If you have ever played around with the preferences setting in Firefox (by typing about:config into the address bar), you may find out that you can quickly and easily add them to the list. Deleting them, however seems to be a lot harder. Basic commands such as pressing delete (or any such combination) don’t seem to work, neither is a delete menu present. To combat this you have to go down a different route. Since the preference options are simply saved in a file, we can edit this file and adjust the results as needed. You may need to delete preferences if you know (for certain) that something is wrong, or you have added an incorrect preference file and want to remove it. Most incorrect preference files usually get removed after a while, however its worth making sure.

To delete the preference file open up Finder and find the following path:

/Users/[name]/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/[random letters].default

This stores a lot of your preferences and related files that Firefox uses. Within this list find a file called “pref.js” and open it in TextEdit or your favourite text editor.

Within this file you will find all of the user preferences that you set (not ones by the application itself, these are stored elsewhere). They take the format of:

user_pref(”preference.name”, value);

Look through the list and find the preference file you have added. To remove it, simply remove the line that the preference occupies. Save the file and restart Firefox. The changes should take effect and not be present when you type about:config in the address bar.

Its a simple tip, however I have used it once or twice when I want to delete a preference that I have added. If you have any more Firefox tips, please leave a comment below.

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Deleting Firefox Preferences On Your Mac

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This is a quick post about Mail. If you have ever copied an email address from any address field you will realise that if comes in the format of Name <email>. Although these two parts are quite useful in certain situations, it may be more useful to change the format so you just get the email address. This way you can copy and paste it anywhere without the need to do any special formatting.

To change Mail’s copy format, open up Terminal and copy and paste the following.

defaults write com.apple.mail AddressesIncludeNameOnPasteboard -bool NO

Restart Mail, and test to see if the command worked. Simply copy any address. Instead of being the name and email, only the email address will be present. I find this far more useful, especially when I need the address in certain situations.

To revert the process copy and paste the following into to Terminal.

defaults write com.apple.mail AddressesIncludeNameOnPasteboard -bool YES

Restart Mail again, and the format should be back to normal.

A simple tip, however I think it is very useful. If you have anything similar please leave a comment below.

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Changing Mail’s Copy Address Behaviour

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This is a quick tip that I would like to share with you. Its a handy short cut that can add a little bit more functionality to the recent items menu under the Apple menu item. If you have used this function before, every time you click on any of the items in the list it will load the item. For instance if you click on an application in the list, it will start the app, click on a file and the file will load and so on. If you press the Command key with this menu open, it will alter the menu state so it will take you to the menu item. This means when you click on the menu item a Finder window will open instead showing you the location of the recent item.

This can be useful if you want to open the containing folder of the item rather than loading it again. I use this option if a file loads and I can’t remember the original source.

There are hundreds of little tricks like this within the Mac operating system. Go around menu items and press Command, Control and Shift keys and see what happens. If you have any similar tricks, please leave a comment below.

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Find The Location Of Recent Items

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This post is going to be a continuation of a couple of old posts I wrote a while ago, How To Use Login Items and Speeding Up Login. They featured some basic and simple ways to remove login items. This post is based off one by OS X Daily, that found some of the other areas on your disk that contain the applications and preferences. I’m going to add a little bit of background to each of the folders (the preference files folder in particular), new users may end up deleting an important files located in the folders, and we don’t want that.

The first port of call is to check your System Preferences for login items. Before you go fiddling through all of these folders go to System Preferences > Accounts > [name] > Login Items. Check through that list and delete any applications you don’t want to run on start up. It may be basic but it is always worth checking.

System Folders

There are two locations where start up items can be located, the first is within the System files located on your hard drive, the second being in your User folder. The first set of files is located in /Library/StartUpItems, these files are used on start up when your computer is in boot. If you know there is a file or folder you want to remove since it is causing your trouble, delete it. Better still move it to a safe location and then restart to make sure the changes don’t do anything damaging. File located in this folder will more than likely be an application in one form or another.

The next step to check is /Library/LaunchDaemons, these are plist or preference files. They are essentially links to other preference files and applications. These files run on start up. To remove them from start up either delete them or move them to a different folder. If you don’t know what they do leave them be. Most of the time it is better to delete a file and then test it with a restart to make sure you haven’t broken anything. Preference files can be slightly difficult to understand however they tend to be formatted in the following way:

com.developer.program.plist

If you want to find out more, either google the program name and the developer to see which application it belongs to. More often than not it will be a defunct file which has been left, and it can be pretty safe to delete it. All of these files will be third party apps and not ones supplied by Apple.

Within the Library folder there is a second folder which contains a list of plist files. This is located in /Library/LaunchAgents, similar to the LaunchDaemons, these are plist files. Instead of running at startup, these run during login. These files apply to all users when they login.

We can now move on, this time into the System folder. First go to /System/Library/LaunchDaemons. This is another folder that contains preference files, however this folder contains a lot of system files. These launch daemons run at start up, so its probably not a good idea to delete any of them, as you may find your computer may not work on start up. Only go into this folder if you know there is an application which is causing you trouble.

Similar to the Library folder there is also a LaunchAgents folder. This is under /System/Library/LaunchAgents, these are system items that run on login. Similar to the the System LaunchAgents there probably wont be anything in this folder worth checking out, however if you have a problematic application that messes about on login you can probably trace it back from this folder.

User Folders

The majority of launch items are in the Library and System folder as mentioned, however these is one in a User folder. Go to /Users/[name]/Library/LaunchAgents. There shouldn’t be many items in this folder, these are login items specific to that user when they login. So if one problem occurs when only one user logs in an not another, the problem may be found in this folder.

Conclusion

Hopefully you have understood all of the specific folders that contain login and start up item. If you are confused there is a simple rule to remember. LaunchAgents are when a user logs in, file can be global (for all users) or specific users. LaunchDaemons are when your Mac starts up as a result there is no specific folder for users. Within these type types there is also system and application folders. Third party applications are found in the Library folder, and System items are found under System/Library. Most of the time third part files are found in the library folder only.

It can be quite complicated to find the correct location for a file. However look through all of the folders and see if you can find the required folder. Then either delete the file or move it, before testing the result.

If you have any questions or comments, please leave one below.

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Tracking Down System and Hidden Login Items

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Today’s post is going to show you how to install Xcode. This post is for people who are new to the Mac and want to try there hand at programming. The Xcode developer tools allow anyone to create Mac applications (as well as other cool stuff). I have recently begun learning the application and how to program for Mac over the last couple of weeks, as a result it seemed a good post. Xcode isn’t normally found on your Mac, so people who don’t know how to install it may find the process a little confusing.

