Murphy Mac

Murphy posted about emailing from Finder a while back. This new screencast was entered in the Macinstruct tutorial contest, winner to be announced next week.

Just drag a file to a folder and it flies off to a pre-determined email address. Optionally, have the action prompt you for a subject so you can find it later.

Murphy finds this technique extremely useful for quickly backing up important files to a dummy Gmail account - especially with the new 20MB attachment size. You have files you can’t bring yourself to delete? Drag them to the folder and they’re on their way to a mail server, just in case you want them later. No addressing, no need to click send. It’s just sent. Murphy knows you can drag files to the Mail icon in the Dock. This is more direct - no extra clicks!

If you’ve got multiple assistants you send files to all the time you could create a folder for each. Dragging a file to their folder is like dragging it to their inbox.

The new screencast details both a Folder Action and an Automator solution. They achieve the same thing in terms of sending. The difference is that the Automator method leaves the file in its original location on your disk, which might be more convenient. But the Folder Action method can be utilized from an SSH session. That opens up a lot of possibilities and offers extra convenience.

The Automator solution comes from a post on TUAW that was inspired by a post on MacOSXHints that was submitted by Murphy. How’s that for a chain of events?

Visit the previous post to download the AppleScripts used in the screencast.

You can drop a folder on the Dock and create aliases for some of your frequently used Applications inside. Then when you click-and-hold on the folder you’ll get a pop-up list of the Applications so you can click-and-launch. You can create subfolders too - they’ll show up as fly-out menus when you access the folder from the Dock. Sort of like the Windows Start Menu.

This is probably better than placing an alias for the entire Applications folder in the Dock because it will load more quickly. It’s also better than rearranging your Applications folder or moving its contents to other folders. Software Update expects certain applications to be in certain locations. And as we saw yesterday some applications can lose functionality if they’re moved from their default location.

Sometimes Murphy uses a Dock folder to launch applications. But usually he uses the Terminal, where he’s created a series of aliases for quickly launching applications. See the screencast Alias App Launcher for more details. Or take a look at Spotlight Application Launcher - that’s another screencast.

When you’re done adding your custom folder to the Dock you might want to change its icon.  Here’s a screencast for that.

With Microsoft Windows Murphy makes frequent use of the Invert Selection menu in Explorer. When you need to select a group of files by dragging the mouse, it’s often more convenient to select the files you don’t need selected, especially if there aren’t as many. From there you invert your selection and you have the desired files highlighted.

In Windows, you could just go to the Edit menu in Explorer (My Computer) and click on Invert Selection. On your Mac it’s not so obvious. In a Finder window you can select a group of files. If you actually want to select the files you didn’t highlight: Hold the Command key on the keyboard and drag around all the files. This will reverse the selection.

Windows doesn’t have a keyboard shortcut for Invert Selection. And as far as Murphy can see there isn’t one for Finder either. Many key combos were attempted but nothing did the trick. Maybe you can find the keyboard shortcut?

This trick works in all three Finder views. In List view you need to start with your mouse pointer positioned to the left of a file, not below the list.

The feature is documented in this Macworld article. They even made the screencast - so now Murphy can take the rest of the day off.

Command+K is great for connecting to a network location. But if you’ve got lots of different servers and shares in your midst the list can get cluttered. Sometimes it’s hard to find the server you’re looking for.
Lucky for you, the answer is simple. Create an alias for the resources you frequently access. When you click the alias you’ll automatically be connected to the server. The screencast example uses a Windows server. But you could use the same technique to connect to a Mac-based share.

Check back later in the week. We’ve got more networking tips on the way.

Let’s start off by saying there are quite a few ways to rename files. We’re going to focus on a script that’s already on your Mac, waiting for you to click it. It has it’s shortcomings though, since it’s based on a find and replace mechanism.

You might use Automator to rename files. That looks like a good way too, but Murphy has had mixed results. And he’s not the only one. Sometimes the files don’t get named in the expected sequence. He hasn’t figured out why and it’s a hassle to check the sequence every time you rename.

Example:

Files named a.txt b.txt c.txt. If you rename them to something like text1, text2, text3 wouldn’t you expect a.txt to become text1? Sometimes that doesn’t happen. If you can shed some light on this by all means do. Let us know in the comments!

You can rename files with a shell script too. Or use an Action in Photoshop. Or with utility applications like renamer4mac (freeware). But what’s the best way? Post a great answer in the comments or send it to murphy at murphymac dot com. If there’s something we really like we’ll make another screencast.

Be careful when renaming files, especially important ones. Test to make sure your metadata, spotlight comments, dates, etc - aren’t altered as a result of your naming tool.

If you want to be extra safe,  Automator can make copies of the originals and rename those. Apple provides detailed instructions in a tutorial.

Note: If you don’t have the script icon used in the screencast, see this post for information on installing it.