Useful Things You Can Do on Leopard

Let’s face it, when it comes to usability, there are no other OS that could come close to Mac OS X Leopard. Here are three useful things you might not already have known you could do:

1) Use Wikipedia right off Dictionary

Did you know that Dictionary allows you to browse Wikipedia articles? It renders them with beautiful and eye-pleasing fonts as well.

 

 
2) Search for Menu items from the Help menu

You gotta admit that when it comes to apps that are complexly huge, sometimes you get lost when you’re trying to find a menu item that you need. Fret no more, you can search for Menu items right off the Help menu!

 

 
3) Do simple Math calculations from Spotlight

Now you can calculate your taxes right off Spotlight. Simple, easy and effective.

What’s your favourite Leopard feature?

Versions App Public Beta Released

Geeks rejoice, Versions App beta has been released. If you don’t know what this is, it’s basically an SVN app that looks stunning compared to other alternatives such as svnX. Grab it, try it, and let me know what you think.

Adding Windows Shared Printers on Mac Using Hidden Advanced Options

Today I’ve discovered two ways to add shared Windows printers using unordinary ways. One is by accessing CUPS thru http://localhost:631 which I won’t explain in detail. Another is by accessing the hidden Advanced options when adding printers.

To access this hidden option, first go to Print & Fax in System Preferences, click the + sign at the bottom left, right click the toolbar right on top and you should see something like this:

Drag the Advanced icon to your toolbar and voila, there you go. Now you can almost any shared printers under the sky using this option. This is extremely useful when your Windows shared printer doesn’t appear when you try adding them.

To add a Windows shared printer, enter smb://IP.Address.Of.PC.Sharing.Printer/PrinterShareName as the URL and make sure Type is Windows.

One thing I note about this is it might take up to 10 seconds for the fields to un-gray so be patient. Got any questions? Feel free to post in comments.

Till the next tech tip, hope you found much use with this one!

Mac OS X 10.5.3 Update Has Been Released

That’s right folks. Hit up Software Update on your Apple menu. More info about this update on this page

Downloading the update as I type this.

Latest Growl Beta Fixes Many Things, Brings Back GrowlMail

If you’ve been itching to use GrowlMail in Leopard, then look no further than the latest Growl beta, 1.1.3 Beta 4.

If you don’t know what Growl is, you’re missing out on an awesome Mac app. It is basically a system-wide notification app. It is highly customizable and supported by a lot of Mac apps out there. If you own a Mac, you got to have this.

Growl Beta download page here