The first step in installing Xcode is to have the binary files. The most common (and quickest) way to do this is to pop your installation disk into the slot drive and allow it to load. The second method is to head over the the Apple developer website and download it from there. You do have to sign up on the Apple website and the download is quite large. It is quicker to find your installation disk and run it from there. When you Mac loads the disk, select Optional Installs the from list.

Throughout this tutorial I will be running it from the install disk that comes with your Mac. The download process may slightly differ in steps.

Within the Optional Installs folder select Xcode. The other package in the list allows you to reinstall apps such as iCal and Mail to name a few, it also has language files and printer drivers to select. This is useful if you ever need to reinstall anything.

As you run through the installation you will eventually be greeted with the options to install different parts of Xcode. The essential package is always needed, however system tools, UNIX support, documentation and Mac OS X 10.4 support is optional. I recommend you install the documentation and system tools, both of these are quite useful especially the system tools option. The UNIX dev support is only need if you want to play around with some high level stuff. For more information read the little description box. If you ever find your need some of the products in the list you can always insert your CD again and reinstall the missing apps.

The installation process will then run. Depending on the speed of your DVD drive this will take about 30 minutes. Unless you choose otherwise the files will be places in /Developer, the root of your drive. I recommend this spot since it is in an easy location to remember and seems to come recommend by Apple. You can chose to install it in other locations, just select the option when it appears.

When everything is done Xcode will be installed. The installation processes brings across a lot of other files, most of which you will never need. However as you develop your applications you may find they become useful. The majority of the cool stuff is in Applications (where the main programs are installed) and in Library. Take a look around to see all of the new shiny programs.

When you are done your can begin writing your applications and using cool Mac technologies such as Quartz Composer. If you need a little help I recommend searching the web, as well as visiting CocoaLab, is always a good start as they have a cool eBook you can download. If you want an actual book to read, Xcode 3 Unleashed comes recommended and one of my readers enjoys Learn Xcode. I am currently reading (and will eventually be reviewing) Beginning Mac Programming, so I stay tuned.

If you have any comments or questions please leave a comment below.

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Installing Xcode

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Every so often I have PDF files, or have created a PDF file, and it needs slimming down a bit. For a long while I had no idea how to do this and would, for the most part, be stuck with a large PDF file that was always difficult to transfer. After a little digging into Preview I stumbled across two options which allow you to shrink the size of a PDF. Most of the time these two methods may not produce useful result, they may be as tiny as possible. However if you have used a program which isn’t designed for PDF (Word for some reason springs to mind) this trick might be useful. There are two options which you can use, both offer different results.

Both of the compression options are found in the Save As menu. First find a large PDF file that you want to shrink, any will do for this example. Go to File > Save As. In the save box there will be two drop down items. The second one is what we are interested in, Quartz Filter. From the drop down menu select none. This may be counter intuitive at first, however it allows the PDF engine to run and reduce any parts that it can. It doesn’t run any other filters. For the most part on an uncompressed PDF this will produce pleasing results. The image below show the drop down box on the Save As menu.

The option of having no Quartz Filter for the most part is sufficient. This can reduce the file size. This option is known as loss less, so it wont remove anything at all and keep things in high quality. This is needed for PDF’s with images. However for PDF’s with only text or simple geometric shapes to may be better to reduce the file size even more.

To apply a reduction in quality (however it still stays pretty good) in the drop down select “Reduce File Size”, I never notice it at first. This option will crunch images and remove parts of the PDF that are not needed, in a similar method of a jpeg images. There are slight problems with this method. Images turn out horrible and lose all quality. However for text and simple bands of colour it is perfect, and the reduction in file size can be massive.

Hopefully these two option apply to you. The first one, for the most part, doesn’t produce any decent results (one files size was larger) if the original PDF is made in Preview. However the second option always reduces the files size, usually by half.

If you have any other PDF compression tips, please leave a comment below.

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Compressing PDF Files In Preview

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Last week I did a detailed post on accessing Usenet on a Mac, it covered the basics of accessing Usenet newsgroups on your Mac. Today I am going to continue with this theme and do a detailed review of Unison, in my opinion one of the best Mac newsgroup readers out there. I am going to cover the basics of how the application works, and some of the nifty features. If you have a question or comment about the app please leave a comment at the bottom of this post.

Setup

Setting up and Unison is dead simple, you first find your login details from your Usenet provider, I recommend Giganews, you enter them into servers preference option. Once you you have completed filling in the required forms its ready to go and Unison will take over the rest. The set up option also allows you to fine tune the settings, for example you can set the amount of headers/articles to download, which is really good if you are on a slow connection. Within set up you can also adjust the number of connections and speed of download. I would change the number of connections from the default down to around 10, unless you have a super fast Internet connection, for me this allows slightly faster downloads. You can also adjust the speed limit, i’ve set this to slightly lower than my maximum connection speed so I can still do other things.

The preferences pane, where the majority of the set up options are located, has other features for the program. Unison handles binary files as a result the transfer options preference pane allows you to adjust how these are handled, how par and rar files are executed and where files are stored after use. The preference options also includes how messages are handled as well as searching and the rules which you can apply to articles and messages.

Once you have set up Unison you can now begin downloading and reading articles.

Finding Newsgroups

Unison 2 has a new feature called the “Directory” it is aimed (I think) at new users, to help them find the newsgroups they want, although experienced users may find it helpful as well. The directory is a collection of topics with links to the newsgroups. For example the “Mac” topic when selected will give you a comprehensive list of Mac newsgroups for your to use, “Business” the same. The 18 different topics allow you to access some of the main groups quickly and easily. Its a first port of call if you need to find something in a specific section.

If you want to delve deeper in to the Usenet world then Unison has a comprehensive list of the newsgroups available to you. Depending on your Usenet provider the list may vary. The “All Groups” section lists in order of popularity the newsgroups available to you. It is laid out in a similar way to the column view in Finder, with the main newsgroups on the left and sub groups in the column next to it and so on. Most of the time this is sufficient, however you can change the view under the “View” menu to list alphabetically.

If you know the name of the Usenet group you want to find you can use the search box. As you type (including all of the dots etc) the list will slowly populate with the newsgroups available to you. This is a very quick way to find groups to your liking.

