When Steve first demonstrated Quick Look, I though it looked gimmicky. Interesting, for sure, but nothing I'd use regularly. Much like Star Wars Episode I: Fun when viewed for the first time, but I'll never watch it again.

Three months later, Quick Look is my favorite feature of Leopard. It's convenient, useful and very fast. With a tap of the space bar, I can identify files in the Finder without having to open a separate application.

Of course, it goes beyond that. With a little effort (and in some cases, plug-ins), you can get even more out of Quick Look. Here's how.

1. Identify files on remote machines. I've been using Remote Desktop at my day job for a couple of years now. With a few clicks, I can observe or control a remote Mac. Leopard brings this convenience to home users with Screen Sharing. It's useful, but files appear quite tiny when viewed on this screen-within-a-screen (and titles even smaller). Fortunately, Quick Look makes things much more legible.
2. Preview the contents of Zip files (plug-in required). BetterZip and the Zip Quick Look Plug-in both let you view the contents of a zipped file with Quick Look. In fact, Zip Quick Look's display is dependent on a HTML file which you may alter to your liking. Here's how to install Quick Look plug-ins.
3. Preview the contents of a folder (plug-in required). Much like BetterZip and Zip Quick Look, the Folder List plug-in lets you preview the contents of a folder. You can also customize its HTML-powered display and show or hide hidden files or time stamps.
4. Examine snippets of code with syntax highlighting intact. Here's another tip that requires a plug-in. Qlcolorcode lets you preview your code with all the helpful highlighting you expect.
5. Examine files in the trash. Until Leopard, the Finder's trash would keep its contents to itself. Anything you wanted to examine had to be moved back to the desktop. Fortunately, Quick Look lets you preview trashed items. Now you know precisely which item to yank out of there.
6. Prep your iWork documents for use with Quick Look. When you create a document with Numbers, Pages or Keynote, you can ensure that its preview will display the proper formatting by selecting the Include Preview in Document check box whey you save (or turn this feature on by default in the general preference pane).
7. Enhance TextMate. TextMate is the editor that geeks everywhere love (including the geeks at TUAW). Ciarán Walsh has written two Quick Look plug-ins for TextMate that let you preview items in a project or render Quick Look previews (for certain file types) using the TextMate syntax highlighter, respectively.
8. Preview fonts. Open a Finder window, select Cover Flow view and navigate to the font you're interested in. Click the space bar and presto! Instant preview.
9. Quick Look and Cover Flow. I love the combination of Cover Flow and Quick Look. Open a bulging folder in the Finder and select Cover Flow view. Tap the space bar to preview the 1st file and then use the arrow keys to move the next one and so on. You'll stay in Quick Look mode! Very cool.
10. Send images to iPhoto. When viewing an image with Quick Look - either from the Finder or attached to a Mail message - you'll see a tiny iPhoto icon at the bottom of the window. Click it to send that image to iPhoto.

I hope you found these tips useful. And I still dislike Episode I.

I'm always, well, tickled by the things that can happen when you use Terminal commands that begin with "defaults write" -- thus changing the preferences for applications, the Finder, and more, often in ways that you can't accomplish via GUI pref settings. I also get a certain warmness from Leopard's Data Detectors, but I have to confess I rarely use them. It's fun to watch the things that Mail can pick up on, and I've often tested to see what exactly iCal will make of it, but I guess some people just get better emails than I do. Strangely, I do get dates and info via instant messaging on a more regular basis.

You can enable Data Detectors in iChat with one simple command in Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.iChat EnableDataDetectors 1

You can disable it using the same command, but change the '1' to a '0.' Now you get the fun job of calling your closest Mac-using relative and explaining Terminal so they can use a feature that Apple hid from public view for what I can only assume were valid reasons. I hope your aunt has her screen-sharing figured out.

[via Mac OS X Hints]

Xbox Media Center (or XBMC) is an open source media program designed to run on an original Microsoft Xbox game console-- for an open source app designed on a "hostile" platform, it's actually got one of the better media center interfaces around (and it's easy to plug into-- you can even use your iPhone to control it remotely). And so the crew over there has recently been porting it back to work with Linux itself-- all of the Xbox Media Center, none of the actual Xbox.

