Tips and Tricks for Leopard
January 21, 2008 by Ross McKillop
Some Tips and Ticks Leopard style, thanks to Wraith2021 from our Forums.
Spaces
Application Binding In Spaces
To set up application binding, launch System Preferences and select the Exposé & Spaces pane under the Personal heading. Switch over to the Spaces pane, and press the little plus button below the Application Assignments box. In the pop up, choose an application and select Add. Under the Space column, select which space the application is to be assigned to. Now, whenever you attempt to launch a bound application, OS X will immediately shift to the assigned space and launch it there.
Application Binding to All Spaces
Launch System Preferences and select the Exposé & Spaces pane under the Personal heading. Switch over to the Spaces pane, and press the little plus button below the Application Assignments box. In the pop up, choose an application and select Add. Under the Space column, select Every Space. Now, whenever you switch spaces the application will follow you to every space you move to.
Moving Windows Between Spaces
If you want to move a window or application between spaces you can do this a number of ways. If you want to stay focused on a single window or application just drag it to the top, bottom, left or right of the screen while keeping hold of it with your mouse, this will switch to the corresponding space without having to let go.
Dock
Recent Items Stack
Here’s a Terminal function that allows you to add a “Recent Items” Stack/Grid to the Dock. Recent Items as in ‘Recent Documents’, ‘Recent Volumes’, ‘Recent Applications’, ‘Recent Servers’ or ‘Recent Items’.
Go to Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal, and type:
defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add '{ "tile-data" = { "list-type" = 1; }; "tile-type" = "recents-tile"; }'
Then Type:
killall Dock
This should now have added a new stack next to your Trash, if you right click the stack you have the option of viewing ‘Recent Documents’, ‘Recent Volumes’, ‘Recent Applications’, ‘Recent Servers’ or ‘Recent Items’, and the option to remove from the dock. This is an amazingly useful stack, I suggest you try it at least once.
Accessing The Dock With The Keyboard
If you use an application a lot, it will probably be in your dock. It makes sense then, to have a fast way to access your dock for saving even more time. A quick way to do this is by pressing Control + F3. Note if you have volume or brightness assigned to F3, you will need to press Fn + Control + F3. This will allow you to navigate the dock via the arrow keys.
Desktop
Make The Menu Bar Solid
If you are not fond of the new translucent menu bar in Leopard, then here is a way to get rid of it. Open Terminal in Applications -> Utilities, to turn the menu bar solid white enter:
sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer 'EnvironmentVariables' -dict 'CI_NO_BACKGROUND_IMAGE' 1
To turn the bar solid grey, enter:
sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer 'EnvironmentVariables' -dict 'CI_NO_BACKGROUND_IMAGE' 0
To make a softer grey, like Tiger’s menu bar, type:
sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer 'EnvironmentVariables' -dict 'CI_NO_BACKGROUND_IMAGE' 0.62
And to set things back to the normal translucent Leopard Menu, type:
sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer 'EnvironmentVariables'
For the changes to take effect, restart your computer.
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