Using Newsgroups

Once you have found the newsgroup you want you double click it an it added to the sidebar. As mentioned before the number of headers you download will depend on how many articles you can read at once (you can always download more headers if needs be). Every newsgroup article is displayed at the top of the page, in a similar method to an email reader. From the list you can view the articles in a thread view, so you can follow the article flow, for example you can see who replied to who. You can also view the articles linearly, so replies follow one after another.

Within the messages window you can also view the thread as an overview to help you can a better idea of the conversation. Another cool feature is the ability to view the whole thread in full screen. I find this more useful for long messages as the window at the bottom is a little small.

Within the sidebar you can order the newsgroups in which ever fashion you want. You can order them by either moving them up or down the list. One feature I find useful is using folders. This way you can order newsgroup in a way that is useful to yourself. Within the sidebar you can also set specific rules for each group. For example you change the server which the newsgroup uses, only really useful if you have access from more than one provider. You can also set if the newsgroup is loaded on start up (good for a frequently used newsgroup), as well as other minor settings. There is plenty of options which you can change and adjust to suit how you use Unison and Usenet.

Downloads

One of the features touted in Unison (and Usenet in general) is the ability to download files. Every time you open an nzb file in Unison it will automatically download the required headers and start the download. When downloading it automatically control how the files are downloaded, changing the file names as needed and sourcing the required files. Unison is also smart. You can start and stop files on the fly, which is useful if you ever need to pause the download.

Unison also has built in extracting and par support. Par files are small files which allow you to repair parts of the file list with out having to download the entire file again. This allows you to repair files quickly and easily, it app will only download the par files it needs to repair the archive allowing you to save on bandwidth. I’ve found this option to be particularly useful, however it doesn’t always work and I have found a dedicated par application such as MacPar, more useful in certain times.

If you do download a lot of files, especially from alt.binaries, the download options within Unison is very useful. It makes download and opening files a breeze.

Conclusion

To conclude I think Unison is the perfect mac application for accessing Usenet. It has that Mac, feel of being well designed and having an intuitive interface, but having enough features to make it useful. Most experienced users will probably find Unison different to use, however for new users or people who want a good Usenet application, Unison is the way to go.

There is a could of bugs in the app, i’ve found that there can be a couple of problems with starting and stopping download and it having problems with extracting archives. The application is constantly being updated so most of these bugs will probably get squashed in upcoming releases.

The application costs $29, which I think is a fair price to pay. There is a 15 day trail so you can see how the application feels.

If you have any comments on this app please leave one below.

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Unison 2 – Usenet Application Review

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Today is only a quick post i’m afraid, University takes it toll. Anyway, I wanted to post this site for a while but I have never got round to it. If you ever get slightly bored of the current icon stylings of your Mac, you may want to replace them. You could search the Internet forever and a day trying to find a good solution and a good source of icons but you may come up trumps. Todays post is dedicated to Yellow Icon, who specialise in icon design. I wanted to show you some of the cool icons that they offer and how you can apply them on your Mac.

If you head over to the downloads page using the link above there is a variety of styles which you can use. I prefer the “flat” icons and Star Wars icons as shown in the images below.

To download the icons, select the Mac download buttons below the image. You will be given a zip file which you can then extract. Depending on the style you may be given a variety of icons to use.

To use an icon in an application or file select the icon you want to use and press Command + I. The icons are currently are set as folders with the icon design as the folder, it’s a little confusing so bare with me. Once you have opened the new icon, find the application or folder you want to apply it to. Again, press Command + I to bring up the info window.

The next step is to copy over the new icon design. Select the icon you want to copy in the Info window and press Command + C to copy it to the clipboard. Then select the destination location and press Command + V, if every thing goes according to plan, you should have a new icon in your application or folder. If you hear a “dunk” noise and nothing happening you need to change permissions. As shown in the image below, unlock the application by clicking on the lock and entering your password. Then under “everyone” change to “read & write”, if your name is present you could change the permissions to “read & write”, it doesn’t matter. Then copy over the file icon as before. To be safety conscious, change back the settings to the previous settings.

You are now done, rinse and repeat until you have changed all the icons you want. If you ever want to change it back, simply select the icon you want to revert and press delete. The icon should go back to the original after a couple of seconds.

In total I wanted to share this icon design website because I really like the designs they produce. Many times I have seen icons which are not up to the Mac quality I expect. If you have any high quality Mac icon designs from similar websites please leave a comment below.

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Yellow Icon Design – High Quality Mac Icons

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A while ago I mentioned about monitoring your Internet connections with Little Snitch. Little Snitch is quite a complex application which allows you to block and allow certain connections, it also allows you to see which applications are connection to the Internet. Since the application does cost money after the demo you may be looking for a “free” version. Today I am going to explain a cool Terminal command which you can use to see which applications have connected to the Internet or your local connection in the last few minutes.

The first step is to open up Terminal. This is found in Applications > Utilities. When the app is open, copy and paste the following and hit enter.

lsof -P -i -n | cut -f 1 -d " " | uniq

When the code runs it will display a list of all of the applications which have connected to the Internet, i’m not sure how long it looks back but you can be pretty sure which apps have accessed the Internet or your network within the last 5 minutes. This is quite useful if you can see your connection saturated (for example using iStat) and you want to narrow down which application is using it.

The line above is split into three different commands, all which run at the same time. The first command, lsof, lists open files, if your run it on its own the command will list all of the open files which you make is using. The first modifying options, -P, will convert port numbers it is combined with -i, -i is used to list all open files on your network. Together they make it easy to see which apps are using your Internet. The final option, -n, is used to inhibits the conversion of network numbers to host names for network files. Both -P and -n allow the lsof program to run faster. If you run lsof on its own it generates a huge amount of output, so any time saving is appreciated.

The middle part of the code, cut, is used to trim down the result. The option, -f 1 makes sure the input from lsof is being used to cut the data, the -d option sets the delimiter, to choose which parts of the field to cut down. In the brackets the spaces are chosen as the delimiter, as a result anything after the first space will be cut from the result, you can enter values in between the speech marks to change the outputted result . If you run both lsof and cut on its own there will be a repeated list of applications, we now need to reduce this list further.

The final option, uniq, goes through the list, line by line and removes any duplicate bits of data. This cleans up the results and makes them slightly more readable.

Hopefully you understand how this little scripts works. The results aren’t prefect but they are pretty useful. Have a play around with the options and see what you can do. If you want more information on each section, in Terminal type “man …” replace … with either lsof, cut or uniq to give you more information. If you have a question or comment please leave one below.

