Mac Hacks (14 page)
. Full Screen for (Almost) Any App
Everyone
wants full-screen apps, but not every app offers that
feature. This hack explains how to add this enhancement to a lot of apps
and fill your screen with almost any app!
When OS X Lion first came out, Full Screen mode was a big selling
point. With laptop screens starting at 11 inches on a MacBook Air, every
pixel counts when you’re trying to be productive. But the usefulness of
Full Screen mode goes beyond laptops and comparatively tiny
screens—full-screen apps also block out a lot of distractions that might
otherwise impede your productivity.
Unfortunately, adding full-screen capability is up to developers,
not Apple, so not every app features it. But for Cocoa-based apps, it
turns out you don’t have to wait for the developer to add this
functionality; you can add it yourself thanks to a free utility called Maximizer.
Before
you can have glorious full-screen apps, you need to get the
tools that let your Mac pull this off. First, you’ll need SIMBL (SIMple
Bundle Loader—hey, the computer world needs more acronyms, right?) and—you
guessed it—a copy of Maximizer. Head to
the SIMBL download
page
to get a copy of it (download the version for Snow Leopard
and Leopard—it still works). For Maximizer, head to
chpwn’s page
and click
the huge Download link.
When you look at your Downloads folder, you should see a file named
Maximizer.bundle
and a
SIMBL-0.9.9
folder. If you do, you’ve got all the
tools you need—we just need to get them to the right places. It’s a good
idea to install SIMBL first, so we’ll start there. SIMBL comes with a
package that installs it, so a simple double-click on the installer file
(
SIMBL-0.9.9.pkg
) will get the job
done (be prepared to authenticate).
Note: One of the SIMBL installer’s screens gives you a choice
that’s not truly a choice. The second screen (
Figure 3-15
) gives you an
option with seemingly no option; since you have no choice, just click
Continue.
package opening and manual dexterity, install SIMBL for a single user,
but it really isn’t worth the effort.
SIMBL
can do a lot more than just enable Maximizer. SIMBL can
run a variety of plug-ins, and since you’ve installed it, you might as
well check out
the list of
useful plug-ins
. You’ll find useful plug-ins that help you
control the behavior of windows in OS X (Sizewell), a plug-in to manage
iPhoto keywords (iPhoto Keyword Manager), and plenty of other cool tools
for OS X.
With SIMBL installed, it’s time to install Maximizer. This involves
moving the
Maximizer.bundle
file you
downloaded earlier to the proper folder on your Mac. The path for the
folder is
Computer/your hard/Library/Application
drive
Support/SIMBL/Plugins
. You can either dig for that starting at
the root of your Mac; use Terminal to copy the file from your Downloads
folder to that destination (
[Hack #29]
); or, since you know
right where you need to go, you can use the “Go to Folder” command
(Shift-Command-G) in the Finder’s Go menu (
Figure 3-16
).
precisely known. This isn’t a good way to browse, but when you know
where you need to go, this command is really slick.
Once you’re in the Plugins folder, just drag the
Maximizer.bundle
into that folder. Restart any
programs you want to get the full-screen treatment and,
bam
—if they’re Cocoa-based apps, they’ll have
full-screen arrows (
Figure 3-17
)!
image, you can see Bean’s native full-screen button (the four-way arrow
icon) and the full-screen arrows added by Maximizer.
Note: Maximizer won’t work on every app because not every Mac app
is built on Cocoa. If you don’t see the full-screen arrows in your
favorite app, you’ll have to wait for the developer to fix
it!
. Create Custom Icons
It’s
a safe wager that there are some annoying or flat-out
terrible icons on your Mac. Replace the crud by making new icons with this
creative hack.
Icons
are a central part of the GUI experience: without pleasant
pictures to click, how would you get things done? Apple has web pages
dedicated to helping you design the perfect icon for Mac OS X, but the
company’s first piece of advice is, “For great-looking icons, have a
professional graphic designer create them.”
That’s solid advice, but the hassle factor and the cost is too much
for any true hacker to bear. You also have to wonder how seriously people
take the rest of Apple’s advice, like these two paragraphs:
Use universal imagery that people will easily recognize. Avoid
focusing on a secondary aspect of an element. For example, for a mail
icon, a rural mailbox would be less recognizable than a postage
stamp...Strive for simplicity. Try to use a single object that captures
the icon’s action or represents the control. Start with a basic
shape.
