toolbars
Latest
Chromium browser cops reset feature to clean up malware messes
Mopping up after malicious software can land you in a browser quagmire full of sketchy search engines, toolbars or worse. Google's latest version of its open-source Chromium browser now has a remedy for much of that thanks to a 'reset profile' setting discovered by code tinkerer François Beaufort. You can revert the defaults for search, homepage, content settings and cookies all in one go, while also disabling extensions. Since Chromium features often pop up later in Chrome, that means your life may soon be easier after your, ahem, friend has a brush with the dark side of the internet.
Mac 101: taming Safari toolbars with shortcut keys
As you've probably noticed, there are suddenly a lot of Safari Extensions floating around, thanks to the new features in Safari 5. PimpMySafari is ramping back up, and the Safari Extensions Tumblog is doing a great job of keeping track of all of them. I'm going to wait until the dust settles, the cream rises, and several other clichés come to pass before I dig in and start featuring my favorites. I do, however, want to offer a quick tip for dealing with Extensions that add toolbars. Most of the Extensions I've tried that add a toolbar to Safari don't make it easy to show and hide it (and I don't really need every extension I install polling my keyboard, anyway). Aside from my url bar, my bookmarks bar, and my tabs, there's no toolbar in the world that I want to have open all the time. What is this, Firefox? Fortunately, there's a simple way to add shortcuts to show toolbars when they're useful, and hide them when they're irrelevant.
Mac 101: Customize your application toolbars
Many switchers to Mac OS X have the same question: "how can I customize my application toolbars?" While this is fairly straightforward in Windows, Mac OS X makes it much easier. Just open the customization menu by right-clicking (if you have a one-button mouse you can control + click) on the toolbar, then select "Customize..." When you do this, you are presented with a dialog box that "rolls down" to display all of the items that you can add. Just drag the ones you want to the toolbar. If you find you don't want a certain toolbar item, just open the customize panel again and drag the item off the menu bar. For more tips and tricks like these, visit the Mac 101 section on TUAW.
Mac 101: the lozenge button
One of my pet peeves involves installing software (of which we do a lot here at TUAW). You download and mount the DMG disk image and you're presented with a Finder window that looks like this. Now you're supposed to drag the icon (Camino in this case) to the Applications folder. But how do I get to the Applications folder? It looks like I have to open another Finder window and navigate there. Sometimes there will be a convenient alias to the Applications folder, but the Camino developers seem to have neglected this. Furthermore, my Finder sidebar is hidden, so I can't easily drag and drop to the Applications folder alias I have there. Well fortunately there's an easy solution to this little annoyance that involves the little button that's come to be known as the "lozenge." It's that little gem-like button on the top right of OS X windows, and what it does is reveal or hide toolbars. If you click on it in the Finder it will show or hide your tool- and sidebars. So in my case here, if I just click the lozenge I can see my sidebar again (see picture after the jump) and it's easy to install the application. The lozenge works the same way in other applications, and you can use it to hide toolbars when you want more screen real estate for your window content. If you command-click the lozenge it will cycle through the toolbar options.