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See Which Apps Are Using The Net With Terminal

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This trick I randomly came across while playing around with keyboard short cuts in Finder. If anybody has more than one input language with their keyboard, for example a Dvorak keyboard set up and a ‘normal’ keyboard set up, it can be quite useful to switch between the two inputs easily. I normally do this via the little drop down menu present in my menu bar, however there is a short cut which has some cool effects. In this post I am going to show you how this keyboard short cut works, how you can turn off the short cut for changing your input keyboard selection, and how to change it. This post is a small mash up of some small things, some of which may be new, some of which may be the solution to an existing problem of yours, which you may not know how to solve.

Changing Input Sources

If you want to use more than one language as you input source, for example the normal qwerty and possibly Dvorak, you can change this via the Language & Text > Input Sources option. Here you can select all of the different languages you want, simply check the tick boxes. This will add them to the list of input options for you Mac. It simply changes what comes out when you press a certain key. I used this when I knew quite a bit of Dvorak and was semi-useful, its probably better suited if you have the keys in the right place to start with.

Input Selection Short Cut

If you have more than one short cut it may be advantageous to switch between them. This can be done by pressing the Command + Space, if you hold down the short cut for a couple of seconds a selection box will appear. This can be used to scroll through the various selection. You can scroll either by the arrow keys or pressing the space bar, at all times hold the command key.

Although the image above is poor, it should normally appear in the middle of the screen semi transparent and looking awesome as these sort of pop ups do. If you press Option + Command + Space, it will cycle through the list backwards, however no input will appear. For the past I don’t no how long my keyboard input selection would randomly change without warning as I smashed my hands over the keys in random fits of rage. I never bothered to find the problem and fix it, and only realised today that this section of the System Preferences was causing it, as a result it can be quite useful to change it, especially if this is happening frequently.

Changing The Default Input Language Short Cut

Changing this short cut is simple, open up Keyboard in System Preferences, and select Keyboard Shortcuts. Under Keyboard & Text Input de-select the options at the bottom of this list. You could change them if you feel the need.

Conclusion

To conclude this post may not be useful to many people, however if you find that your keyboard input is suddenly changing this will probably be the problem. For ages my keyboard input would change and I didn’t know what was going one. I was really pleased today when I found the solution. I originally started using the keyboard input selector back in Tiger and haven’t looked at it since today, hence I didn’t notice the large keyboard short cut text showing the solution to my very mundane problem.

If you have a similar sort of story or a related tip, please leave a comment below.

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Change Default Input Language-With Shortcut

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Within Preview there are two options when you come to print that you usually take notice of. These are the “Auto-Rotate” and “Scale To Fit”, most of the time these options are sufficient for normal work. However, if you work with documents that are always the same or with documents that you don’t want to “Auto-Rotate” and scale, since they may be in the correction orientation and anything added just causes problem, you can disable these options. Normally the options preferences are remember throughout the day, and when you open and close Preview. However if you restart your computer you may find that these options reset. This can be a pain, especially if you have to keep removing these options and sometimes forget.

The image above, with the massive red arrows, shows what I mean. Removing the default is simple. Open Terminal in Applications > Utilities and copy and paste the following:

defaults write com.apple.Preview PVImagePrintingScaleMode 0

After hitting enter this will disable the “Scale To Fit” option within Preview. You can test the results by restarting Preview.

If you want to disable “Auto Rotate”, copy and paste the following into Terminal.

defaults write com.apple.Preview PVImagePrintingAutoRotate 0

Once again, restart Preview and the results should take effect.

If you want to reset this option simply copy and paste the following code into Terminal.

defaults delete com.apple.Preview PVImagePrintingScaleMode;
defaults delete com.apple.Preview PVImagePrintingAutoRotate

This will delete the preference files and return Preview to the original state.

A simple trick which I am sure some of you will find useful. This trick works in Snow Leopard, so your mileage may vary with older operating systems. If you want to learn more about Terminal either use the related links below this post. I also recommend Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual and Mac OS X for Unix Geeks, both are great books.

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Disabling Default Auto-Rotate & Scale In Preview

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Every so often I write a post explaining in a relatively large amount of detail one aspect of the Mac OS X core, in the past I have spoken about the Anatomy of Network Preferences, as well as various other posts. Today I am going to talk about Network Utility. Its a general purpose application which is found in your Utilities folder under Applications. If you haven’t guessed by the title its an application which is very useful for finding specific bits of information about your network and various other network utilities. It’s highly useful for people who are working with a network, and worth knowing about if you are not a network geek.

Most of the tools in Network Utilities and available from other locations, usually from the Terminal command line. The Network Utility app allows you to have all of the tools in one place and have an easy to use GUI placed on top, it also makes printing results (from File > Print) a lot easier. To access Network Utilities go to Applications > Utilities and double click on Network Utilities.  The app will take a moment to load and configure itself. Once it has loaded you are ready to go, you should have a window open which looks something similar to the image below. Note that I am doing this review from Snow Leopard, older versions may have a different layout, but the core functions remain the same.

Info

The main screen is very basic and designed to give you a general overview of your network connections. It shows you hardware address, also known as a MAC address and is useful for knowing if you want to give specific hardware access from routers. IP address, pretty obvious inclusion. The link speed and status is good is you need to know the speed of your network. Finally the model, is the type of network card including in you Mac or the connection you are using. This is useful if you need to solve hardware specific problems.

On the right of the screen you get some basic transfer stats. Most of the time its a log of the sent and received packets. If you are getting network problems, such as poor performance and errors its highly likely you are dropping packets or there are collisions. Collisions shouldn’t happen on newer networks but may be prevalent if you run on older or damaged hardware.

The drop down box at the top of the page is used to select the type of connection. You can switch between Ethernet, Airport and any other connections you may have installed. Overall the info box is good to peel off quick statistics about your hardware.

Netstat

Netstat is really only useful for the hardcore administrators who need to figure out what is happening with the networks. For the every day person, such as myself, its not really needed. However if you need to learn a little bit more about your network or are just wondering what is going on, Netstat can provide a wide variety of information.

Netstat has four different states, with the information shown in the bottom half of the window. The routing information shows which IP addresses have connected to your Mac and how they are linked. Its quite complicated on how it works and more information can be found here.

The network statistics (second option) is quite interesting, it shows a lot of information on what you network is doing. It gives details such as the packet sent and received as well as various other statistics relating to network transfer. It is useful if have problems with your network or want to troubleshoot what is happening with your packets. Most of the time, it useful to look at, in a similar manner to the multicast information button.