If it's on Linux, it shouldn't be too hard to get it back running on OS X itself, right? At least that's what elan on the XBMC forums thought-- he hacked together a close-to-working XBMC port on Leopard. They haven't released it in any fully workable form yet (if you want to dive in as a developer, you can probably start here, and good luck, you're going to need it), but as a few people say, there's definitely a call for a terrific open source media center for OS X, because Front Row doesn't cut it for everyone.

Thanks, floris!

If you're trying to figure out what to buy yourself with the gift card you got this holiday season, let me recommend David Pogue's Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Leopard Edition. I was fortunate to get a copy of it for Christmas this year (thanks, sweetie!) and it's 866 pages of sweet, Leopard-y goodness.

The book is divided into six sections that cover just about every conceivable thing you could ever want to know about the OS. It takes a look at how to maneuver around the desktop, how to use the native apps to their fullest potential, what to do with once your online with your Mac, and everything in between.

If you already know your way around OS X, this manual is a terrific reference tool for looking up obscure things you don't do very often, like tweaking onscreen colors to mimic a Windows PC monitor. At the other end of the spectrum, if you're a switcher there are roughly seven trazillion tips and tricks to help you learn how to get the most out of your new operating system.

Pogue's writing style is upbeat, easy to understand, and sometimes downright hilarious. The book is well laid-out and progresses fairly intuitively, although the editor seems to have gone a little crazy with the headings, sub-headings, and sub-sub-headings on many of the pages. Also, while I'm sure Pogue touches on all 300 of Leopard's new features, it's not always immediately clear which features he's describing are different from the previous version, Tiger.

Despite these minor shortcomings, I love this book and think it's a great addition to any Mac users bookshelf. This manual is one you don't want to miss.

We've covered many of these piecemeal over the last few months since Leopard was released, but the guys over at Appletell have put together a nice Leopard Tweaking Guide bringing many great tips together in one place. It covers both terminal commands for things like restoring the opaque menubar and a variety of software for improving and customizing the look and feel of the UI. There a bunch of hints and tips here and it's definitely worth a look if you've ever wanted to fiddle with your Leopard desktop.

[via Digg]

A new year, a new software update. The creators of OnyX and Maintenance, Titanium Software, updated OnyX today. As you probably know already, OnyX is the ultimate Mac customization / optimization utility. In addition to this new version being completely re-written, there are also some bug fixes which include:

• Enable/disable Journaling
  
• Enable/disable iChat Data Detectors
• Hide the icon of Spotlight in the menu bar
• Deleting the Conversations log of instant messaging
• Resetting the Sidebar of Finder windows
• Some bugs of the previous beta corrected

I am sure that to avid users of OnyX this update is welcomed with open arms. If you haven't checked out OnyX before, what a better time than now? You can get your system tweaked and running smoothly for 2008! OnyX is available as freeware from Titanium Software or Mac Update.

Should Auld Acquaintance be deleted... then too bad! Especially if you are using Edenwaith's free Permanent Eraser product. Unlike Disk Utility (and Mac OS X's secure empty trash), this disk eraser will over-write data 35 times (versus secure empty trash's 7 times). What many users don't know is that when you delete a file from your computer, it's not really deleted; the operating system just marks that space as "free." However, this software will over-write the area of the hard drive where the data remains until it is scrambled and unable to be read.

This software received a new update yesterday that improves a bug that limited you to deleting 250 files. This application also has full Mac OS X Leopard support; including new icons for Leopard. In addition to deleting files in the trash can, you can also drag files to the icon to securely delete them.

This application can be downloaded for free from the Edenwaith website or from Mac Update.



[via Mac Update]

With zip support built into OS X a third-party compression utility has to bring something special to the table, and BetterZip does. Basically it allows you to open and inspect archives without expanding the whole thing first. This can be useful if you only want a few of the files that are compressed within an archive. It also does compression naturally, including encryption, splitting large archives, and stripping out Mac specific hidden files to make archives more cross-platform..

