It's time yet again for Ask TUAW, our weekly questions and answers column. This week we'll be tackling questions from last week about putting the Trash in the Finder sidebar, problems with Mail, keeping track of Books, and more. As always, please leave your own comments, and ask more questions for next week either in the comments to this post or using the tip form. Now let's turn to this week's questions.Santiago asks
I'd like to know if there is a way to add a Trash icon in the finder sidebar? It would be easy to drag-and-drop files directly to the sidebar and not to the dock.
There are a variety of ways to do this. In fact our own Dave Caolo posted a hint last year on doing this with a simple AppleScript. However, the easiest way to do this is probably just to add the hidden Trash folder itself to your sidebar. In the finder hit Cmd-Shift-G and in the dialog box type: ~/.Trash. Your Trash folder will now appear and you can drag it over to your sidebar like any other folder. You can now drag files over to trash them. Of course if you want to make it look nice you'll need to change the icon of the .Trash folder as I've done in the screenshot below. The downside to this method is that the Trash can won't animate (i.e. show when it's full), but if you can live with that this is the cheapest and easiest way to do this. If you want a more full-featured trashcan you can check out the free SideTrash as recommended by Macworld (though it is PPC only). There are some shareware trash managers available as well, just try this search on MacUpdate.
Aron asks
I have been using my mbp and for quite some time and mail.app for quite some time longer. Lately (the last couple weeks, or so) I have not been able to send e-mail. Ever. Ok, that was an exaggeration. Here is the situation: I have 5 e-mail addresses. At work, I can send e-mail with two of them. At school, I can only send using my school e-mail address. And at home, I can't send using ANY of them. Now I can understand the trouble at work and school would be related to some sort of network settings outside my control. However, at home, I am the network admin. So it makes no sense why given the same settings (with some of the same e-mail providers) The only differences is are my roommates are using Entourage. Now i'll die before i'll use a non-universal, microsoft application for ALL of my mail... but this is ridiculous! Are there any other e-mail applications that seem to perform better than mail.app? I would REALLY prefer to have an application on my computer rather than using a webmail app of some kind - but at this point i'm desperate.
In all likelihood this is an issue of your ISP blocking the standing SMTP sending port 25. ISPs do this because so many Windows computers have become infected with Trojans, etc. which turns them into zombies which the hackers then use to forward Spam. Since Microsoft can't be counted on to fix the problem at a desktop level, many ISP have simply turned off port 25, which is likely what has happened to you. I see from your email address that you're using Time Warner's Road Runner Service in Houston, so you should check out help.rr.com where you'll find listed Road Runner's Houston SMTP server address: smtp-server.houston.rr.com. If you type in that address to the Mail.app SMTP preference as below, you should be able to send mail without any problem.
The problem, however, is that once you're away from home again, you probably will not be able to send mail with this server (since you're not on Time Warner's network). In that case you might consider trying to find a commercial SMTP provider. In fact, I use fastmail.fm just for the SMTP services. If you sign up for their Member account ($14.95 one time) you can use their SMTP server from anywhere in the world. Best of all, they allow you to use non-standard ports (e.g. 26) for SMTP, allowing you to bypass those ISPs that block 25, as well as SSL encrypted SMTP servers. I've been using fastmail for SMTP for years; absolutely worth the 15 bucks. A free option would be to use Gmail's SMTP server (you'll need a Gmail account of course, and you'll need to change the default sending address in the Gmail settings if you don't want it to be your Gmail address).
Since you mention you're a student, your school may also offer authenticated SMTP access for free as well.
kr asks
I'm having trouble adding my aol account to my mail.app list. I have heard some say that aol won't work in mail.app. Is this true? If not, what should I type in in all of the fields? (i.e. outgoing, incoming server, etc.)
AOL has the answer to your question.
leeanna asks
I am a voracious reader and like to keep track of all the books I read. For the past several years I've used Notepad or TextEdit to keep track, but I would like something more elegant and nicer looking than a plain list. I figured there might be some sort of mac solution, but I haven't been able to find one.
