A Dash Of Web and Mobile Development » osx

Lock The Screen In OS X

Ian G. Clifton — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 02:11:17 +0000

One of the features I am used to having is a quick way to lock the computer. In Gnome (Linux), it’s typically Ctrl+Alt+L. In Windows, it’s Windows+L. In OS X, it’s… uh… a secret? I thought for sure I could just hit Command+L, but that wasn’t it, so I asked Google. Being a good friend, Google replied with dozens of answers, usually somehow using sleep or the screen saver. A common solution was to make a corner of the desktop activate the screen saver while having preferences set to require a password upon returning from the screen saver. Of course, this causes the possibility of accidentally activating the screen saver, which is annoying. So, I dug deeper.

The best solution I have found is to open Keychain Access (in /Applications/Utilities), then open preferences (Command+,). In the General section, there is an option you can check to “Show Status in Menu Bar.” This will give you a lock in the menu bar, which you can click to bring up a short menu. The first item is “Lock Screen,” exactly what I was looking for. Actually, it just seems to activate the screensaver and require a password upon returning, but it feels like a better solution than any other I have come across.

I’d like to assign this action to a key combo, but I don’t know how to do so without installing an external app. Any suggestions?

Open Images With Preview Not Photoshop

Ian G. Clifton — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 03:00:52 +0000

One very frustrating feature of OS X is that saving an image in Photoshop will cause the “open with” action to use Photoshop. In other words, you can double-click an image to open it in Preview, but if it’s been edited in Photoshop, it instead opens in Photoshop. This is really irritating since 90% of the time you want to just view an image which takes 0.2 seconds in Preview and about ten years in Photoshop (minor exaggeration).

Frankly, whoever thought that the same action (open) on the same type of file (e.g., JPEG) should be inconsistent needs to re-evaluate his/her ability to apply logic to a given situation.

The solution seems to be to find a file that is opening in Photoshop and should be opening in Preview, and then open its “Get Info” dialog (right-click, Get Info or command+I). The fourth section down is “Open with” (you may have to click it to expand that section). Change the dropdown to Preview and then click the “Change All” button. That should fix the problem….

…for that file type. Yes, you seriously have to do this for each file type (JPEG, PNG, GIF, etc.). So, after you perform this same sequence of steps several times, you’ll eventually be able to have consistent, expected behavior. That is, until you use someone else’s computer.

If anyone knows of an easier way to fix this problem, please let me know. Otherwise, feel free to use the comments for general grumbling about the issue.

Mac OS X Mouse Acceleration

Ian G. Clifton — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 05:14:47 +0000

When I first starting using OS X on my work machine a few years ago, the first thing that immediately bothered me was the behavior of the mouse. When quickly moving across the screen from one item to another, the mouse worked fine, but as soon as I started slowing down, the cursor speed practically dropped to zero. It seemed like it was moving through sludge, pixel by pixel. The acceleration curve was simply too steep. I felt like an old person who had never touched a computer before, struggling with fine adjustments.

Unfortunately, there is not a mouse acceleration curve adjustment setting in Mac OS X. You can change speed but not acceleration. Eventually I just got more-or-less used to it, but I still felt that my mouse behaved more naturally in Linux and even Windows. A couple of months ago, the issue started to bother me again, so I did a bit of Google research to finally come across a solution.

I found a site called Knock Knock, which had a page talking about the same issue. The author came up with a simple program that can adjust the mouse accelleration curve, so that it will feel much more natural. There are two versions, 1.1 and 1.2, but I recommend trying both to see which feels right.

Vim “No Identifier Under Cursor” Arrow Keys Problem

Ian G. Clifton — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 05:15:59 +0000

Recently, I started to have problems with Vim on my machine at work (a 24″ iMac), running OS X 10.5.7 and SSH’ing into a CentOS Linux server. The arrow keys did not have the correct functionality. Instead they would give errors such as “no identifier under cursor” and the session would freeze momentarily. I noticed this in insert mode, the only mode I use arrow keys in, but I did a little testing and found that it occurred in all modes. I wondered if the wrong key code was being sent, so I started doing some searching.

My search queries were coming up with nothing helpful. The string “no identifier under cursor” was uncommon and many results were related to translations. Including “Mac keyboard” or “Apple keyboard” didn’t help nor did the model number (A1243). Eventually, I had the random thought to check the settings in the terminal application.

Under Terminal -> Preferences, there is a Settings tab. Within that section, there’s a Keyboard tab, which didn’t seem to have the arrow keys listed, but there is also an Advanced tab. One of the options is “Declare terminal as:” and was set to xterm-color. I changed it to ansi and restarted the terminal app. Now my arrow keys actually work how they should in Vim.