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Transmit 3.5 - where have you been all my life?
Last month Dave Caolo mentioned that Transmit updated to v3.5, went universal and added droplets, amongst other things like Growl support. While I'm sure droplets aren't a new concept by any means, these handy little DnD (drag-n-drop) extras that can perform all sorts of tasks seem to be all the rage lately with applications both old and new. Photoshop does them, DVGuru discovered Compressor does them, and Transmit 3.5's droplets were one of the few key reasons why I purchased a license a few days ago.Transmit's droplets are icons you can effortlessly create that allow a quick DnD operation to send files/folders up to a specific directory in one of your Transmit FTP accounts. What's even nicer is that you can opt to save the relevant password in the droplet, or require it to be input each time you use it to upload something. Creating a droplet is simple: right-click (control-click) on a directory in Transmit and chose the "Save droplet for Folder..." option like I have pictured.The one drawback of these droplets is that they still have to start Transmit in order to actually perform the upload. On the flip side, however, they also automatically quit the app when finished. Ultimately, these droplets are incredibly handy if you have multiple FTP accounts with various directories into which you simply need to dump stuff.Another new feature is Growl support. Since I am a lover of Growl, this is most welcome, but Transmit's implementation is a little quirky as there is no option in Transmit to toggle this feature; it's all done through the Growl System Preferences pane. Heads up to those who are new to the realm of Growl.The last major new feature in 3.5, the one that truly made this love affair flourish, is the "edit any remote file, in any application" feature Dave mentioned. This one almost has to be experienced to believe: you can now double-click remote files in Transmit (such as image or text files) and it will download and open them in an external editor you specify in the preferences. You can then work your magic, simply hit "Save" and Transmit uploads the altered file - seamlessly (try this on an image file with Photoshop for an insta-drool effect). Gone are the days of "download, surf to your local directory, open the file, edit, save, then upload." This alone was worth purchasing a license.Which reminds me: Transmit offers a 15 day trial, while a single license is a bargain at $29.95. Bulk pricing and upgrades are available.
iLife 06 Tip: Edit iWeb sites on more than one Mac
I've been poking around in iWeb to create a wedding site for my fiance and I. While I really like the app, I share one of the big peeves around the web: sites created in it are only edit-able on the originating Mac.Thankfully, MacOSXHints has come to the rescue again, with a fairly simple method for giving your iWeb sites some portability so you can edit them on more than one Mac. Basically, the tip involves tracking down where the iWeb support/package file lives in your Home directory, moving it to something like a flash drive and creating an alias (of sorts) so iWeb is none the wiser.While this is a fairly simple work-around, I second MacOSXHInts' call to Apple: this really needs to be enabled natively so a work-around like this doesn't have to exist.
Take control of your Services menu with Service Scrubber
Service Scrubber is one of those "great idea!" apps that should have been built into OS X since day 1: it lets you easily edit and customize the Services menu. Offering a simple UI, you are presented with a list of all the apps that have services installed, and you're able to toggle each one on/off, rename and even assign/edit keyboard shortcuts. Call me crazy, but I don't think customizing Services could get much simpler than this.Service Scrubber is brought to you by Peter Maurer, the same guy who graced us all with Textpander, and it's donationware. While 'donationware' means that it's free, I highly recommend that you drop at least a few bucks to developers like Peter if you find their apps useful. There's nothing like a little bit of compensation to inspire innovations like Peter's apps.
Give your .Mac aliases a name
I love my .Mac aliases, but Apple really dropped the ball on allowing users to add unique names to each alias in Mail.app. By default, a message from a .Mac alias doesn't have a sender name or anything - the sender is simply the alias itself; kinda ugly if you ask me.Fortunately, MacOSXHints has done it again and discovered that you can simply edit Mail's preference file to add a unique name for each alias. Their post recommends using Property List Editor, but on my PowerBook the file opened in OmniOutliner Pro, which made finding the right part of the file to edit a breeze.No matter how you do it, this simple trick makes those .Mac aliases a bit more valuable and aesthetically pleasing. However, Apple really should listen up here and create an easier way to do this for the typical .Mac customer.
