Windows 7 tips; keyboard short-cut and gesture for maximize and minimize #2

• Vertically maximize window
• Drag bottom border of window to the bottom edge of display, whole the mouse pointer is up-and-down arrow
  
• Drag top border of window to the top edge of display, whole the mouse pointer is up-and-down arrow; this is not work if you drag the title bar, instead of the top border
  
• Double click at bottom border of window, whole the mouse pointer is up-and-down arrow
• Double click at top border of window, whole the mouse pointer is up-and-down arrow

Providing multiple way to do one thing may useful.
But explaining "To do xxxx, please execute aaaa, or bbbb, or, cccc, or..." is nightmare.
In the other hand with Mac, "To resize a window, drag right bottom corner of the window, this is the only way" is the life of minimalist, bipolar design philosophy.

Windows 7 tips; keyboard short-cut and gesture for maximize and minimize

Windows 7 tips I found.

• [Windows]+[Right arrow] and [Windows]+[Left arrow]
  Align and maximize at right/left half of display.
  With mouse, move title bar to right/left edge of display.
  To restore, reverse arrow key. If you press same arrow key once again, the window will be aligned and maximized to opposite, and again, it will be restored.
• [Windows]+[Up arrow]
  Maximize current window.
  With mouse, move title bar to top edge of display.
  To restore, press [Windows]+[Down arrow] . If you press this key again, see below.
• [Windows]+[Down arrow]
  Minimize current window (iconify).
• [Windows]+[Shift]+[Up arrow]
  Maximize current windows to vertical direction.
  With mouse, move bottom border to bottom edge of display. (move down with mouse, but up arrow with keyboard)
  To restore, press [Windows]+[Down arrow] . [Windows]+[Shift]+[Down arrow] is same effect. If you press again, see above.
• Shake the window title
  Minimize other windows.
  
  

Passcode Lock Now utility

>Recently, I wrote an entry "Protect your iPhone/iPod touch with Stronger Password".
Many of us use passcode lock timer to let us eliminate re-enter the passcode even when iPhone/iPod touch has been locked in very short period.
When you leave your iPhone/iPod touch alone, someone could see your important information without passcode.

I wrote "PasscodeLckNw (Passcode Lock Now)" utility that puts iPhone/iPod touch immediately into passcode locked.

PasscodeLckNw (Passcode Lock Now) (build #001 2009-09-22) [Download]

How to install:

• It can not be installed from App Store, sorry.
• Copy above kit to home direcotry of mobile user of iPhone/iPod touch by your favorite method.
• Log-in to iPhone/iPod touch and become root (by "su" command).
• Extract the kit at /Applications/ folder. The example command is;
  

  cd /Applications/ ; unzip ~mobile/PasscodeLckNw-001.zip

  A directory /Applications/PasscodeLckNw.app/ will be created.
  
• Let iPhone/iPod touch recognize the application by using "respring" command or reboot.

Implementation note:

• This is a shell-script application.
• It restarts SpringBoard process by using "killall". That is a quicker way to lock the iPhone/iPod touch than rebooting.

[Japanese version]

Easily Take a Note on Snow Leopard/Leopard

With Notes on iPhone/iPod touch (MobileNotes.app), you can take a note easily and quickly.

On Mac OS X, Notes function of Mail.app is not so quick.
You have to open the Mail, and then call New Note from File menu.
You want to take a note, but you have to open the Mail app, is not intuitive.
So, I made an utility to start taking a note with one click.
If you are using Note Sync with iPhone/iPod touch, this brings synergy.
It is very basic AppleScript applet.
Follow the steps to make it.

• Open [Applications] -> [Utilities] -> [AppleScript Editor].
• Copy and Paste following code into AppleScript Editor window.
  

  tell application "Mail"activate
  end tell
  tell application "System Events"
  tel

  l process "Mail"
  click the menu item "New Note" of the menu "File" of menu bar 1
  -- click the menu item

   "新規メモ" of the menu "ファイル" of menu bar 1
  end tell
  end tell

• Push [Run] button to test the script. You will see the Mail.app is open and new note window is appeared.
• Then, do [File] -> [Save as], with "New Note" as file name, and specify [Application] for [File Format].
• Place the "New Note" icon created into Dock.

To change the icon of "New Note";

• Save the image at the upper right.
• Open the image with Preview app.
• Do [Edit] -> [Select All] or .
• Do [Edit] -> [Copy] or .
• Select "New Note" on Finder and do [File] -> [View Info] or .
• Click the icon on the "New Note Info" window.
• do [Edit] -> [Paste] or . Then the icon is replaced.

[Japanese version]

Grid layout of Snow Leopard Exposé ; wrong decision

Grid layout of Exposé on Snow Leopard (with about 60 windows)

Flexible layout of Exposé on Leopard (showing famous 150 window) - There are 2.5 times many windows, but easily distinguish each of them.

The Layout mode of Exposé is changed from Flexible to Grid on Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6).
I like flexible layout of Leopard or Tiger (10.5/10.4).
I think grid layout has following disadvantages.

• The size of all window will be same. So you can not easily find them.
  For example, large Safari window and tiny Sticky window will have the same size. You can not distinguish which window is Safari and another is Sticky at once.
• The information "window size" will be dismissed.
• There is no meaning on Grid itself.
  Grid layout is seems to be smart, but original window layout is analog, and is not aligned each other.
• Anyway, Grid layout is not fun compared to Flexible layout.

I want original Flexible layout comes back in future.

[Japanese version]

Bottleneck of PyObjC on iPhone OS

I found the bottleneck of Python programs with PyObjC on iPhone OS.

"import objc" and "obj.loadBundle ("UIKit",...)" are both usually used code, but they both takes about three seconds at application startup.

Though, Python language itself is not so slow.

It is 5 seconds overhead at startup time.

In addition , they are very large libraries so it also become disadvantage on memory footprint.

On comparison, MobileAddressbook takes only 5.7MB, but HelloPython takes 11MB.

That shows the memory overhead is about 5MB.

Both overheads appear only when you use both PyObjC and UIKit.

[Japanese version]

My Safari 4 on Mac OS X has been always hanged with pages with Flash

Actually, My Mac mini with Safari 4 always hanged with web pages using Flash or YouTube movies.

After months with nightmares, I found it was caused by the conflict between Safari and SafariStand.

I deleted SafariStand, and I got very smooth web surfing with Safari 4.

My fault was that I do not updated the SafariStand after I installed Safari 4.

SafariStand is installed on /Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins/SafariStand.bundle .

I was mistakenly used SafariStand 3.1T161 with Safari 4.

Current version of SafairStand is 4.0T167 and it is compatible to Safari 4.