The final option, socket connections, shows you which IP addressed you are connected to. This includes open ports and open connections. This is useful for snooping in on what is happening when you use your network.

Ping

The ping option is very simple. If you want to see if a web server or IP address is up and running you can use the ping option to see if it is alive. When you enter a web address or IP address, the ping option will see if it alive and return a message. If there is no reply you can assume the server or computer at the other end is offline or not accepting pings. This option is very useful if you find a website is down and want to see if it is running or not.

Lookup

The look up option is, again, used for people who need specific information about a server. The look up option gives you information on a server just as IP address, DNS server plus any other information if the server or computer is allowing that information to be sent. To find information on a server, enter an address, select “Any/All information” from the drop down list and press Lookup. The box will return any information it knows about the server you are trying to look up.

Traceroute

Traceroute and ping go hand in hand. Ping is used to see if the server is alive, traceroute is used to see the path to the final server. If you have a slow connection to a computer or server it may be worth seeing where the lag is in the network. I use this at home and on mini LAN’s to see the routes packets take. Simply type and address in the box, IP or otherwise, and press the button. The trace route will then run. It will take a fare bit of time and bandwidth but it will show every hope and jump it takes to reach the final server. The numbers on the right of the list is the time taken, anything around 100 to 300 ms is a good value. Anything in the thousands usually means a hold up. If you run this in a local network you can see where the hold up is by looking at the IP address and linking this to a piece of hardware.

Traceroute is very good at trouble shooting slow networks, its also very good at seeing how complicated the internet is and how many different routes a packet of data can take. For example from my computer to my server hosting this site takes 23 hops. This means it goes though 23 different bits of hardware and cables to get to its destination. From Sheffiled to my website in the USA a packet goes to the main switch in my block, the main servers for my Uni network, then around (what I think) is an education network within Britain. This packet is then bounced north to Leeds where it flys round a bit before going down to London. After taking a trip around London it enters the main exchange for the UK, where it flies across the Atlantic. When in America it goes through nine different routers before it enters my servers data centre, before finding my server and then my website. A long route done in (what is normally) about a second or two.

I can spend all day seeing where my packets go, and what connections it uses. Playing a side it is good to see where hold up’s are and if it is possible to correct them.

Whois

If you want to find the information behind a website the best way to do this normally is through the contact form a website provides. However if one doesn’t exist, and you need one for legal reasons or otherwise, the Whois is the way to go. With this enter a website and then pick a Whois server. I recommend adding “whois.godaddy.com” to the server box if you don’t get any meaningful results.

Finger

Finger is a very old protocol which was originally designed to find information about a user on a network. Nowadays its not really used due to security and other concerns. However you can find information on your network if you type your name into the box. Although I haven’t tested it it will probably work for other users on your Mac and small home network. Overall this is one option you can probably ignore.

Port Scan

The final option within Network Utility is the port scan option. This is used when you have ports open so can receive requests from other people. This usually includes the “Sharing” options within System Preferences. Any options which you have selected will usually show up here. I like to use this utility to find vulnerabilities and open ports on my Mac and other computers within the network. You can use it on other computers over the net however you usually don’t yeild useful results. I don’t have any ports open so the image below doesn’t show much information.

Conclusion

To conclude Network Utilities has a lot of options. For most people you only really need to use Ping, Traceroute, Whois and occasionally Port Scan. Have a play around with the app and see what information you can yield from it. Its good fun to play with, especially the Traceroute.

If you want to lean more about networking and TCP/IP there are plenty of resources. One of the best is to search the internet to see what you can find. If you like your information in a book there is plenty of resources out there, some good ones include TCP/IP For Dummies for general networking stuff and Mac OS X Unix Toolbox as a general Unix guide. A lot of the actions in Network Utility can be done through Terminal.

If you have any questions or comments please leave a comment below.

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Looking In Detail At Network Utility

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1. Troubleshooting Your Network
2. Network Tips For Your Mac – Noob2Pro #24
3. Disable Your Network Connections

Usenet goes back. Way back. Its one of the oldest and most popular protocols on the internet. In a nutshell, Usenet is a service which allows you to access articles post by people like you and me over the internet. Since this information is spread world wide and most importantly it is the same, you can access a bustling community of enthusiasts (of every kind) in a quick and easy manner. I wanted to bring up how to access Usenet because there is a large community of Mac users using the service, which is great for learning new things and asking your questions. I have done a post previously on this site about accessing Usenet, but I am going to updated version here with more detail, as a request from one of you guys who contacted me.

Put simply, Usenet is a way of sending and spreading information. Imaging the Usenet network as a forum, every time you make a post this information is spread world wide where everyone else can receive that post. Post are made into Newsgroups. Each Newsgroup is a on a specific topic (such as a specific forum), these vary from information about Mac (which I will post about later), to science, sci-fiction related and to the legality ambiguous alt.binaries.* where you can get the latest movies, TV shows and everything in between. The advantage of this is easy access and the ability for everyone to see the same thing. You don’t need to find the specific website as you do with modern forums. If you want to learn more about Usenet, read the wikipedia article or read a couple of books from Amazon, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Usenet Newsgroups and Managing Usenet are old books but still relevant. I use Usenet to read up on the latest news in my area, in my university field and ask and solve questions about Mac related stuff. Hopefully by the end of this guide you can do the same.

Set Up

To get access to the Usenet network you need a newsgroup provider, these are the companies which allow you to access the information. You can’t access newsgroups from a web browser. Most ISP’s offer newsgroup access of some form or another so I recommend you go searching through the help pages, beware that ISP’s can drop certain newsgroups and and not store all of the articles, so you may not be getting a of the available articles. If you have and ISP which doesn’t offer it, I recommend you buy access. It only costs a couple of dollars a month. My favourite is GigaNews, cheap price and good access as well as a free trial which I recommend you sign up with. I’m only on the cheap Bronze package since I don’t download much data. The more you download the bigger the package, stuff like binary files take up a lot of bandwidth. If you just want it for browsing articles a lower package will suffice. Note that the retention is how longer the newsgroup provider keeps the articles. The longer the retention the further back you can go and the more you can read. A short retention may mean an story or article you are reading may get cut off or deleted before you have finished reading it. Especially if its a busy newsgroup.