This advice is more useful, but do people actually follow it? Take a
look at the icons of two popular programs: Safari and Photoshop (
Figure 3-18
). Obviously, the
Safari icon adheres to Apple’s guidelines: its shape is just a circular
compass, and the program could be described as a tool for navigating the
Internet. Photoshop’s icon is also a basic shape (a square), but it’s hard
to imagine how someone firing up a Mac for the first time would guess that
a blue square with “Ps” on it represents an image-editing program.
The lesson from all this? Forget Apple’s guidelines unless you’re
trying to create a mass-market application (and if your mass-market
application is popular, forget the guidelines anyway). Because you’re
designing icons for your own computer, feel free to use or design whatever
icons you want to see.
amount of information.
The
easiest but least satisfying way to change a problematic
icon in OS X is to simply find an icon that you like better and paste it
over the icon you want to change. For example, suppose you find the Time
Machine icon annoying—which you might: that odd blue hue with the inane
backwards clock deal coupled with the fact that it looks more like a
modded Apple remote than anything else make this a likely candidate for
replacement. Once you’ve decided on the victim, er, icon you want to
replace, the next step is to find something to replace it with. If
there’s already a better icon on your computer, great; if not, there are
several online sources for a vast number of icons that will be revealed
with a quick Google search.
Once you find a suitable replacement, the process is
straightforward. If you’re using a picture file (completely allowable!),
open the picture in Preview and then choose Edit→Select All (Command-A).
Follow this with the Edit→Copy command (Command-C). You’ve successfully
copied the image onto the clipboard, so all that’s left to do is paste
the image where it needs to go. To do just that, head to the Finder and
select the file or program with the hated icon; then select File→Get
Info (Command-I). In the Info window, click the tiny image in the
upper-left corner (circled in
Figure 3-19
) and then choose
Edit→Paste (Command-V) and the icon will be changed! (You may need to
authenticate before your Mac changes the icon.)
into the Info window on the right. All that’s left to do is click the
circled icon and then hit Command-V (paste).
That’s not the only way to change an icon. What if you want to
replace an app’s standard icon with the icon for another app? For
example, imagine you’re at work and you’ve downloaded a super fun game
with a festive icon. You might want to change that icon to something
suitably boring and business-y (the Microsoft Graph icon is a great one
for this). To get started, open both apps’ Info windows (Command-I), as
shown in
Figure 3-20
.
playing with Microsoft Graph when I could be playing Angry
Birds!
All that’s left to do now is a quick copy and paste. Click the
source app’s mini icon in the Info window’s upper-left corner to select
it (it will be surrounded with a soft blue hue). Then select File→Copy
(Command-C).
Repeat the process within the target app’s Info window, but change
the copy command to Paste (Command-V). (You may have to authenticate,
too.) You’re done—the new icon has replaced the old one! See
Figure 3-21
for an
example.
occasionally work!
This hack actually scares some folks because what happens when
you start to loathe that
replacement icon—are you stuck with it forever? When you use either of
the above methods, the process is nondestructive. You can get the old
icon back any time by opening the app or file’s Info window
(Command-I), and then selecting the tiny icon in the upper-left
corner (circled in
Figure 3-19
) and choosing
Edit→Cut (Command-X).
As alluded to earlier, Apple has plenty of advice when it comes to
designing icons. One of the keys? Get a professional to do it for you.
The bad news is that professional graphic designers charge a ton of
money (they’re pros; what do you expect?). The good news is that
everyone who owns a Mac and a copy of Photoshop thinks they’re a
professional-level graphic designer, so you can get plenty of free help.
Really, don’t be afraid to ask. But if you’re friendless, you can use
the following advice to make your very own icon.
When
creating or choosing an image to iconify, there are a
few things to keep in mind. The first is image size: icons can be as
large as 1024×1024 pixels (you wouldn’t to use an icon that big on
your Mac, but large icons look nice in the App Store). That’s more
pixels than a 50-inch high-def TV displays, more pixels than the
original iMac’s screen displayed. It’s a cool
million
pixels, all for your icon, so you’ll want
to start out with an image at least that big and preferably
bigger.
The
second consideration is the file type. In this hack,
we’ll use Photoshop Elements and the command-line program iconutil.
Iconutil only accepts files of the icns and iconset file types, which
can get confusing, but don’t worry about that for now. When you save
your icon file in Photoshop Elements, save it as a TIFF file. Later in
this hack, you’ll learn how to convert it to an icsn file and, if
necessary, an iconset file.
Now
that the limits are specified, it is time to generate
the image. This example uses Photoshop Elements, but you can pull this
off with any image editor. Begin by creating a new image. I want to
see all the ugly, so I went for 1024×1024. If you have the option, set
the background to Transparent.
