denying, the first time we saw OS X, our hearts beat a little faster when we saw the dock.

Until now, though, the dock concept was really sort of a nuisance to get working effectively in Linux. There is the Avant Window Navigator, and though it does the trick quite nicely, many newbies (or extremely busy people) said the tweaking factor left them wanting something a little less involved.

We've been using Cairo-Dock of late, and we really like it. The beauty of it extends far beyond the physical appearance. There are source packages, and there are Debian binary packages. Installing isn't that difficult. We even installed it, quickly and with great success, on a 64 bit system (and yes, we'll show you how.)

Read more →

Filed under: Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Productivity, Mozilla, Freeware

Tiny Menu: Save Firefox screen real estate

Tiny Menu the Firefox extension
Exactly as its name implies, the Tiny Menu extension allows you to compress your entire Firefox menu bar into one item. And, thanks to a recent update, that item is now even smaller. Setting up Tiny Menu isn't entirely intuitive, so I'll outline the steps to save you a bit of time:
  1. Download and install Tiny Menu (don't forget to restart Firefox)
  2. Click your 'new' menu (the M) and then select View > Toolbars > Customize...
  3. One at a time (not that you have a choice) drag the items from your Navigation Toolbar into your menu bar until there's nothing left in the Navigation Toolbar
  4. Click Done to return to the main Firefox window
  5. Again, click your new menu and this time choose View > Toolbars > and then uncheck the Navigation Toolbar
  6. Bask in the glory of your newly free pixels

Filed under: Business, Design, Developer, Internet, Text, News, Open Source

Walmart.com beefs up, adds open-source

Walmart
Wal-Mart has generally had a good-enough web presence online, that is for the most part helpful in finding products and priming the pump for customers to visit the store knowing what they will find already since they saw it online. I have used their website for a long time. Now, Walmart.com has had a face-lift, a make-over, and even to some extent, a make-under. Using open-source software, Wal-Mart has pulled the trigger on their reloaded web experience. New features include: the use of Flash for promotional spots and new flashy-popdown-menus to quickly find what you are looking for, which saves a lot of time having to click on each tab previously and wait for it to load. Alphabetical menus, a "what's hot" area, and logical product groupings make everything easy to find. Walmart uses OpenLaszlo and Flash technologies to accomplish this newly christened voodoo, making open-source a big component of their operation. One more thing, hub, the failed social networking experience is not a part of the new site, thank goodness. If you ask me, Wal-Mart should think about adding social product voting and interactive user comments on products. Turn the thing into a giant blog that the customer can contribute to. That would be something.

Filed under: Internet, Windows, Productivity, Web services, Yahoo!, Freeware, Social Software

Deliwin: access your del.icio.us bookmarks from the system tray

Deliwin - del.icio.us bookmark menu for Windows
As a Mac OS X user, I've written about Delibar, a del.icio.us bookmarks menu for the menubar, over on TUAW a few times now. But wouldn't it be great if somebody ported it to Windows, so PC users could join in on the fun?

Ask and ye shall receive, boys and girls. Deliwin is a Windows port of Delibar, allowing access to your del.icio.us bookmarks via the system tray. One of the nice features of Delibar/Deliwin is that these apps will obey a tag hierarchy; the first tag on a bookmark will be displayed as its top-level directory, while the second tag will act as a sub-directory. This might cause some del.icio.us users to retool the way they tag their bookmarks, but I welcomed the change and quickly became used to the advantages this brought to my tag labeling and organization paradigms.

Deliwin is donationware and available from the author's site.

Filed under: Design, Photo, Features, Windows, Macintosh, Adobe, Commercial

Imaging Tip of the Day: Customized Photoshop Menus

photoshop color menuEven if you're a nut for keyboard shortcuts, it can be easy to get lost in the sea of Photoshop menu options. Today's Imaging Tip is a simple way to edit and add some color to CS2 menu options to make them stand out in the crowd a little better: in CS2, head up to Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts, and check out the lesser-known tab called "Menus". In that tab you can completely customize all of your menus by turning on/off any of your options, or even adding a colored label to really give them that extra "bullseye!" they need.

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The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

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