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How-to: Use Butler and AppleScript to open a folder

Wednesday, November 16th, 2011

I know what you’re thinking…how hard can it be to open a folder? Not very hard at all. But what I wanted was a way to open a certain folder with a certain view and sort order, even though I may then change that folder’s view and sort order, thereby messing up future openings of that same folder. In my case, I wanted my Downloads folder to open, at a given size and location, sorted in reverse date order. Moom can do 90% of this using saved window layouts, but it can’t do anything with the actual Finder window, such as setting the view and sort column.

After a bit of work with AppleScript, I came up with a solution that got me everything I wanted. By storing the AppleScript in Butler, I can now open my folder with the press of a hot key, at any time from any application. Here’s how I did it.

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How-to: Use Butler for real-time Google searches

Monday, April 11th, 2011

For those who aren’t aware, Google has a real time search engine that can find up-to-the-second results across sites and social media services for topics of interest. Here’s how to set up Butler to search via this real time search engine.

  1. Open Butler’s main window (via Butler > Customize in the Butler menu, for instance), and go to the Engines tab.
  2. Click the plus sign at the lower left corner of the Butler window, and select Search Engine (or just press Command-N.)
  3. Name your search engine (in the box near the top right of the Butler window). (Press Tab when done.)
  4. On the URL tab, enter this for Prefix: http://www.google.com/webhp?btnG=Search#q=. Enter this for Suffix: &tbs=mbl:1&fp=1&cad=b.
  5. If you’d like to use real time search via Butler’s input box, click on the Triggers tab and enter an abbreviation. (Press Tab when done.)
  6. Click the Configuration tab, then click the plus sign at the lower left again. Scroll down and choose Smart Item > Web Search.
  7. Drag the newly-added Web Search entry to your desired section of Butler’s interface—I do all my web searching via keyboard shortcuts, so I have it in the Hidden section.
  8. Title your newly-added search, using the box near the top right of the Butler window. (Press Tab when done.)
  9. Click the pop-up in the Search Engine tab, and select the newly-created Google realtime search entry from the list.
  10. If you’d like to search via the keyboard, click over to the Triggers tab and set a Hot Key.
  11. Optionally set any other options.

I’ve been using this for a few weeks now, and it works quite nicely (at least using the USA version of Google; I’m not sure about international real time searching).

How-to: Five tips for using Witch (video)

Thursday, February 17th, 2011

In conjunction with the Witch 3.6.1 release today, we’ve created a video that discusses five things you can do with Witch:

  • Basic window switching (really basic!)
  • Creating global hot keys for certain window-related actions
  • Fast toggling between windows without seeing the Witch panel
  • Using shortcuts to see window info, switch to windows, and perform actions on windows
  • Setting up Witch for use with a mouse or trackpad

The video runs just under 10 minutes in length, and is available in two sizes: 640×480 [31MB] or 1024×768 [73MB]. (Both versions are also available in the sidebar on the Witch page.)

How-to: Launch and hide Desktop Curtain at login

Monday, February 7th, 2011
Over the weekend, I was asked why Desktop Curtain can’t be launched and hidden at login—when set to run at login, Desktop Curtain appears (as would any other app set to run at login). While you can’t set this preference within Desktop Curtain, it’s relatively easy to do with some help from Mac OS X.

First, make sure the ‘Launch automatically at login’ box is checked on the Advanced tab of Desktop Curtain’s settings window.

Second, go to the Accounts System Preferences panel, select your account in the left-hand column, and then click the Login Items tab on the right. Find Desktop Curtain in the list, and check the leftmost box, in the Hide column:

That’s it—Desktop Curtain will now launch at login, and hide. To get the most out of this tip, you should also set a global hot key (on the Advanced tab of Desktop Curtain’s settings window), so you can then make Desktop Curtain visible whenever you need to hide your clutter.

How-to: Set playback start/stop points in Usher

Monday, January 10th, 2011

A few users have asked how to set the start and stop points for playing back a particular video—for instance, to skip a portion at the start or end of a video clip that you’d rather not see. (This is the equivalent to setting a Start Time and Stop Time on the Options tab of iTunes’ Get Info window.)

While it’s not quite that simple to mark a video’s start and stop points in Usher, it’s really not much harder. Read on for the quick how-to, in both text and video forms.

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