BetterZip supports a bunch of formats which should cover just about anything you'll run into on the net: ZIP, SIT, TAR, GZip, BZip2, RAR, 7-Zip, CPIO, ARJ, LZH/LHA, JAR, WAR, CAB, ISO, CHM, RPM, DEB, NSIS, BIN, HQX, DD. Finally, the developer has also put together a great Quick Look plugin that supports most of the same formats.

BetterZip is normally $19.95 and a demo is available but as it happens it's on sale at MacUpdate Promo until Monday evening for half-off ($9.95)

Kent Sutherland, the developer of the well-known Chax, a utility for making iChat easier to use, has a nice new utility for improving Leopard's Spaces virtual desktops as well. Warp is a preference pane allows you to switch between Spaces just by hovering the mouse cursor on the screen edge. You can set the switch delay as well as require a modifier key if you prefer. In some ways this is such a natural addition that it's disappointing that it wasn't built into Spaces from the beginning.

Warp is a free download, but donations are requested.

As many Mac users already know, Saft is the "Swiss-Army Knife" of web browser plug-ins. Some of the most loved features in Saft include: full screen browsing, tab thumbnails, and auto-hiding the download window.

Much to the chagrin of fans, Saft was "broken" inadvertently by a recent Apple security update. Thankfully, Saft 10.0.4 was able to regain support for Safari 3.0.4. Saft is a wonderful plug-in for Safari; if you haven't taken a look lately, try downloading the free trial.

You can download Saft as a trial version or get a full license for $12.

[via DownloadSquad]

The guys over at DEVONtechnologies have announced updates for a number of their applications. Most importantly the entire line of DEVONthink information managing software (along with DEVONnote) now natively support Spotlight. They note that this allows you to search multiple DEVONthink Pro databases at once from Spotlight. In addition they've updated their line of freeware applications to be compatible with Leopard, including the handy menubar folder utility XMenu.

[via MacMinute]

One of the unfortunate incompatibilities Leopard brought with it was breaking GrowlMail, the plugin for Mail.app that shows new messages via the Growl notification system. However, Evan Schoenberg has now posted a test build of GrowlMail on the Growl discussion Google Group that appears to work with Leopard.

If you've been missing your Growl Mail notifications you can find the new plugin here (download link).

[via Hawk Wings]

Newsflash: Microsoft messed up. Yes, I know, that doesn't come as news to most of you (that's why you're here), but Joe Wilcox over at eWeek was surprised by the fact that while Apple's Leopard Family Pack pricing lead to some nice sales numbers, Microsoft instead decided to discontinue their family pack prices. Basically, you could buy OS X 10.5 as a single copy for $129, or a "family pack" (installations for 5 Macs) for $199. And a whopping 33% of Leopard sales were of the family pack version, even though OS X doesn't require any validation at all-- users could just have bought the $129 version and installed it five times.

What's the difference? Wilcox says that Apple trusts their customers, and as a result, users who feel the family pack is worth it are willing to pay. Microsoft, on the other hand, demands validation from their users. Wilcox also quotes an analyst (which in this case is Latin for "he who states the obvious") saying that Leopard had a blowout launch, much better than Vista. But that's a big duh, so I won't even bother comparing OS X to Vista-- I'll leave that to the Mac commercials.

What else do you need to know? Clearly, Microsoft is just plain doing it wrong.

Over at MurphyMac, Murphy has posted a great tutorial about the new Leopard selection tools for Preview.app. As usual, there's an excellent screencast that walks you through the entire process. The new "Extract Shape" tool lets you draw a rough outline around an object and then use selection handles to fit the outline to the shape. The screen cast then goes on to describe how you can matte around the selection to control the edge texture. It's a tidy and easy-to-follow technique that seems to produce nicely trimmed results.

It should be clear by now that I love Leopard's Quick Look, particularly because of the modular way that Apple designed it so that it can be expanded and extended by third parties. And those third parties are responding! To keep track of all these plugins two interesting new sites have sprung up, QuickLook Plugins List and QLPlugins.

Each site has some good stuff not on the other so it's worth keeping an eye on both. Highlights include a neat trick for expanding video format support to mkv (Matroska video) files (and in principle others) and a plugin for Flash FLV files. (Both of these require Perian.)

In the years to come I suspect we're going to look back and wonder how we ever got along without Quick Look.

Thanks to everyone who sent these in!