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Top Tips from other Sites

OSX Daily

Hide any file or folder

MacWorld

10.6: Add Size and other columns to search results

OSX Daily

Track an applications usage in Mac OS X with opensnoop

MakeUseOf
is an excellent free source of
tips, tricks, manuals and geeky humour

Blogger Hacks

A compilation of the best hacks
to Google Blogspot / Blogger's standard templates.

Important Note
Although you will find easier guides on the web, you don't need to read this page at all.
Why? Because what this page offers is a completely
BLANK TEMPLATE
with most of these hacks applied*, downloadable by clicking the link.

These hacks have been applied to a standard Google template.
In theory this means you can host your own customised code..
..and yet retain the full functionality of Google's editing tools..
Voila! Full custom free CMS..

From time to time Google will change the rules..
..so these hacks are guaranteed not to remain working.
I will, however, endeavour to keep it updated.

HTML Hacks

(via Template - Edit HTML)

Hide Blog Title

Look for: .Header h1 {

Add: display:none;

Hide Blog Description

Look for: .Header .description {

Add: display:none;

Remove Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

1. (Go to dashboard/ template/ edit HTML)
2. Click the 'Expand Widgets Templates' box
3. Find and Remove:

<b:include data='feedLinks' name='feedLinksBody'/>

Remove Home (link)

1. (Go to dashboard/ template/ edit HTML)
2. Click the 'Expand Widgets Templates' box
3. Find and Remove:

<a class='home-link' expr:href='data:blog.homepageUrl'><data:homeMsg/></a>

Remove NavBar

1. (Go to dashboard/ template/ edit HTML)
2. Paste inside the head section:

#navbar-iframe 
{ display: none !important; }

Remove Top Margin

1. (Go to dashboard/ template/ edit HTML)
2. Find outer-wrapper
3. Look for margin-top: (value)px; 
4. Set the value (can be a negative value)

Remove Top Padding / Margin

1. (Go to dashboard/ template/ edit HTML)
2. Find <Variable name="main.padding.top"
3. Change value= to "0px"

eg.
<Variable name="main.padding.top" description="Main Padding Top" type="length" default="0px" value="0px"/>and/or

.post-outer {

  padding: 15px 20px;
  margin: 0 0 25px;

Remove Post Background

1. Create a 1px transparent .png
2. Upload and copy it's URL
3. Go to dashboard/ template/ edit HTML
4. Replace background-color: $(post.background.color) with background: url(image_url) repeat;

Remove Image Border

.post-body img, .post-body .tr-caption-container {

  padding: 0px;

Remove Post Footer

Paste this code just after ]]></b:skin> :

<style type='text/css'> <b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != "index"'> .post-footer {display:none !important;} </b:if> </style>

Remove Page Title

Paste this code just after </b:skin> :

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "static_page"'>
<style>
.post-title.entry-title{
display: none;
}
</style>
</b:if>

Centre Title

Paste this code just before ]]></b:skin> :

h3.post-title { text-align:center; }

Remove Attribution

Search for Attribution
locked='false'
Layout -> Edit Attribution -> Remove

Remove Link Underlines
a:link {
text-decoration:underline;
}
a:visited {
text-decoration:underline;
}
a:hover {
text-decoration:underline;
}

To

a:link {
text-decoration:none;
}
a:visited {
text-decoration:none;
}
a:hover {
text-decoration:none;
}

CSS Hacks

(via Template - Customise - Advanced - Edit CSS)


Note that CSS hacks you  Customize  will disappear from the template editor.
and end up in the HTML template.

Horizontal Gradient

body {

background:-webkit-gradient(linear, left bottom, right bottom, from(#000000), to(#ffffff));
background: -moz-linear-gradient(left, black, white);

}

Remove NavBar

#navbar-iframe { height: 0px; visibility: hidden; display: none;}
#navbar { height: 0px; visibility: hidden; display: none;}

Remove Image Border

.post-body img, .post-body .tr-caption-container, .Profile img, 
.Image img, .BlogList .item-thumbnail img {
    border: 0px;
    -moz-box-shadow: 0px 0px 0px rgba(0, 0, 0, .0);
    -webkit-box-shadow: 0px 0px 0px rgba(0, 0, 0, .0);
    box-shadow: 0px 0px 0px rgba(0, 0, 0, .0);
    border-radius: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
    background: none;

Remove Post Footer

.post-footer
{
display: none;
}

Remove Attribution

#Attribution1 {display: none;}

External Links
(Top Tips and Tuts from other sites)

W3 Schools
W3C: CSS tips & tricks
Smashing Magazine
CSS Tricks
Learn CSS Positioning in Ten Steps
Hongkiat: 20 Useful CSS Tips For Beginners
Web Vamp - CSS Image Rollovers

Google power searching with [site:] (site colon)

This tutorial will show you how to do your own power-searches
or plunder the contents of a specific website using

For Mac Spotlight power-searching, click here:

To summarize

In a Google search, paste in the URL of a website, but type site: instead of http://www.

