In the midst of all the exciting news about iPhone OS iOS 4 and the new iPhone 4, Apple snuck in yet another bit of innovation in the release of Safari 5. With little surprise, the most advertised of new features are enhancements to the rendering of HTML 5. Of the HTML 5 improvements, full screen video support is of most intrigue due to the on going “war” (of sorts) between Apple and Adobe over video content delivery. The release notes also talk about how Safari’s Nitro Engine will run JavaScript 30% faster than Safari 4, 3% faster than Chrome and over twice as fast as Firefox 3.6. Last but not least is the addition of Bing to the list of available search providers and (finally!) Safari now has support for Extensions, or as the rest of the web broswing world calls them, “Plugins”. Read on for a more complete list of features.

This update contains new features including:

Whether you are a new Apple developer or an experienced Cocoa engineer with roots in NeXTStep, you will understand the need to back up your hard work. Integrating Xcode with subversion not only allows you to back up your code, but it also enables you to keep a history of changes that you can revert back to or compare your code against. This is called version control. This article assumes that you already have your own subversion repository that you have read and write access to. If you want to setup a subversion server of your own, I suggest consulting the almighty google for a wide range of articles on how to accomplish this task. Read on for screenshots, details and lots of fun.

Step 1) Tell Xcode about your repository.

     Xcode has the ability to communicate with subversion using native svn communication, ssh+svn, http and https. The most popular of the various methods is https which allows you to save your data over an encrypted channel. Because after all, it is important that your trade secrets are never exposed to your competitor! To add a subversion repository, navigate to the “SCM” menu and select the “Configure SCM Repositories…” option. Fill in the relevant information which should be readily available to you, if it’s not, contact the person who administrates your SVN repository for more details.

Step 2) Let’s put your code on the Subversion server

     Go back to the SCM menu and select the “Repositories” menu item. From this screen you can now “import” your hard work into the repository. Click the “Import” button and navigate to your Xcode project’s directory. If you haven’t done so already, you might want to think about configuring your project to use a directory for builds that lives OUTSIDE of your Xcode project directory. If you configure your build paths (in your Project Settings) in this manner you will avoid checking in binary copies of your application, which is typically unnecessary as subversion is source control management (SCM) not binary control management. After you have settled on your build path situation, go ahead and select your entire Xcode project and import it. If the subversion server is “local” to your computer this process will be lighting fast. If not, wait a while for it to finish.

Step 3) Check-out your newly imported code from the repository

     Now that you have stored your source code on the subversion server, the current local copy of your Xcode project can be moved off to the side, or even better, deleted. Don’t worry since you placed the files inside of the repository, we can quickly check them out so that your working copy will be attached to the repository. Navigate back to the SCM menu (noticing a trend here?) and select “Repositories”. From the repository browsing window select your Xcode project and click the “Checkout” button. Xcode will ask you for a place to save the project. Any location will do, just save it.

Step 4) Inform your Project that it is under SCM control

     Time to tell Xcode that your project is being managed by SCM, or more specifically subversion. Pull your Project Settings and click the “Project Roots & SCM” button. It will bring up the window you see below where you want to select and then click the small black arrows until it reads your subversion repository. That it. Hit Ok and return to Xcode. Your project is now Subversion aware.

The Final Steps
     The hard work has paid off. You can now right click the menu bar of the navigation sidebar and check the “SCM” entry. This will place an additional column in the sidebar which will have an “M” in it if a file is “newer” (meaning it needs to be committed) than what is in the Subversion repository. You can now right click a file and commit it to the repository. When you do that, Xcode will ask you to enter a comment that describes what changes were made to the file.

ShrinkIt is a handy little app that greatly reduces the file size of Illustrator generated PDF’s. Created as an internal tool, the developers over at Panic realized that PDF files saved from Adobe Illustrator were loaded with loads of extra nonsense metadata, even patterns, preview bitmaps, swatches, creating enormous PDF file sizes when they should be much smaller. The solution? Process the Adobe bloatfile through Apple’s PDF processor. You can do this yourself through Preview, but it’s a pain to open and re-save tons of PDF files, thus the creation of ShrinkIt. Now you can drag and drop your Illustrator PDF’s into ShrinkIt and you’ll save a whole lot of space (the original file is always kept, just renamed).

ShrinkIt is for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard only.

ShrinkIt developer home
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If you want to beef up the security on your Mac, you can try enabling the built-in firewall.

