I'm away for the next 2 weeks so no tips. If you can't wait, here's a few sites to check out that have some good tips:

MacTips
iUseApple.com
Mac OS X Hints
Murphy Mac

See you on the 29th of July!

Zachary writes:

Hey... Is there anyway to keep the URL address highlighted when I start Safari? It would be so much easier rather than having to always keep clicking the address bar when I want to switch sites as soon as I run Safari... Thank you so much!

When you start Safari or open a new Safari window, normally the address bar is highlighted. This means that you can start typing an address straight away. However, if you have Safari set to automatically display your home page when opening a new window, the address bar is not highlighted.

For example, if you have Google as your home page, when you load up Safari or open a new window the Google home page will load and the search box will be highlighted instead of the address bar. If you type an address and press enter, it will Google search the address rather than just going to it.

So how do you solve this? Well the obvious answer is to stop Safari loading up your home page in new windows. You can do this from the Preferences located in the Safari menu. Under the General tab, set the "New windows open with:" menu to Empty Page.



But what do you do if you want to keep the automatic loading of your home page, or if you want to quickly jump to the address bar when you are already viewing a web page? The answer lies with keyboard shortcuts. As you only use the keyboard when typing in a web address, you don't want to have to move your hands to the mouse and click on the address bar before typing. Instead of doing this, simply hit Command-L before typing the address. You will notice that the address bar automatically highlights, ready for you to type away. The command is actually located in the File menu, as "Open Location..." and conveniently the same keyboard shortcut works in Firefox.

If you don't have any Safari windows open, Command-L will open up an empty window and highlight the address bar. This is similar to the function of Command-N for a new window, but Command-L has the added benefit of opening an empty window, even if you have Safari set to automatically open your home page.

As a bonus tip, hit Command-Option-F to quickly jump to the Google search box in the top right.

GarageBand is everything you would expect of an iLife application. It's intuitive and easy to use for even the newest users, and produces great results. While it definitely isn't one of Apple's Pro Apps, it does use professional quality instrument loops and effects and these can take quite a toll on your Mac. If you are using an older Mac you may find GarageBand is very slow and might even crash when performing certain tasks. Here are a few tips for speeding up things up.

1. Turn Software Instrument Loops into Real Instrument Loops. If you didn't know, Software Instrument Loops are green and have dots on the track while Real Instrument Loops are blue and have audio waves on the track. The Software Instrument Loops are more customisable as you can change the instrument that plays them and the notes that they play. The Real Instrument Loops are harder to change as they are just recordings of an instrument playing.


Software Instrument Loops take a much higher toll on your CPU. If you are using a G3 or G4 you might find that GarageBand crashes when you try to play a song with lots of software instruments. Using Real Instruments instead of Software Instruments will help you avoid crashes and make you Mac run faster, especially during playback. To convert, hold the Option key when dragging Software Instrument Loops to the timeline. This will turn the loops into Real Instruments.

2. Optimise for Faster Response. In the Preferences (in the GarageBand menu) click on the MIDI/Audio tab and set the Optimisation to what you find more important. A large buffer size will allow you to have a large number of simultaneous tracks, while a small buffer will give a shorter loading time for playback. This doesn't always give great improvements, as results depend on individual system specifications.

3. Lock Tracks. You can lock tracks by clicking the padlock button. This means that you can't change effects, instruments and notes, but it does free up your CPU and RAM by transferring the burden to your Hard Drive. After you have locked a track, click the play button to render it to your Hard Drive. The locked tracks will sound exactly the same during playback as when they were unlocked. This tip doesn't work as well if you have a slower Hard Drive and has the greatest effect when there is too great a burden on your CPU and RAM.


4. Hide the Track Mixer during Playback. Your Mac will be more responsive and run faster with the Track mixer hidden. This is especially noticeable during playback. Do this from the Track menu or press Command-Y.

5. Reduce the number of Tracks. While you might not want to delete tracks from your song, you can combine them. Once you have a number of tracks the way you want them in the final song, choose Export to iTunes from the File menu. Delete the tracks in your GarageBand project (you might want to save before you do this). Locate the file you just exported and drag it onto the timeline. This will create a single new track to replace the ones you just deleted. This process also has the benefit of converting the Software Instrument Loops to a recording.

Recently I read on Murphy Mac about how to create your own Quicktime skin. This is basically a border to go around your movie to replace the normal Quicktime window.

The thing I found more interesting than the skins though is that you can use the same idea to create a borderless Quicktime movie. What's even better is that you can make borderless movies with the regular Quicktime that comes with your Mac, unlike skins that require the extra features Quicktime Pro ($30 from the Apple Store).

Murphy Mac has a great screencast about creating Quicktime skins, but luckily it is a lot easier to create a borderless movie. It involves creating an image file and a text file to go with your movie, and then combining all three files into one borderless movie.

The first step is to find the dimensions of your movie. Double-click it to open it in Quicktime and press Command-I or choose "Show Movie Info" from the Window menu. The Movie Info window will show you the "Normal Size" of the movie in pixels. Make a note of this size.

Next, you will need to create a solid back image that is the same size as your movie. There are lots of ways of doing this, but here's a method that should be available to everyone. Download this image to your hard drive by clicking one the link and then choosing Save As from the File menu. Basically its a really big black rectangle.

Now you will need to crop it down to the size of your movie. Double-click on it to open it up in Preview. Here you can make a selection by holding the Option key and dragging a rectangle. Notice that a small box appears, telling you the size of the selection. You can keep adjusting the selection until you get it the same size as your movie. When you are done, Press Command-K or choose Crop from the Tools menu. Choose Save As from the File menu and save it in the same folder as your movie. Give it a name like "black.png".

The next step is to load up TextEdit and type the following lines:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?quicktime type="application/x-qtskin"?>
<skin>
<movie src="movie-name.mov"/>
<contentregion src="black.png"/>
<dragregion src="black.png"/>
</skin>

Replace "movie-name.mov" with the actual name of your movie. Press Command-Shift-T or choose "Make Plain Text" from the Format menu and then choose Save As from the File menu. Here's the strange part - put the file name as "borderless.mov". Yes, that's a .mov file extension on a text file instead of .txt. Save it in the same folder as the black image file and the movie file. Now when you double-click on borderless.mov, it will load up as a borderless movie! Simply hit the space bar to play and pause.

Obviously it is a bit annoying to have three separate files to achieve this. The good news is that you can combine them into one file, but the bad news is that it requires Quicktime Pro ($30).

If you have Quicktime Pro, you can do this by choosing Save As from the File menu with the borderless movie open. Choose a file name and make sure you save it as a "self-contained movie", not a reference movie. The resulting file will still work fine if you delete the other files or move them about, meaning you can send it in emails or over the internet.

Now why would you want to do this I hear you ask? Honestly, there's no big reason apart from your movie will take up a bit less space and look a whole load cooler!