News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
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Leopard's Quick Look function is sort of "Preview on steroids" yet super-simple to use. Quick Look is worth reviewing because of how much it can do "out of the box" and how flexible it is.
At its simplest, Quick Look provides you with a high-resolution preview of the contents of a file without you having to open an application. Have a .jpg file you'd like to check before e-mailing? Click on the file, press the space bar and a black window opens showing the file's contents (press the space bar again and it goes away).
There are other controls on that window, too — the diagonal arrows will display the preview full-screen and the stylised iPhoto icon will add the file to iPhoto (if it's a file type iPhoto can handle). You can also resize the preview window by dragging the usual control at the lower right hand corner of the window.
Quick Look is a lot more interesting than that. Have an audio or movie file you'd like to preview? Quick Look those file types and you'll get a mini media player in which you can play the file — you can pause and choose your play point as well. Music files will also have basic information about the file (including album art if it's present) within the Quick Look window, too. You can scroll through PDFs (and anything else multi-page like Word files, presentations, long file lists, etc.) and look at worksheets within Excel workbooks.
The list of supported file types is extensive, although finding a definitive list is difficult. I've found reference on Apple's site to Quick Look supporting "images, text files, PDF documents, movies, Keynote presentations, Mail attachments, and Microsoft Word and Excel files", but I know it also supports audio files, PowerPoint presentations, .icalevent files, .html files and e-mail .emlx files, amongst others.
For files it doesn't support (and for folders, applications, disks, network shares, etc.) Quick Look displays a large icon of the item and some basic information. The amount of information varies according to the type of item — network shares and disks only show the share name with the icon, whereas applications and document files also display file size and last modified date (applications also show the version and documents the file type).
One of the really nice things about Quick Look is that it's extensible. Apple has made it relatively straightforward for developers to create Quick Look plug-ins which allow the previewing of otherwise unsupported filetypes. If you want to check out the contents of .zip files, QuarkXPress 7 files, Installer packages or .eps files (amongst others), head on over to the QLPlugins web site.
Quick Look can also act as a quick and dirty slideshow presenter. Select the files you want to view as a slideshow and press the space bar to call up Quick Look — click the Play triangle, and the file previews will play just like a "real" slideshow, either in the Quick Look window, or full screen if you click the diagonal arrows.
One use of Quick Look I'd never really considered until last week was comparing two files, such as two Excel spreadsheets, before opening the one I want. By invoking Quick Look when two (or more) files are selected, then clicking the thumbnail icon (four boxes in a 2x2 grid), the previews are shown all at once. With Excel 2008 and Word 2008 being anything but sprightly to launch (and generating several hundred console log messages a minute), this is a great way to minimise my time in those apps (and the log files from growing too big) by making sure I'm opening only the file I want.
This works in conjunction with Spotlight too. Say you do a search for a content item such as "Macworld" and several similar-looking results come up. Select each in the Spotlight list, press the space bar, and you get a full preview without having to open anything. No more guesswork!
Oh, and leaving Quick Look invoked while you navigate around your Mac will change the preview (or slideshow if you've got one playing) to that of the currently selected item/s. You can navigate with the mouse or the keyboard (the latter allowing you to have an arbitrarily timed slideshow, for example).
All in all, I think Quick Look is the Leopard technology which has changed the way I use my Mac the most. I was already doing backups (although Time Machine's simplicity is nice) and I already had multiple virtual screens (Spaces' simplicity is nice, too) — but I open a lot of files, and finding the right one via Quick Look without having to open an application is extraordinarily useful.
The Dictionary application received a number of improvements with the release of OS X 10.5. First of all, there’s a new technical jargon dictionary from Apple, and direct access to Wikipedia entries as well. There’s also a huge resource known as “front and back matter,” which you can reach by selecting Go > Front/Back Matter > New Oxford American Dictionary from Dictionary’s menu. In the front/back matter, you’ll find things such as a list of all US presidents, a chemical elements chart, standard weights and measures, countries of the world, and much more. If you haven’t checked it out yet, it’s quite impressive in its breadth (but disappointingly non-Australian in its content -- why aren't the Macquarie people onto this?).
Rob Griffiths | Jan 25, 2008
The first thing a Mac user is presented with each time they start up their Mac is the Finder, Apple's venerable file browser and application launcher which has seen several revamps since its earliest days. A Finder window basically shows you the files and folders within -- for example, folders, disks, search results, servers, or anything else which can contain files and folders. We're going to have a look at some features of Finder windows which can make them more productive, and one or two which make them more fun.
Sean McNamara | Feb 27, 2008
If you're new to Macs, it can be a bit daunting as you begin the exploration of your new OS. There are some great resources out there for getting used to the Mac and for when things go wrong — or when you just want to do some cool stuff. While I can't hope to detail every single useful Mac web site "out there", I did want to cover some of the most useful sites I visit pretty well every day as a Mac user and troubleshooter. If you have a favourite not mentioned here, tell us about it in the forums.
Sean McNamara | Mar 27, 2008
If you’re like me, you dislike leaving your display(s) on when you leave your machine for an extended length of time. To turn them off, there are a number of options. You can set a short sleep timeout in the Energy Saver System Preferences panel, of course, but that gets annoying if you pause while working. You can also use Keychain Access (via its Preferences) to add a menu bar item that includes a Lock Screen function. Finally, using the Exposé & Spaces System Preferences panel — in 10.4 and 10.5 — you can set one corner of your screen to Sleep Display. Drag the mouse to that corner, wait a second, and your displays will sleep.
Rob Griffiths | Apr 17, 2008
This morning Apple released a new version of its iPhone SDK for developers. iPhone SDK beta 2 includes Interface Builder, a component of Apple’s development tools that lets developers create the interface for their applications. That seems to be the only major change in the latest build, according to the SDK’s read me, which continues to list some known issues. Apple says “this second beta is known to be incompatible with installation folders other than the default /Developer.” Given the importance of UI on the Mac, Interface Builder is a pretty critical tool in the development process, and some developers had chosen to hold off on their efforts until the SDK was revised. Apple unveiled the iPhone SDK at a special event earlier this month, allowing developers to begin building applications for the iPhone and iPod touch. Several high-profile companies have already jumped onboard, demoing their applications at the event. Highlighting the demos was AOL with a native AIM client; other applications from Electronic Arts, Salesforce.com, and Apple were also shown.
