Typinator and Google Chrome revisited

The new version of Typinator fixes the Google Chrome spaces problem I mentioned earlier this year.

Unfortunately, the hack that I applied back then to get proper snippet expansion in Google Chrome now backfires and causes newlines to go invisible. If you are experiencing this, you know what I’m talking about. To remove the hack, just delete the file Chrome.plist located in ~/Library/Application Support/Typinator/Application Settings, then quit and relaunch Typinator.

(via Ergonis Support)

How Apple will bring iPhone OS to notebooks (a prediction)

Over at TUAW, Erica Sadun has posted an entry pondering whether or not Apple will bring its iPhone OS to Macs. They will, even though Steve Jobs has said there will be no App Store for Macs, as someone politely remarked in the comments.

How?
They will revive the iBook brand.
Within 2 years, Apple will launch a new series of iBooks that will run iPhone OS, with the App Store to match it. Probably something in the netbook-to-13-inch range, my pick would be a 12” screen.

Think about it. It would be a perfect addition to iPod, iPhone and iPad. The iBooks will be just as closed as the other iDevices, and run approved apps from the App Store only.

The new iBooks may or may not have touch screens at launch, but at some point they probably will. These iBooks will provide the ultimate “it just works” experience on a notebook, and iPhone and iPad will have prepped the world for this.

Also, since the new iBooks won’t technically be Macs, Steve’s promise not to open a Mac App Store won’t be broken. Although I could definitely see MacBooks gain the ability to run iBook App Store programs.

Apple has a winner with the iPhone OS, they cannot afford to take it to the MacBook brand (yet) because that would hurt their “traditional” Mac OS X. They have an appropriately named and well-known notebook trademark gathering dust on the shelves. Surely there must be a prototype iBook  with iPhone OS just waiting to be left at a beer garden somewhere ….

P.S. I’d be interested in a nice mockup picture of an iPhone OS iBook to illustrate this post. Any creatives that want to share?

What will become of Tweetie for Mac?

Tweetie for Mac is is my favorite Twitter client on the Mac. I paid for the full version (with a little help from Macheist), and I use it every day.

On April 9, 2010, Tweetie’s author and owner Loren Brichter announced that Twitter had acquired his company and that new versions of the iPhone App would be free. I paid $2.99 for Tweetie 2 for iPhone and love it, and I am happy for everyone that will get this excellent app for free. Even better, an iPad version is in the works!

Neither Loren Brichter / atebits nor Ev / Twitter has said anything about the future of Tweetie for Mac. My question on twitter was not answered. Maybe I missed something, if so, please let me know. Let’s hope Twitter don’t discontinue Tweetie for Mac, because it’s a lovely little program (with a version 2 in the works, as announced before the acquisition).

Also, thank you Loren for these excellent apps, let’s hope the move to Twitter brings even more greatness.

Update: Looks like Loren has reported Tweetie for Mac as alive and kicking: http://www.twittwittwitter.com/tweetie-2-for-mac-coming-soon/ => http://www.macheist.com/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=370710#p370710

Panic makes a classic User Interface Design mistake with Transmit 4

Transmit is my favourite FTP client and more. I gladly pay for it. The upgrade from Transmit 3 to Transmit 4 was a no-brainer for me. Until I started Transmit 4, and found out that the guys at Panic have made a classic User Interface Design mistake.

“Eye Candy Overdose”, also known as “It’s less useful but it’s prettier”. Everything shrinks, slides and pops, but it doesn’t always serve a purpose.

What’s worse, the “Favorites” section (direct links to often used folders on a local or remote site) is hidden behind a click and a pop-out. Which means that I have to click my Favorites into view every time I need them. The point of favorites being that you need them all the time.

I have complete faith that this mistake will be fixed within a week or so, and that Panic will write a nice blog post to apologize to its user base and admit that this was a big oops. Or they tell me that I somehow missed the setting to show Favorites like in Transmit 3. Let’s check the Support section of their website just to make sure …

Where did the sidebar and/or preview go?

The Sidebar has been replaced with the new Places pop-up. It’s the folder with the star — just click it to get a Dock-like menu of favorite folders, which you can add on a per-server basis. The Preview drawer has been replaced with Quick Look (and, if you’re on Mac OS X 10.6, will still show you image dimensions.)

via panic.com

Typinator and unwanted spaces in Google Chrome

If you use Typinator and you get unwanted extra spaces when expanding inside Google Chrome, try this tip (from Ergonis Support):

  • Copy this link: typinator://appsetting?name=Chrome&signature=rimZ&directString=300
  • Open Safari (not Chrome). 
  • Paste the link in the address bar and press Enter. The Typinator Window should now open. Close it if you want. 
  • Close Chrome if it was open. 
  • Launch Chrome. 

That’s it! Works for me. Thanks Ergonis!

Numbered chapter titles and paragraph headers in Pages (iWork ‘09)

For most of my document writing I use iWork Pages (from iWork ‘09), and it’s usually fine for me. I don’t miss Microsoft Word, except for one simple feature: the ability to number chapter titles and paragraph headers for easy reference in the contents of the document and for cross references.

Somehow, I cannot find this feature in Pages ‘09. It is possible to number headers by setting the style to numbered, but it doesn’t mitigate well into the generated dynamic contents, and paragraphs don’t follow the numbering of higher level elements it seems.

Does anyone know how to make this work?

via superuser.com

I asked this question on SuperUser.com a while ago. Is there still no better way to do this? The accepted answer kind of works but messes with numbered lists in the content way too frequently to be useful.