At this point you have your newsgroup login details and you are ready to access some articles. For this tutorial I am going to use Unison. I’ve found that it is one of the best Usenet applications. Others include Mozilla Thunderbird, Gemini or Binbot for grabbing binary files. There are plenty of apps out there, a quick Google search will probably bring up a lot more. I recommend Unison since it is the best one I have tried and has everything you will need. Its also one of those really well designed Mac apps that you expect on your Mac.

Adding your login details to Unsion (or other readers, for this tutorial I am going to use Unsion) is simple.  Go to File > Preferences > Servers and enter your details. Give it a nickname, then enter the server address, password and port. SSL is only needed if you have a restrictive ISP who likes to filter and slow traffic. The number of connections refers to how many open lines there is to the server. In theory the more connections the faster the download since the server can give you more information. However too many connections can lock up your router and give you a large overhead of extra unneeded data, especially if you have a slow connection. The “limit to” box is used to limit your connections, since newsgroup access will saturate your connection you may want to limit this value to stop you downloading to much data.

You are now ready to start accessing newsgroups and articles. In Unison either go to directory and select a category such as “Mac” and then select a newsgroup underneath. Newsgroups are organised in a funny manner, for example a Mac newsgroup may be comp.sys.mac.apps. To find a newsgroup of your liking, use the directory function and search through the various lists or use the “All Groups” function to look and search through the hierarchy. It will take you a while to figure out where everything is, exploring is usually the best way to find information. But once you have selected a newsgroup you can read through what people are saying and join in the conversation. Note, that when you select a newsgroup you have to download the “headers” this is the information such as what articles are called, who has responded and  various other bits of information. You need to download headers to view a newsgroup, however they don’t take long to download. You also only need to download the headers once and any new headers. Large groups get updated frequently so you may find you are downloading a lot of information. To limit the header download go to Preferences again and change the header load count. Anywhere between 5000 and 10000 is satisfactory.

In the screen shot above the newsgroups are on the left, i’ve subscribed to many groups on things I am interested in. Note that the large numbers is due to all the new responses and may note represent new articles. The main window shows all of the new articles and vary on topic, however they usually represent topic and conversation, depending which newsgroup you are in. You can read them like an email/forum and reply in the same way. In a couple of days I am going to post about Unison in more detail. In the mean time simply search the web on how to use newsgroups for more information.

Mac Usenet Newsgroups

If you are stuck on some things to read there plenty of groups out there. Some Mac specific ones are below. If you want to access them the quickest way is to type them into the search box in the “All Groups” section of Unison or search the “All Groups” section manually.

• uk.comp.sys.mac
• comp.sys.mac.comm
• comp.sys.mac.advocacy
• comp.sys.mac.apps
• comp.sys.mac.misc
• comp.sys.mac.portables

For readers who are in Europe and speak the specific languages:

• de.comp.sys.mac.misc
• nl.comp.sys.mac
• pl.comp.sys.macintosh
• fr.com.sys.mac

There is plenty of content out there and it is all updated very regularly by new users. Those groups are just the nutshell and you can access more from the “All Groups” or the directory in Unison. If you are into downloading binary files you will need to find the required files on sites such as NZBClub. An NZB files is used to group specific files (found in Usenet groups) so they can be easily downloaded. This is only used for binary files such as TV Shows, Music, Movies etc and you don’t need it if you only reading information. I don’t recommend it since most of the binary files are illegal. Unison does, however support binary files off the bat with no need to do anything special.

Conclusion

To conclude Usenet is a great way to access information an articles. If you have a Mac question and want a large audience to access it, Usenet is a way to go, remember to ask it in the right newsgroup. All you need is a newsgroup provider such as GigaNews and a little know how and you are ready to go. There is a lot of information out there and it will take you a while to get your head around it. But it is worth it in the end for the amount of stuff you can learn. There are hundreds, if not thousands of groups which you can access on nearly everything. Its great for hobbies, i’m into photography and there is some great groups to help you learn and discuss ideas. With Unison as your Mac app it couldn’t be simpler.

If you have questions or comments please leave a comment below.

Please note: I have an affiliate link to Giganews. This helps me keep this site up and running. Thanks. James

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How To Use Usenet Newsgroups On A Mac

Related posts:

1. Unison 2 – Usenet Application Review
2. Configuring Usenet

A few months ago I mentioned about Taking Time Lapsed Screen Shots With Terminal, it was a script which would take a screen shot every couple of seconds of your desktop. This is useful if you are taking a time lapse movie, but it is not useful if you actually want to show people videos of your desktop. I have previously written a post on iShowU which can take movies of you desktop. This post will show you how you can do this for free using QuickTime Player which comes with Snow Leopard.

To capture your desktop video open QuickTime Player in your Applications folder. Then from your File menu select “New Screen Recording”. This will open up a little widget with a record button as shown in the image below. From the down arrow you can select a couple of options, first the sound input. If you want to select your audio which your computer makes you can either use a Male to Male cable and plug it in your input and output on your Mac or you can download and install SoundFlower, which allows you to pass audio into QuickTime. Other options from the flippy down arrow include the quality and the save location.

When you are ready you can start recording. Press the little red record button and it will start recording what ever is on your screen. When you have finished recording press the stop button in your Menu Bar.

Once as you press stop QuickTime will do a little bit of processing and your video will be available to view. Note that it will record at what ever your screen resolution is set to, as a result it will more than likely produce a large HD video, which is really good for playing back but not that useful if you want to share with your friends. So its worth trimming the video before you compress it, this way you have the least amount of video to compress. To trim the video go to Edit > Trim and cut out the beginning and end of the video to what you want. Every bit you cut off is less you have to compress down the line making the final video file smaller.

When you have trimmed your video you can now save it for final use, although the final video is already saved in your Movies folder (or other location if you specified it) its worth compressing the video. Go to File > Save As or File > Save For Web. The former is good for saving for use on your computer, since you can select 480p resolution, among a variety of others. The latter is good if you plan on putting it on the web. Have a look at the settings and pick on which you think is suitable for you. If you want more options it may be worth opening the movie in the older version of QuickTime and using that apps options.

There you have it. Capturing your desktop as a video couldn’t be simpler. If you want to learn more about QuickTime I recommend Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual or Apple Pro Training Series: QuickTime Pro. There are many resources out there so look around.

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Capture Your Screen With QuickTime

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This is going to be a quick tip for any users who regularly use iCal. When you create a new event, either in the day, week or month viewer  you will realise that the length of the event is one hour long, for most people this is fine. However if you regularly have meetings which are half an hour long, or book rooms for two ours at a time, it may be beneficial and more efficient to adjust the default meeting time. This means you don’t have to fiddle around with the length slot if you regularly use the same event length.

