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Mac 101: Remove unwanted System Preference panes
Sometimes applications can install extras in the form of System Preference panes. However, when you remove the app from your Mac, you might be left with extraneous System Preference panes. To uninstall System Preference panes, just right-click (or control + click if you have a one button mouse) on the preference pane icon and select "remove x preference pane."When you click "remove," the preference pane will be instantly moved to the OS X Trash can where you can completely remove it from your system by emptying the trash. Please note that this will only work on System Preference panes located in the "Other" section of System Preferences.Want to see more tips and tricks like this? Visit TUAW's Mac 101 section today!
iVideoMail and iVoiceMail plugins for Mail
Here's a novel idea: being able to easily send something besides text and pretty pictures in email. iVideoMail and iVoiceMail are Mail plugins that take the legwork out of recording video and audio clips for easy emailing. They install as preference panes within Mail, and once you customize a message's toolbar to add a button for either plugin (there doesn't seem to be any other way to use them when composing a message), you're ready to start emailing your beautiful mug and American Idol-worthy voice to anyone who can handle it. Just don't blame us if your friends and colleagues begin removing you from their address books.I only briefly tried out the iVideoMail demo and it works pretty well, although the resulting 6-second 320 x 240 video in MPEG4 was 376 KB, which might be considered a little large by some. By why not judge for yourself? Demos are available via a rather annoying submit-your-email-for-a-customized-download-link process, and a license for either plugin is a mere $10 USD.[via Hawk Wings' plugin list]
Three-pane Mail.app turns into a plug-in
Well that was quick. First Mail.app received a widescreen, three-pane face-lift, and now it's been morphed into a plug-in. The author provides two different sets of instructions for installing: drag and dropping into your ~/Library/Mail/Bundles/ directory or using a couple of commands in Terminal. Go nuts ladies and gentlmen.
Give Mail.app a three-pane view
For those of you longing for the often-requested three-pane view in Mail.app, Tim Gaden at Hawk Wings has dug up yet another stellar find: an actual working version.This Ars Technica forum thread begins with the typical "gee, it'd be great if..." post which oh-so-often yields productive results such as the screenshot you see in this post: a hacked version of Mail.app with a three pane view. Fortunately, this hacked version of Mail.app has a different name (MailWidescreen) so you don't have to bite your nails over whether to overwrite your original Mail.app. Still, it would be good practice to back it up anyway for good measure.Personally, I think the three pane view in email apps is one of those needless 'change for the sake of change' developments that seems to have oozed out of an admittedly old email UI industry. Email subjects can be pretty useful and revealing, while most emails are never long enough to warrant all the space a three pane view gives to the message, and this view seems to enhance both of these complications: subjects are cut short, while white space is wasted on typically short emails. Just note Exhibit A - this post's screenshot.With my $0.02 out of the way, however, check out the forum thread for details on this hack's development, or simply use the direct link to the .ZIP file right here.