Well the obviously suggestion is Delicious Library ($40, below) which will display cover images of your books on virtual bookshelves and allow you to input them either manually or by scanning barcodes with your iSight and downloading information from Amazon.com. Delicious Library focusses not only on books, but also DVDs, CDs, and games as you can see. Unfortunately, it's also rather notorious for bogging down with large libraries.
A free, open source option that's not quite as slick, but may in fact be a bit better for your purposes, is Books for MacOS X by Chris Karr (below). Like Delicious Library it can download bibliographical information from the net but it is not limited merely to Amazon.com and has plugins for a variety national libraries including the Library of Congress. Books' display options are not quite as nice as Delicious Library's, but it too can download cover images.
Phil asks
I rarely use Spotlight because I find the results display to be crippled. I'm often looking for a particular directory, based on knowing the name of a file in that directory. In the Spotlight results, it seems that only verb available for the found documents is Open. There doesn't seem to be a way to say "show this document in the Finder". Am I missing something?
Fellow reader Donny offers the solution to this one. Just hold down the Command key while clicking on the result and the folder in which it is located will open in the Finder. You might also like to check out the alternative Spotlight interface we mentioned last week called Spotlaser, which opens its results in a Smart Folder in the Finder.
This information is provided for your entertainment. Neither TUAW nor this author can be held responsible for any problems arising from the use of the information provided here.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
3-07-2007 @ 8:38AM
Tony Ward said...
Re: the Trash tip: personally, I'm much more inclined to right-click and select "Move to Trash." This works, no matter where you are in the Finder (no sidebar or Dock required).
Reply
3-07-2007 @ 8:59AM
jason mark said...
RE: spotlight
TIP: Instead of using Spotlight (which just appears to return junk results for me) make sure you put the "search" option in the top-right of your finder window (as shown in the screenshot that Mat put on your tip above). then open your hard drive, and search on your hard drive. When you click on the file you found, the path will appear at the bottom of the find results, and you can click to jump anywhere in the path you'd like.
Jason
http://www.gravityswitch.com
Reply
3-07-2007 @ 9:03AM
Cog said...
In Finder, you can customize the tool bar. There you will find a red circle with a slash. Add that to your tool bar and then simply click it to delete selected files. Easy!
Reply
3-07-2007 @ 10:09AM
Ed D said...
Re: AOL mail and Mail.app: AOL provides an app to migrate you from the old client to Mail.app and iChat. The Service Assistant sets everything up and even pulls in the mail you've saved in the AOL client.
http://downloads.channel.aol.com/macproducts
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3-07-2007 @ 10:29AM
Tim A said...
Re: Phil's question to "Show this Document In the Finder".
If you're searching within a window and not the drop down menu (like Command-F), you can select the file you're looking for and press Command-R. This keystroke combination Reveals the file in its finder location by opening its folder as a new window, and even selects the file for you.
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3-07-2007 @ 10:52AM
ossiejnr said...
How do you change the icon of something in the sidebar?
Reply
3-07-2007 @ 10:52AM
Leo said...
I kinda of have the same problems with sending emails from home when I'm not at school.
My school provides VPN, and using that seems to fix the problem for me, and most of my friends. Aron you should look that up and see if your school offers the same.
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3-07-2007 @ 11:14AM
Toastmaster General said...
i just use apple+delete to move files to the trash. then apple+shift+delete to empty the trash.
Know your shortcuts.
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3-07-2007 @ 11:37AM
russell said...
In spotlight if you select "show all", you get a separate window where you'll find few more options in the items' contextual menu including reveal in finder, get info, mail, some others.
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3-07-2007 @ 11:37AM
Kyle Hall said...
when i'm on my school's network....i use their smtp server for most of my outgoing mail....this should get the job done!
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3-07-2007 @ 12:25PM
Doug McIntosh said...
I have RoadRunner service in Indianapolis.
I encountered the "Sending" problem with Mail.app last weekend.
I called RR tech support and at that time, no Knowledge Base information said anything about a Mail.app problem.
However, in searching Apple's discussion forums, I discovered a pattern of forum postings starting around March 1, 2007, that all complained about SENDING Mail from Mail.app, to any one of a number of different ISPs, not just RoadRunner.
I continue to have intermittent problems sending mail.