This trick, as many tricks on this site do, uses Terminal. Open it up from Applications > Utilities. Then type or copy and paste, the following and hit enter.

defaults write com.apple.iCal 'Default duration in minutes for new event' 15

This will change the default event length to 15 minutes. To see the results re-open iCal if you already have it open. The number at the end represents how long the new iCal event will be. You can change this to any length you want, 10 for ten minutes in length or 120 for two hours in length. Don’t make it too small otherwise it may be difficult to see the event in iCal. For example if you set the iCal event to 1 minute long, all you will see is a small strip in iCal and you may find it difficult to adjust the time.

If you want to reset it back to the default time of one hour, simply change the value to 60. You could delete the preference option with this command:

defaults delete com.apple.iCal 'Default duration in minutes for new event'

Again, restart iCal to see the effect. Note that if you don’t restart it will take about 10 minutes for the preference to kick in. Restarting allows you to see the effect straight away.

If you have any questions of comments please leave a comment below. If you want to find out more iCal tricks, either use the related links below. If you fancy a cool book to ready with lots of tips and tricks I recommend Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual. Its a good book with plenty of tricks.

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Change Default iCal Event Length

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Normally Front Row, Apple’s multimedia interface which I haven’t used in a long time, is accessed by either pressing the keyboard short cut, using the Apple remote or clicking on the applications icon in Finder. I have found that using the short cut (Command + Escape) is a bit cumbersome, I also end up pressing it every so often while I am working. If you don’t use Front Row it can be a good idea to disable to short cut to stop being interrupted by the application starting up.

Disabling Front Row’s short cut is very simple. It involves going into the system wide keyboard short cut preferences and removing the option. To access this go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Front Row. Within this option simply un-check the box denoted by the big red arrow in the image below. If you still want to use a short cut but one that is different, you can change it by double clicking on the short cut on the right hand side of the option.

If you have an Apple Remote, either the new one or old one, you can disable it. This can be used to disable access to Front Row and any app for which the remote uses. This can be useful if you have a family member or pet that likes to play with your remote while you are using your Mac. To disable the remote go to System Preferences > Security > General and check the button at the bottom of the list that says “Disable remote control infrared receiver”.

Your remote will now not work with your Mac, simply un-check the box to re-enable your remote.

A simple trick today, however one I know doubt you will find useful at some point.

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Disable Front Row’s Keyboard Short Cut

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Yesterday I wrote a post on the calendar function in Terminal, its designed as a two part series, with the second part being about the date function. I found in bash scripts the two functions sort of work hand in hand. This post is going to show you some of the main features of the date function. The date function is more versatile in that you can easily pick out the piece of information you want, the week of the year, day of the year etc, the calendar function is more graphical. The date function can be used to set the date in your Mac, however I will not be going into this today as I prefer to use System Preferences (to find out more about setting the date use the man help page).

Before we start I would like to point out a couple of cool books on Amazon which may be of use if you want to pursue this type of programming. My favourite is Mac OS X Unix Toolbox although there is a variety on Amazon.

The date function is accessed in Terminal simply by typing date this will display something similar to the following.

Sun 31 Jan 2010 20:58:03 GMT

That’s useful on its own. However if you are using a bash script any want something specific the default format displayed by ‘date’ is a bit basic. As a result we are going to use some formatting options to pick apart the date function and allow use to display what we want. This is done using the following:

date '+%A'

The previous code will display the long hand day of the week, eg “Sunday”. What is important to note is the %A, these can be a variety of options which I will discuss in a minute. Anything that doesn’t have an ampersand before the letter will be displayed by text, the single quote marks and the plus sign need to be added otherwise the script will result in an error, any other text added will be displayed in full.

There are a variety of format options which can be used. A more comprehensive list can be found here, the best ones are below.

%a = Short date, Sun
%A = Long date, Sunday
%b = Short Month, Feb
%B = Long Month, February
%d = Day of the month
%D = Date such as %m/%d/%y
%H = Hour in 24 hour format (00..23)
%I = Hour in 12 hour format (01..12) (this can be used with %p to append Am or PM)
%j = Day of the year
%m = Month in number format (01..12)
%M = Minute (00..59)
%p = Locale either AM or PM
%S = Second
%u = Day of the week
%V = Week number of year with Monday as first day of week (01..53)
%Y = Year
%z = Numeric timezone (e.g., -0400) or %Z with timezone abbreviation.

You can also use %t, for a tab and %n for a new line. Combining these together you can produce something quite useful. The following:

date '+The Current Time:%nYear: %Y%nMonth: %m%nWeek: %V%nDay: %A (%d of the month, %j of the year)%nHour: %H%nMinute: %M%nSecond: %S'

Will produce:

The Current Time:
Year: 2010
Month: 01
Week: 04
Day: Sunday (31 of the month, 031 of the year)
Hour: 21
Minute: 13
Second: 59


Very interesting if you want to use it in GeekTool or a script. You can mix and match any of the options to produce what you want. Note that the more options you use the long it can take to work out. I have a feeling your Mac works everything out from the initial date (the time is stored in seconds so the original t value = 0), so the more options you have the longer it will take to run.

Highlight the Current Date In GeekTool

You can use the date function to run with the cal function to highlight the current date in GeekTool (even in Terminal). I didn’t make this code I found it here. You can play around with the code to produce different results. You can change the colour with the colour codes, these can be found at the bottom of the page here.

cal_head=`cal | head -1`; cal_tail=`cal | tail -7`; today=`date "+%e"`; echo "$cal_head"; echo -en "${cal_tail/${today}/\033[1;32m${today}\033[0m}";

Conclusion

The date function is very versatile can be used to give a lot of information. Its good for displaying information and working out factors based on the current time. If you have any tips or tricks please leave a comment below.

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Working With The Date Function In Terminal

Related posts:

1. Working With The Calendar Function In Terminal
2. Back Date A File Using Terminal
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Today and tomorrows post will be a two part mini-series on the date and calendar function within Terminal on your Mac. If you are ever into scripting or working with GeekTool (I have an old post about GeekTool here) it may be very useful to learn how to work with the calendar function in various scripts or what ever you decide to use it with. The calendar function is very useful for producing graphical representations (in text) of any month of any year. Tomorrows post will feature the date function which complements the calendar function nicely. The commands talked about in post can be found (along with more commands) in a variety of books such as Mac OS X Toolbox. Any basic Unix book will feature these basic commands.

