MentalFish » Usability

It’s all about the Mac

MentalFish — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 08:58:16 +0000

Ok Steve, you told us recently it was all about the Mac. The new MacBook Air is nice and slim, and iLife makes my wife’s life easier when making albums of the kids in the kindergarten where she works… but I don’t see how this is all about the Mac. It feels more like, its all about making the Mac more like the iDevices, which is fine when making them more consumer friendly.

As a “power” user in need of productivity tools in 3D and game development, I am still waiting for an up to date graphics card update option to my 2008 Mac Pro. The overpriced Quadro 4800 is not really an option and the Radeon 5780 is still not available for purchase.

In terms of OS X, there are some issues that needs to be addressed. When changing the association of all files of a certain type to be opened by a specific application, it will only be valid for the currently existing files on the system. As soon as another file is added/downloaded, it might have some other application associated with it. Can I please have a more Windows like file association? Not by file extension though, but by actual file/mime type. I am fed up of having the most recently installed app hijacking any file types it want to. I have tried RCDefaultApp, but it just doesn’t work as “advertised”.

Next issue that needs to be fixed is Spotlight. When I search the system for files of a certain file size, Spotlight does not allow for displaying the file size next to the name and date in the listing. I have to Cmd+I click each of them or check their size. Why oh why?

Fix these first, then you can get back to implementing iOS features in OS X.

My first WordPress plugin

MentalFish — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 16:41:09 +0000

I have recently created my first ever WordPress plugin, Append Posts is the name of it. Pretty simple but useful to create pages with specific posts beneath them. So you can for instance list all posts you have put in a category Products and tagged Free, to create a page of all free products. As soon as you add another post with that category and tag, it will be listed on the page, no need to manually add links to static pages and so on.

It uses WordPress shortcodes so you can add a shortcode like this:
[append-posts category=”tools” tags=”mentalfish,plugins” count=”3″]

See it in use on this page: http://mentalfish.com/products/lscripts/

And download it if you would like to use it yourself.

Use caps lock for Quicksilver

MentalFish — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 22:28:16 +0000

As a Mac user I use the app Quicksilver, brilliant for launching applications without having to click around with a mouse. Secondly, the caps lock key is an annoyance that has to be dealt with. There is no option in Quicksilver to use caps lock as a shortcut key (as it was with Enzo for Windows), so the quickest fix that gets you 90% of the way is to reassign the caps lock key to the option (alt) key in System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Modifier Keys > Set Caps Lock to Option:

Then in Quicksilver, make whatever shortcut you want the “regular” way of launching it, and at the same time set Modifier-only Activation > Double > Option

You don’t want to launch Quicksilver each time the option key is pressed, therefor the setting is Double instead of Single. Whenever you now double tap the caps lock or the actual option key, Quicksilver will come up.