Improving the esthetic experience
September 25, 2007Different strokes for different folks and all that, but I’m a firm believer in — whenever possible — getting rid of the extraneous. Here are some things that I do to keep what I see on my Mac as pure and clutter-free as possible.
Change Your Appearance Scheme from Blue to Graphite
I recently watched a video of Steve Jobs introducing the Next Step operating system. In the video he created some sample emails and in those emails he chose the typeface 26 point Stencil because he said it was his favorite. I’m sure that now he wishes he could buy up all copies of that video and burn them (figuratively speaking). Come forward 15 years and tell me that it isn’t past time to retire the traffic light colored buttons at the top of every window in OSX. Fortunately, by switching to the Graphic scheme we can choose to do just that, giving the OS a more unified appearance.
Hide the Desktop
I like to use Screenshot Helper to hide my desktop. It provides a layer of color (or an image) covering the entire screen. It can be whisked to one side with the help of exposé, or by hiding it with a Cmd-H. It’s also great for bringing to the front of all other applications and then (using Witch) bringing just one window to the front of Screenshot Helper.
Pluck the Text from Cluttered Web Pages
Tofu is an extremely clean way to view text: No toolbars; white space around the text; scroll bar at the bottom etc. When installed, Tofu adds a Paste into Tofu entry to the universal Services menu. So, if I’m looking at an article on a webpage that’s full of peripheral distractions I just select the body of the article and zap it over to a new Tofu document.
Tofu is clever enough that the pasted text is in the font, font size an colors that YOU prefer, but it also keeps any hypertext links active from the article.
Learn to Toggle
Memorize the shortcuts for toggling toolbars on and off, and for showing and hiding the Dock, and use them. You might find that in an app like Mail you’re only using three commands from a toolbar of perhaps ten, so learn those commands and lose the bar. Not only will things be cleaner, you’ll gain some real estate as well.