Enabling the Firewall in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

* Open “System Preferences” from the Apple menu
* Click on the ‘Security’ icon
* Click on the ‘Firewall’ tab
* In the corner of this window, you’ll see a lock icon, click on that and enter the administrator password
* Now click on the ‘Start’ button to activate the firewall

Yes, it’s that simple.

If you want to allow certain ports, applications, or network connections, you can enter the ‘Advanced’ tab and adjust the settings as necessary. The Mac OS X firewall is quite secure by default and will block nearly all incoming connections (again, unless specified otherwise). It’s my opinion that if you’re behind a router with it’s own firewall, and on a trusted network, you probably don’t need to use the Mac firewall at all. For small home and school networks you should be fine, but for larger, untrusted, or exposed networks, using the firewall may be a prudent idea, even if the likelihood of an attack on your Mac is extremely low in comparison to a Windows machine.

It’s worth mentioning that since Mac OS X 10.6, the Firewall service has been placed under the “Security” systems preference as opposed to ‘Sharing’ as it was in prior versions of Mac OS X.

Mac OS X 10.6 simplified the font smoothing (anti-aliasing) for Mac OS X and all apps within it, but for some the change is unwelcome. If you feel like your screen looks different, it probably does, and the change can be very profound on certain LCD displays. Using the Terminal we can adjust the font smoothing to the same precision that we could prior to 10.6, so launch the Terminal and enter the following command:

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 2

the 2 on the end is for medium smoothing which used to be called ‘best for flat panel’, 1 is for light smoothing, and 3 is for strong smoothing. After you execute the command you’ll want to reload the Finder and other apps that are open to see the changes in effect, you can reload the Finder by killing it:

killall Finder

Now your font smoothing will be reflected in the settings you chose.

I found this hint on MacWorld, where the author was complaining of the way fonts looked in 10.6 on his Hackintosh Dell Mini 10v, the changes are very profound on smaller screens and the improvement was very nice on my Hackintosh Netbook (an Acer Aspire) as well.

[ via MacWorld ]

You can change the Mac OS X login screen background picture using a few different methods. We have covered this tip before but it was based around a few Terminal commands that might not be easy to follow for the average Mac user without command line experience. With that in mind, here are ways to change the Mac login wallpaper:

Change the Mac Login Screen Background

This is the easiest way to change the Mac’s login window background picture, you simply copy a new background image file over the old one via the Finder.

* Change the image of the file you want to use as the new login background to ‘DefaultDesktop.jpg’ – note that it must be a JPG file!
* Hit Command+Shift+G to bring up the ‘Go To Folder’ window

* Type or paste in the following directory path: /System/Library/CoreServices/
* Within this directory, locate the file ‘DefaultDesktop.jpg’ and copy it somewhere else on your hard drive, so that you have a backup of the original.
* Now drag the new image file you want to use as the login background (also named DefaultDesktop.jpg) into the /System/Library/CoreServices/ folder
* You will be presented with a dialog box telling you the file cannot be modified without authentication, click on ‘Authenticate’ – you may need to enter your Admin password

* After authentication, the copy should go as intended, and your Mac login background is now changed! Reboot to see the difference:

The above screenshot is dated from our past article, but this method has been tested and works in Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6! You can further also customize the Mac login screen, by changing the Mac logo and whatnot.

Mac OS X Server is infinitely better equipped, more stable, and just generally more pleasant than any of Windows offerings (yes I am biased, but it’s true), if you’re needing a server I highly recommend checking out Apple’s offering. Instead of shelling out the $499 for a copy though, you can get a free evaluation copy! If you’re a large corporation, small business, nonprofit organization, government agency, or educational institution, you can get a free and fully functional evaluation copy of Mac OS X Server directly from Apple. I just found out about this and I think it’s a pretty great thing for Apple to do, so if you qualify for a copy, check it out and you will be impressed.