Oh, and as a tie-breaker, I installed Eudora. It was able to send and receive flawlessly. So the problem is NOT at the ISP.
Hopefully, Apple will recognize and quickly fix this issue.
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3-07-2007 @ 1:41PM
Mat Lu said...
@6: Just change the folder icon the regular way, THEN drag it to the sidebar. It may not update if you change it AFTER it's already on the sidebar, so just drag the folder off (Poof!), then change the icon, then drag it back onto the Sidebar.
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3-07-2007 @ 1:46PM
Mark Gould said...
Never mind Delicious Library. Librarything (http://www.librarything.com/) is much more useful, and sociable.
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3-07-2007 @ 2:06PM
Scott H said...
If Books doesn't do what you need, you should definitely check out Bookpedia (bruji.com). It's outstanding--more customizable than Delicious Library, frequently updated, and fun to use without being cartoony like DL.
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3-07-2007 @ 5:11PM
robin D'Arcy said...
I was wondering if their was a way to copy playlists from one itunes to another so that the songs apear the same in each playlist on each mac computer?
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3-07-2007 @ 6:28PM
George said...
Regarding SMTP from your ISP, I have Road Runner via Earthlink, and I use their(Earthlink's) authenticated SMTP server on my laptop from any network. Since you are logging in using your acccount & password, I don't think they care that you aren't actually connecting from your home account.
For Earthlink, the info is here: http://kb.earthlink.net/case.asp?article=resid7280
For Raodrunner, try searching through the help: http://help.rr.com/AA/rrwho.aspx?
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3-07-2007 @ 7:18PM
jim said...
try port 587 instead of port 25. it's been the preferred for sending mail for awhile now, due to abuse of port 25. see rfc 2476 for more info: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2476.txt
even apple recommends (at least for .mac users). see http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75124
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3-07-2007 @ 11:05PM
Luzifer said...
Hi!
Can you tell me, if there's a way to disable what i think is called the "bundle bit" - in the filesystem? We ran into big problems with file-suffixes automatically claimed by OS X (and apps) at work:
Please note, that i'm not a developer, so be please patient with me using wrong terms …
For software development we use a special folder hierarchy, where we use reverse-DNS-style folder-names for the packets of our software (not OS X packets) - e.g. "com.company.name.package.xyz.help" or "com.company.name.package.xyz.template" - which can contain many subfolders and files inside them. These folders show up in the Finder as "Help" and as "Pages Template", even on Macs where "Pages" isn't installed! As you can imagine, those folders are not usable in a normal way any more, which is even more a problem, as those folders are part of our SVN-repository. Windows- and Linux-PCs have no problem accessing those folders and changing files in there, but our Macs.
So, what can we do to prevent or exclude specific folders from being transformed by OS X's unwanted behaviour? Since i have managed to get half our people to switch to Mac, i need to find a good and easy solution soon. Searching tons of Apple support documents and many other OS X related websites, brought up not a single solution! Simply nothing! All related documents only praise the advantages of this rigid file-suffix-association-feature, while noone seems to have problems with it. For me the need for suffixes introduced wth OS X is completely idiotic and was clearly implemented only for helping Windows-Switchers, but complicates the use of the file system for experienced Mac users …
I'm just a designer, but from a developers point of view, such filesystem-limitations are a big problem for programmers, since it seems to require a lot of tweaking, before one can start developing in the way he choses. Not everyone uses xCode. I know, there are plenty of OS X developers out there, but their programming needs may simply be different or they have enough experience to already know a way to work around this …
Even worse of course is the standard copy-folder-over-folder action (when both folders share the same name), that OS X performs. It overwrites the entire content of the existing folder, including subfolders, with the contents of the new folder - but that's another issue …
Sorry for the long post ;-)
Luzifer
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3-08-2007 @ 12:31AM
Michael Rose said...
In addition to Delicious Library, the venerable ReaderWare is an industrial-strength cataloging system for books (and DVDs/audio as well via separate modules). The UI is much more stark but the functionality is top notch.
http://www.readerware.com
Reply
3-08-2007 @ 1:54AM
mark said...
What #8 said. Hitting command-delete is infinitely easier -- and faster -- than any other method of trashing an item. Know your shortcuts, indeed.
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