To start open Terminal found in Applications > Utilities and type cal (then hit enter) into the command line. Your Terminal will produce something similar to the following.

    January 2010
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
                1  2
 3  4  5  6  7  8  9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31

A nice representation of the current month. This is very useful for graphical representations. You can also use ncal. Its a variation of cal, but produces a different output. Some of the commands either use cal, or ncal.

    January 2010
Mo     4 11 18 25
Tu     5 12 19 26
We     6 13 20 27
Th     7 14 21 28
Fr  1  8 15 22 29
Sa  2  9 16 23 30
Su  3 10 17 24 31

Notice with the ncal output its more square a regular. It does however read in a different direction which can make it slightly more difficult to look and glance at. However ncal does bring with it a couple more features which will be discussed later.

To change the month shown simply type:

cal -m apr

and the month of the current year will be displayed. The month format is the 3 letter short version; jan, feb, mar, apr, may, jun, jul, aug, sep, oct, nov, dec. You can then combine this with a year, anything from 0AD to 9999AD. Minus month and years in the 10th millennium will not compute. For example

cal apr 2015

This will produce a calendar for April in the month 2015. Notice you don’t have to append the “-m” modifying option. This is so the function can tell when you are imputing a month and not confuse itself over a year with three letters. Note, if you enter the following:

cal 2015

or

cal -m apr -y 2010

It will list every day in that year regardless of the -m option. The same works with ncal.

There are a couple of options which can be added to the cal options (other than a specific date) to calculate which week or day in the year you are on. For example you can list each day sequentially in the year, in the calendar format. For example:

cal -j apr 2010

This produces:

        April 2010
 Su  Mo  Tu  We  Th  Fr  Sa
                 91  92  93
 94  95  96  97  98  99 100
101 102 103 104 105 106 107
108 109 110 111 112 113 114
115 116 117 118 119 120

You can easily tell how many days have ran in April during 2010. The -j options can be appended to any date. This can be quite confusing to which actual day represents which number in the calendar. As a result I run this code to show both dates at the same time.

        April 2010
 Su  Mo  Tu  We  Th  Fr  Sa
                 91  92  93
 94  95  96  97  98  99 100
101 102 103 104 105 106 107
108 109 110 111 112 113 114
115 116 117 118 119 120

     April 2010
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
             1  2  3
 4  5  6  7  8  9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17
18 19 20 21 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29 30

Here it is clear that April the 14th is the 104th day in the year. In the next post I will show you how you can pick the day number out more easily.

The final option is to show how many weeks have passed in the year. This can only be done with ncal and is used with the -w option.

ncal -w

    January 2010
Mo     4 11 18 25
Tu     5 12 19 26
We     6 13 20 27
Th     7 14 21 28
Fr  1  8 15 22 29
Sa  2  9 16 23 30
Su  3 10 17 24 31
   53  1  2  3  4

Note the week number at the bottom of the calendar. This option can be combined with the day number option and used for any month within any year.

Overall this cal options is useful. You can produce a whole variety of calendars in a graphical format. Tomorrow I will show you the date function for showing date and times and using the option to highlight specific dates. If you want to learn more about Terminal, either look through this category on my site, search my site, or have a look at the many books on Amazon.

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Working With The Calendar Function In Terminal

Related posts:

1. Working With The Date Function In Terminal
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Today’s post is all about adding a welcome message to your login screen. Most of the time it displays a list of users and options to restart, shut down or log into your Mac. This string of text can be very useful if you have a fear of your Mac getting stolen or mixed up with other Mac’s. The string is short but can be used to display a useful bit of information. This post took me about 15 minutes to research and put together, and about an hour to try and grab a screen shot of the screen in action (I never found a working solution).

To do this little trick fire up Terminal. This is located in Applications > Utilities. Within it copy and paste the following:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow LoginwindowText "Your Message Here"

If you want to change the message alter it in TextEdit (quickest method) and then paste it into Terminal. You will be asked to supply your admin password. Once as the command runs the message will be changed. Use the quick log out option to see your handy work. The switch will probably take a long time. I thought my Mac had crashed but when the screen eventually loads you will see above the list of user name the piece of text you have just added.

Useful information can include your name, address of a piece of unique information such as your address, email, phone etc, something that can only be linked to you. This means that if you Mac get stolen and the user name deleted it will be easily identifiable to you. Unless your thief reads this blog and has read this tip, it will be very hard for them to get rid of this bit of information. If you know your Mac wont get stolen add something funny or humorous. The text can only be one line. I’m not sure of the length however I would keep it short.

If you want to change it back and remove the text simply copy and paste the following into Terminal:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow LoginwindowText ""

The text will be gone.

If you want to learn more about Terminal command, either search this site or read some of the cool Terminal books on the market. I recommend MAC OS X UNIX Toolbox or Mac Command Line: Unix Under the Hood. There is plenty of resources out there.

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Add Text To Your Login Screen

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With a variety of formats for practically everything imaginable, we will at some point get a clash where one newer format will not work with an older app. In Microsoft’s infinite wisdom they have decided to release a docx format super seeding and as a result not making it work on the old but widely used version of word. Since I am a student, and as a result broke, I can’t afford to upgrade to the latest version. I only use it for writing reports and reading files people send me. I then went out on a web hunt for an app or web website that could convert my files from docx to doc format. There is many out there, with some that need a payment of some kind, I eventually found a good app. It’s on the Windows site of all places, and can convert docx, pptx and xlsx files.

To download the application head over to the Mactopia website, its Microsoft Mac portal. The website is set up a bit funny and the direct download links are a little difficult to post. The app is located under Additional Tools > Open XML File Format Converter for Mac 1.1.3 > Download. The link is located at the bottom. Install the app, once it has been downloaded, using the installation package.

The app is pretty well designed. You have the choice of either converting one file, or if you have a big file list many files at a time. Adding files to the app is either a simple drag and drop onto the drop box, or using the add tool in the toolbar. Converting files takes a minute or two depending on the file size.

I’ve tested the app with a docx file and the results are pretty good. There doesn’t seem any visible differences in the converted file. I assume more complex and documents is new features will be omitted. Excel and Powerpoint files probably have the same results.

For something Microsoft created (and credit to them) its a good app. I now don’t have to spend 10 minutes finding an online converter to work with my files. If you have any comments, please leave one below I would like to hear what you think.

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Converting Windows Docx Files To Doc

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