Apple: Snow Leopard Server Evaluation

Snow Leopard changed the way the Dock behaves when a Dock item has been clicked on and held down, since 10.6 it launches Expose for that specific application. You may recall how Leopard handled the click-and-hold though, which was to launch the contextual menu (the same one you get when you right-click in 10.6). Using the Terminal and the defaults write command, you can alter this behavior between the 10.5 contextual-menu and 10.6 Expose style click-and-hold Dock behavior. So launch your Terminal:

Show contextual menu rather than Expose when Dock item has been clicked and held (like 10.5)
defaults write com.apple.dock show-expose-menus -bool no; killall Dock

Revert to Expose upon click-and-hold (10.6 default)
defaults write com.apple.dock show-expose-menus -bool yes; killall Dock

I actually like the new Expose click effect (which is slightly different in 10.6.2 than it is in 10.6), so for me this is a matter of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” but to each their own.

via Lap Cat Software

When you go to change the file extension in Mac OS X you will get a dialog box notifying you that by changing a file type it may open in another application. Chances are if you are changing the file extension deliberately, you did this intentionally. You can quickly accept this file type extension change by hitting Command+U when the dialogue box pops up.

This appears to be Snow Leopard only, but I do not have access to an older Mac OS X to test.

If you want to change the wallpaper that sits in the background of your Mac’s login screen, from the Finder hit Command+Shift+G to open the ‘Go to Folder’ screen. Type /System/Library/CoreServices/ and click ‘Go’:

Next, find the image file called ‘DefaultDesktop.jpg’ – you should save a copy of this somewhere safe, or rename it to DefaultDesktop-backup.jpg or something of the sort, so that you can revert your changes.

After that file is safely backed up, add the new wallpaper image you want to use as the login background, naming it exactly the same as the previous file: DefaultDesktop.jpg

That’s all there is to it! Reboot and your login wallpaper is now whatever you set it to. This works to change the login background in Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6

With Mac OS X Snow Leopard you can input Chinese Characters directly into the trackpad! This is an extremely cool feature but requires a newer Mac with a multitouch trackpad.

Enable Chinese Character Input in Mac OS X

* Launch System Preferences
* Select the Languages and Text pane
* Click the “Input Sources” tab across the top
* Scroll down to either “Chinese – Simplified” or “Chinese – Traditional”
* After enabled, you can show the trackpad handwriting surface in two ways:
* Either Hit Control+Shift+Space to bring up the Handwriting Input Surface (or whatever else you changed it to in prior screen)
* OR you can select the International keyboards menu bar item and select “Show Trackpad Handwriting” to bring up the Chinese Character Input screen

When the trackpad handwriting feature is enabled, the mouse is disabled for scrolling around and the trackpad itself becomes a writing surface allowing you to draw and input Chinese characters directly into it. The strokes are then monitored and you will be offered different character choices depending on what strokes you enter. Very cool!

[ above image borrowed from Apple.com ]

If you Option-Click the Airport Menu you can get extended information about the wireless network you are connected to (and the ones you’re not as well), including Channel information, MAC address of the access point, signal strength, and the transmission rate. This is Snow Leopard only, if you haven’t upgraded to Snow Leopard yet and your Mac is compatible, it’s highly recommended.

Thanks to reader Jim Thorpe for the tip and screenshot!

You can adjust your Mac’s sound volume level silently by holding down the Shift key and then pressing the volume up or volume down keys. This is really handy when you’re in a quiet office or library and don’t want the beep sounds blaring as you adjust system volume.

This tip was submitted to us by Fashion Photographer Ashley Cameron, thank you Ashley! If you have any tip submissions, feel free to send them to us at osxdaily.com@gmail.com

You can easily resize any disk partition in Mac OS X using the included Disk Utility app, located in /Applications/Utilities, you can even resize a mounted volume but that’s not the best idea in the world. Before you go messing around and resizing your partitions, be sure to backup your data in case something goes wrong.

Since Mac OS X Leopard (and obviously Snow Leopard) you can grow or shrink HFS+ (Mac OS X) Partitions on the fly, with the resizing done live regardless of whether the drive is internal or an external drive.

[ tip idea and animated gif from CreativeTechs ]

Command-Tab in Mac OS X works really well as a quick application switcher and I use it all the time, but there’s more features available within the Command-Tab application switcher than just hitting Command+Tab itself. Once you’re in the application switcher you can try some of these other commands.

Command+Tab launches the Application Switcher. Continue holding down the Command key and then try the following buttons:

• tab – move selection to the right in the app list
• ` – move selection to the left
• h – hide the selected application
• q – quit the selected application
• mouse scrollwheel – move the selection back and forth
• left arrow – move selection to the left
• right arrow – move selection to the right
• up arrow – enter expose within the selected application
• down arrow – enter expose within the selected application

Memorize these tips to master the Mac application switcher and speed up your workflow! (Note: the expose features appear to be Snow Leopard only)