Now type a space, followed by your search query eg.

Now for the long-winded version:

Meet my favourite

Google party trick

site:

By the end of this, you will have a useful

tool for power-searching an entire website.

What is it?

A Google listing of all indexed webpages for a specific site

Why would I need that?

To get a good overview of the

number of, or types of pages on a site

Trick #1 site:

By the way..

this isn't the best bit, that's

#2 site: + query

and even better is

#2.1 site: + query (images)

but we needed to start here, so..

Think of a website

Copy it's URL (address)

Now, in a standard Google search, type:

site:[root address of the site you want to explore]

Note: something in [green] is a suggestion from me ie. you should type your own stuff there

or in other words..

replace the

http://www.

with

site:

eg. site:apple.com

and now we are one click away from..

Trick #1.1 site: (images)

If you click the Images link / button on the side

you've got all images on the site

Trick #2 site: + query

Now we're cookin'..

How to find something specific on a website

(without using the website's own search engine)

In a google search box, type:

site:[root address] + [space] + [query]

So if you typed

site:apple.com xyz

(take note of the space before the xyz)

then you would have

every reference to xyz

on Apple's whole site

Trick #2.1 site:query (images)

If you click the images link (for google images)

you've got all images of xyz on Apple

that's all, folks

Top Mac Apps

The best Mac Apps

(in the author's opinion, of course..)

Alternative App Store

Bodega The alternative App Store. A great selection of genuinely useful apps in a funky user-friendly interface..

Finder Tabs TotalFinder Tabbed Browsing - Add tabs on top of Finder. The same tabs as seen in Google Chrome. Internet

Google Chrome Currently the fastest and most popular web browser

Flash Player Unless you use Chrome, you're probably going to need this

Google Drive Drop files into a folder to back them up to your Google account. Edit them anywhere online.

Dropbox Like Google Drive.. the original online sharing app

Skype Cheap phone calls

Transmission Torrent client

Multimedia

VLC Plays anything

Perian Extra codecs for Quicktime player

MPEG Streamclip Advanced, free video converter

File Management

Tidy Up! Intelligent, customizable dupe finder

Archiver Alternative archive handler

A Better Finder Rename Highly advanced file renamer

EasyFind Non-index based searching for when the brilliant Spotlight is proving to be a little too "clever"

Big Mean Folder Machine Categorize files into folders based on their file type

Super Flexible File Synchronizer Back-up your data and synchronize Macs, servers, notebooks, and online storage space.

Technical Tools

TeamViewer Easy to install and use cross-platform LAN and internet remote desktop tech support.

CoRD LAN-based desktop sharing with Windows computers for Mac.

iPartition An alternative to the excellent Apple Disk Utility.app, iPartition includes a huge number of partition types and the ability to write MBR boot code to drives for advanced boot capabilities.

Pacifist An alternative to the default Apple Installer.app allowing force-installation, .pkg unpacking and installation to external devices for when Installer.app won't allow it.

DiskWarrior The stalwart of Mac tech support is still the only completely reliable way of rebuilding a corrupt file-system. Disk Warrior will rescue unmountable disks in most cases (for damage beyond file-system, see Test Disk). Recommended as part of advanced maintenance.

testdisk Recovers lost or damaged boot sectors. Will recover a drive when Disk Warrior can't see it.

rEFIt An alternative to the default Apple boot loader, rEFIt offers added file-system support (extfs) and overcomes problems with Boot Camp.

Lingon See what's been installed to the system by third-party installers and disable problematic and performance-reducing startup items.

BatChmod Change permissions and remove ACLs on files and folders of files and sub-folders.

TuxeraNTFS The best NTFS driver for Mac, allowing excellent write-capability and adding extra formatting and repair functions to Disk Utility.app.

Cleaning and Maintenance

CleanMyMac Safely slims down the size of Apps by removing unused languages and leftover code. Cleans caches not cleaned by other apps: use it with Lion Cache Cleaner, MainMenu or OnyX. Has been known to free up to 3Gb of space, depending on what's installed.

Lion Cache Cleaner More than just a cache cleaner, LCC (or Snow Leopard Cache Cleaner) is one of the most complete set of Mac maintenance, repair and settings suites around.

MainMenu Pro Full maintenance, repair and settings suite accessible from the menu bar.

AppZapper App uninstaller