Articles posted in June, 2005

Word 2004: Counter-intuitive behaviour with cursor keys in numbered lists (and table cells)

Thursday, June 30th, 2005 • 6:49 am

I don’t use Word’s automatic feature for numbered lists myself, because it simply is too buggy and too badly implemented. But I frequently get Word documents created by other people, and of course they use the feature, probably because it’s on in Word by default. There is one thing that I find particularly irritating with […]

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iMac G5 trouble-shooting saga

Thursday, June 30th, 2005 • 5:00 am

Even though I’ve never owned one of these iMac G5 machines myself, I am starting to get trouble-shooting work to do for people who own one. Today I went to give a training session on Adobe Creative Suite for someone who is using one. She had also bought a small D-Link router so that she […]

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Space-time warp

Wednesday, June 29th, 2005 • 4:19 am

In the June 25, 2005 issue of The Globe And Mail, science journalist Dan Falk writes: … speed is equal to distance multiplied by time… Yikes. I am guessing that Dan Falk is having a rather difficult time defending himself by arguing that “multiplied” was a typo for “divided“. Just guessing. Then again, today is […]

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LATEXT: ‘Don’t Be Afraid’ (MP3, 04:44)

Wednesday, June 29th, 2005 • 1:33 am

… to play. “Don’t Be Afraid” (MP3 file – 160 kbps – size: 5.5 MB – duration: 04:44) More LATEXT music here.

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Spotlight and Mail 2.0: Message searching with or without message preview pane

Tuesday, June 28th, 2005 • 2:42 am

I am a long-time Mail user but, ever since I switched to it from Eudora back in 2002, I have maintained the habit of using it without the message preview pane. In other words, my main viewer window in Mail has the list of mailboxes on the left-hand side and then the message list area, […]

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Customizing Mail 2.0: Mail Act-On

Friday, June 24th, 2005 • 5:17 am

I’ve just discovered a terrific enhancement for Mac OS X’s Mail. It’s called Mail Act-On. It’s open source software. And it works extremely well. It takes advantage of the fact that, when you are not composing a new e-mail message or a reply, typing letters doesn’t do anything in Mail. For example, you still cannot […]

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Word 2004: Merged cell pasting poetry

Friday, June 24th, 2005 • 12:41 am

Ah, Word… What would we do without you? Take the following table: It’s a pretty straightforward table with some merged cells. (Cell A and Cell F are the result of the vertical merging of two cells, Cell B and Cell G are the result of the horizontal merging of three cells.) Now select the first […]

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Defective Seagate hard drive replaced

Thursday, June 23rd, 2005 • 4:50 am

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the fact that one of my internal Seagate hard drives had failed. I requested a RMA number through the Seagate support site (which only works with Microsoft’s Explorer or Netscape 7.0 and is really slow, especially over a modem connection). The defective hard drive was shipped back […]

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Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger): Can’t change number of copies in Print dialog

Wednesday, June 22nd, 2005 • 6:20 am

If you use Photoshop CS or Photoshop CS2 in Tiger and try to change the number of copies that you want to print of your document in the regular “Print” dialog, you might notice that you cannot. The contents of the “Copies” field are selected by default, and the focus (blue halo) is on the […]

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Safari: Click in active link area results in text selection

Tuesday, June 21st, 2005 • 12:33 am

I regularly visit the 3hive web site. It covers music web sites for record labels or artists who share some of their own music tracks for free as MP3 files. When I see a page with tracks that I might be interested in, I add the tracks to my Speed Download download queue. When I […]

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Mac OS X’s Preview: Why is the ‘Drawer’ button on the left?

Tuesday, June 21st, 2005 • 12:27 am

It seems to me that it’s a pretty obvious question: Since in most cases the “drawer” with the thumbnails or the table of contents for a PDF file opens on the right-hand side of the window by default, why on earth is the “Drawer” button on the left-hand side by default? It’s neither intuitive nor […]

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Adobe Reader 7: Yet another lousy installer

Monday, June 20th, 2005 • 7:09 am

Adobe is really trying to break all records when it comes to lousy software installers these days. The lowest point was probably reached with the Illustrator CS 11.0.2 update, but it’s not an isolated case. Take the Adobe Reader 7 installer, for example. Download the thing and double-click on it and what do you get? […]

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Security Update 2005-006 and Java applications

Monday, June 20th, 2005 • 5:43 am

A number of Mac OS X machines in my employer’s offices use a custom-made Java application that communicates with a library management system on a central Solaris server. Mac OS X support has always been a bit dicey — the provider of the library management system is, predictably, more familiar with client computers running Windows. […]

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Finder: Can’t drag item if name is editable (list view)

Sunday, June 19th, 2005 • 8:50 am

I don’t know why, today is the day for uncovering Finder bugs and flaws… Here’s another one that’s outrageously easy to reproduce. Open a Finder window in View as List view mode. Select an item in the window. Click on the name a second time to make it editable. While the name is editable, click […]

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Finder: Dragging proxy icon to the trash creates a copy in the trash

Sunday, June 19th, 2005 • 6:03 am

Another example of sloppy, inconsistent programming by Apple in Mac OS X’s Finder… Create a folder called “Test” in your home folder. Open the folder “Test” in a new Finder window, and switch the Finder to View as List mode (if it’s not in this view mode already), so that the Finder window displays the […]

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