Andrew’s Mac Tips Weblog

Getbuzzword, a stunning looking online word processor, should be renamed GetBroadband. On my dial up network every time I click on an element another progress bar (should be a sun dial) pops up. I could have installed Microsoft Flight Simulator on a Celeron PC (including all of the world scenery) in the time it’s taking me to write “Hello World” into this thing.

Hopefully all of these progress bars are indicating something of the back end that is going to stay on my drive for a while. I can’t envisage going through this torture every time I visit the site.

A nobel prize should go to the inventor of multi-tasking…

…Oh, heck. Safari just crashed. Don’t get me wrong; what I did see of it was very pretty. It’s just another item to go on my When I get Broadband list.

Getbuzzword

Let’s say you are on a dial up connection and you are using Safari to download an mp3 file. Depending on the file size, it might take several minutes, or even hours. You can preview the file while it’s downloading to see if it’s actually what you are after.

In your Downloads folder (usually the Desktop) you will find an icon for the download in progress. If you Ctrl-Click (or Right-Click) on the icon and choose Show Package Contents from the context menu then a new folder window will open that shows the partial mp3 file and an info file. Don’t double click on the mp3 file as that might import it into iTunes; instead, Ctrl-Click (or Right-Click) on it and choose Open With… to launch it in QuickTime.

Now you can preview the file that you’re downloading. This doesn’t work with all media types; some need to be complete or QuickTime will show an error message.

Another little side-tip: If the status bar is showing in Safari when you see a cryptic button or link on a webpage (something along the lines of “View Now” or “Listen”), hovering your pointer over the button should show the associated file in the status bar. If it’s a QuickTime compatible file like an mp3, mp4, mov etc., you might want to drag that button or link to your download window to start downloading the actual file rather than simply clicking on it and having it play (or sit forever while buffering and then play in fits and starts; remember, we’re talking about dial-up users here).

I added two great bookmarklets to my Safari Bookmarks Bar today. The first is Convert Me (Don’t click this link yet! Read on…). If you’re looking at a video in a YouTube page, simply click on the bookmarklet to Zamzar’s site where you choose the file format you’d like and enter your email address. They then convert the file for you and email a link to the download. There are a few stand-alone applications that will do the same thing, but this is much less hassle.

The second bookmarklet is Mobilize Me which takes the complex, slow to load page that you happen to be viewing and sends it through Google’s conversion thingie and reloads it as a simple cellphone-friendly version.

Not familiar with bookmarklets? Simply make sure that Safari is showing the Bookmarks Bar, then drag the links above to the bar to make the buttons; each one uses javascript to look at the URL of the current page being viewed to work its magic.

Both of these bookmarklets were found here. I talk about some other useful buttons at my Some Great Web-Based Services page.

Micro Persuasion: Bookmarklets for the Web 2.0 Jedi Master