Andrew’s Mac Tips Weblog

A long time ago I decided to add a new section to the Mac Tips site called Web Based Services. I chose at the time to give it a look that was different to the main site; a lot of the elements are called from the same javascript files, but presented in a different style.

I wanted a clean Mac interface look for the new section so I reverse engineered the iTunes interface.
 

 
The main body was pure white and the buttons and links were as subtle as I could make ‘em. Revisiting it now though, it looks a little dreary. I wanted to “crisp” it up a little; make the sidebar more different from the body, while at the same time not draw too much attention to it, and make the buttons more distinctive.

I tinkered with colors and spacing and so on in the CSS, all the time zeroing in on a look that ended up quite like (you guessed it) iTunes. I guess you can’t beat the classics.
 

 
It’s not a carbon copy if iTunes though; the shade of blue is less in your face and the dividing line is more discrete. Right now I’m pleased with the result. So pleased that after some more tweaking I might revamp this Wordpress blog to the same style, so as to be less massaged Kubrick and more watered down Mac OS.

Andrew’s Mac Tips — Some Great Web-Based Services

…Now there’s Loose Stitch—an online outliner that works in Firefox, Safari and iPhone. It works in much the same way as any stand-alone outliner, and can even import your existing files provided they are in the universal OPML format…

Andrew’s Mac Tips — Some Great Web-Based Services — Loose Stitch

…I may be working on a project and find myself with, say, three Safari windows open on the screen, and three Tofu windows. In order to concentrate on one thing at a time I could hide one of the applications, but even then I’d still have three windows showing. What if I want to just have one window of the three showing at a time, from a single application?…

Andrew’s Mac Tips — Quick Review — Screenshot Helper

Library Books is an icon that sits in your menu-bar. Once you’ve set up the preferences by entering your library and log on information, Library Books will keep a track of everything that you have borrowed, and reserved, and present that information to you via a drop down menu…

Andrew’s Mac Tips — Quick Review — Library Books

Journler is a “Multiple Documents in One Interface” application that adopts a familiar iApps-like appearance. Use it to quickly write entries without having to name or save them—or, take the time to categorize them and assign tags and labels to aid future searching and filtering…

Andrew’s Mac Tips — Quick Review — Journler

The thing that strikes me about “Minutes” is the wonderfully obvious nature of its interface. Just grab the pointer and wind it round and round the widget to set the desired minutes remaining. At the same time, a smaller display shows the time at which the alarm will sound, so it’s also an alarm clock; so obvious, yet never seen before…

Andrew’s Mac Tips — Quick Review — Minutes Widget

ExifRenamer takes the image files from your camera and renames them. It replaces the cryptic names that the camera assigns with new names based in the exact time that each photo was taken. It gets this information from the file’s EXIF data –hence the name…

Andrew’s Mac Tips — Quick Review — ExifRenamer

…The second tab is the Theme Generator, where you create (or steal, using the magnifying glass) a primary color, and iPick generates six further, beautifully complimentary colors for you…

Andrew’s Mac Tips — Quick Review — iPick

Uh oh!

I’m rapidly running out of space!

My ISP allows me 10 megs of free web space, and the Mac Tips site so-far takes up about 9 of those 10 megs. Pretty soon there won’t be any more room for new content.

I could investigate paying for more room, but compared to the massive amounts of free space for, say, email at Google, what these guys would charge me for a mere five megs is truly exorbitant.

Besides, I Really hate spending actual money (just look at the amount of freeware that I review).

What I’m looking for, is about 5 to 10 megs on someone’s server, where I can easily ftp the screenshot files that are used in my Quick Reviews. I briefly looked at Picasa albums, where it’s possible to link directly to a stored image — but those images are arbitrarily resized — making that option a no-go.

If you know of a reliable benefactor that might provide some free space to a non-profit service like mine, please let me know; I could sure use the headroom.

Many Thanks

NameChanger is an application for the batch renaming of files. All of the usual ways of renaming files are covered (prepend, append, add date, add number sequence etc), but with a few useful twists.

The first thing that differentiates this app is the live preview of how the files will be renamed, making it easy to fine-tune the changes prior to committing to them…

Andrew’s Mac Tips — Quick Review — NameChanger