At this point, you’re likely to be presented with a blank canvas
to work with. Apple recommends simple shapes, and simple shapes are
far easier to create than complex ones, so create something
simplistic. In this hack, I’m starting with just a solid circle
generated with the Ellipse tool shown in
Figure 3-22
.
icon.
You could stop here. The icon is ugly and unrepresentative, and
it could be the worst Mac OS X icon ever. But it’s more fun to try to
make it look somewhat OS X-ish. After all, if you’re making the worst
icon ever, this won’t do; people will say you didn’t even try. On the
other hand, if you attempt to make it look OS X-ish, people will
think, “Man, that’s sad. I can tell they put effort into it.” The
latter scenario is hilarious, and hilarity is worth the extra
effort.
To OS X-ify the icon, we need to perform a few more steps in
Elements. OS X icons are supposed to look as though a light source is
directly above them, so a flat circle just isn’t going to cut it. Time
to light the top half of the circle. First, create a new layer. You’ll
note that the moving, dashed line is still present (Photoshop types
call this “marching ants”). Since the light needs to come from the top
and shine down, limiting the selection to half of the circle is
useful. Choose the Rectangular Marquee tool and select the bottom 5/8
of the circle while holding the Option key (holding the Option key
tells Photoshop to
exclude
the selected area from
the overall selection). If everything went right, the top portion of
the circle is now selected. It would be better if the icon could
display a hint of three dimensions, so refining the selection with the
Elliptical Marquee tool is a good next step. Again, hold the Option
key to exclude the portion of the image you are selecting. Your result
should look like
Figure 3-23
.
There are an infinite number of ways to proceed at this point,
but invoking the power of the Gradient tool seems to be the favorite
of Photoshop types. Set the foreground color to white and set the
Gradient tool to create a “Foreground to Transparent” gradient, as
shown in
Figure 3-24
.
Then apply a linear gradient.
Drag across the circle to apply the Gradient, ensuring that the
white portion starts at the top, and the transparent portion ends at
the end of the selection. This puts the gradient you just applied
right at the top of the circle, but that isn’t very OS X-ish. So hit
Command-T to invoke the Free Transform tool, and then move the
gradient down from the top edge of the circle a comfortable distance.
Continuing with the Free Transform tool, squish the bottom edges in a
bit to follow the outline of the circle more closely. Hit Return to
make the changes stick. The result should look like
Figure 3-25
.
That’s it for the top, but careful inspection of OS X icons
reveals that the bottom of them
also
includes a
light source. (There must be really good lighting in Apple’s
icon-design offices.) To get the bottom looking lit up, though not as
lit up as the top, a little more work is required. At this point, you
need a method of selecting most of the rest of the circle without
selecting the part you already enhanced. I used the Elliptical Marquee
tool followed by the Polygonal Lasso tool to refine the selection, but
there are plenty more elegant ways to pull this selection off. Once
the area is selected, create a new layer (Shift-Command-N) and then
switch to the Gradient tool. Again, use the “Foreground to
Transparent” setting, but this time, to give a more rounded
appearance, change to the Radial Gradient option (instead of Linear).
Apply the gradient, and you should have something that looks like
Figure 3-26
.
hoped for.
If you’re happy with the shape and look of the gradient you just
added, you can move to the next step. If you want to fine-tune it a
bit, hit Command-T to bring up the Free Transform tool and tweak
things as necessary.
At this point, the icon is just a solid circle with some
gradients on it—not the most exciting blob in the world. In addition
to its unexciting nature, it isn’t quite ugly enough. I’m going to fix
that by adding a big red X in the middle. In this example, I’ve used
the Text tool set to a 900-point sans serif font. The results are
approaching the ugly ideal I set out to capture (see
Figure 3-27
).
The good news is that the process of creating an image to use as
an icon is almost complete. All that’s left are a few small tweaks.
First, in Elements’ Layers panel, reorder the layers so the layer with
text is
beneath
the layers with the gradients, as
shown in
Figure 3-28
.
Now for some final adjustments: change the gradient layers’
Opacity settings to 80%, and hit all the layers with a Gaussian Blur
of 10. The last thing OS X icons usually feature is a drop shadow. In
Photoshop Elements, there’s a Drop Shadow table associated with the
layer style option. Choose the background layer (the one with the big
black circle) and then add the “High” drop shadow. Good news: you’ve
created the world’s ugliest OS X icon! Well, mine is probably much
worse than yours, so compare your result to
Figure 3-29
.