In ye olde times, with "Mack OSe 9," many users chose to keep their personal files, work, and documents on a different physical disk from their startup disk. It was a safety measure: If one disk goes down, at least the other won't. There was no structural reason to keep files in a particular disk location, other than keeping them out of the System Folder.

I visited a client yesterday whose drive scheme was set up exactly like this, and he wanted to be (finally) upgraded to Leopard. I wasn't sure how Leopard would handle the fact that his Users folder had been moved to a different drive, so (knowing I had backups of his entire system) I cautiously proceeded with the installation.

After the installer finished, Leopard had created a fresh, blank Users folder on the startup disk with a home folder bearing the same username. This wasn't exactly the answer I was looking for. I had to link, somehow, the new Users/hisname folder with his existing user folder on the other volume.

Turns out, Leopard handles this much better than previous versions of Mac OS X. Read on to find out how.

Here's a frustrating problem: You have InDesign CS4, and your buddy needs your file, but has InDesign CS2. "Easy!" you think, "just save an InDesign Interchange (INX) file and send it to him."

Lo, wonder of wonders: InDesign saves an INX file that's compatible only with the immediately preceding version of InDesign. (As I found out the hard way today.) CS4 saves a file for CS3; CS3 saves a file for CS2. If you don't have both versions on your computer, you're out of luck. Way to Quark it up, Adobe.

An INX file is just a glorified XML file. And Adobe, clever lads and lasses they are, inserted a version number in the file. Adobe CS2 looks at the version number, sees that the INX file is targeted for CS3, and pops up an error message without even trying to open the file. Curses.

But Mike Rankin figured it out last November: Open the INX file with your favorite text editor (like TextMate or BBEdit) and change the version number. Replace line number 2 (which looks like this):

<?aid style="33" type="document" DOMVersion="6.0" readerVersion="5.0" featureSet="257" product="6.0(352)" ?>

with this:

<?aid style="33" type="document" DOMVersion="5.0" readerVersion="4.0" featureSet="257" product="5.0(662)" ?>

Easy peasy. Open the INX file in InDesign CS2, and you're good to go. Use caution, though: This works best for simple layouts. The more complex your layout, the more likely it will unexpectedly change when re-imported into a lesser version of InDesign.

[Via InDesignSecrets.]

1. Open a new Finder window and select File > New Smart Folder.
   
2. In the resulting window, select "Other" from the first drop-down menu (the default selection is "Kind), and search for the key word "size." If you wish this item to remain in the menu, select the "In menu" check box. Select the OK button once you select the "Size" item.
   
3. Select "is greater than" from the next drop-down menu.
4. Type in the size that you would like to search for files. I would suggest searching using 1 GB, but you can use any size you wish.
   

If you're looking for a significant performance boost for your middle-aged laptop, replacing your aging hard disk with a solid state disk (SSD) could give your computer a new lease on life.

Solid-state disks (pictured, bottom) differ from traditional hard disks (top) in that they're not constructed with platters and heads. Instead, they're more like giant thumb drives, containing memory chips designed to be written and re-written without wearing out. The upside to this is that SSDs are much, much faster to read and write to, making booting and starting applications lightning-quick.

I recently installed an Intel X25-M SSD, a 160GB drive, as a replacement for a 120GB Toshiba hard disk for my 2006-vintage black MacBook. Spendy, for sure, but for the performance increase and the extra life it adds to my MacBook, well worth it. Plus, I had my state tax refund burning a hole in my pocket.

The performance is phenomenal. The old disk booted in a respectable one minute, 49 seconds. The new disk booted in a blazing 31 seconds. Ridiculous. Windows also boots in less than half the time it took before. Photoshop CS3 launches in five seconds, Illustrator CS3 in nine seconds.

Getting the drive was simple: It's moving the data that takes time. Read on to see how you can migrate your data like I did -- including a Boot Camp partition -- with little fuss.

"Backup Timer" = 120

defaults write com.apple.backup "Backup Timer" 1

• Wi-fi: off
• Push: off
• 3G: off
• Bluetooth: off
• Brightness: set at minimum (Note - I also turn off Auto-Brightness)
  
• iPod: off

TextExpander, a $29.95US utility which inserts snippets of text or images when you type a preset string of characters, has long been a TUAW favorite. I only recently learned that it can run AppleScripts within a snippet, which opened up a world of fun for me. Here's a quick script demonstrating how AppleScript can be used to randomize quotes within your email signature.

Create a new TextExpander snippet and set the content type to "AppleScript." Copy and paste the code that follows into the snippet content box. I'll run through what it does in at the end.

Read on for the script!

Note: This tip is Leopard-only, sorry Tiger holdouts.

The Command-? trick is easily one of my favorites among the less-ballyhooed feature expansions of Leopard. If you missed that one, it allows you to search for menu items in any application by pulling down the "Help" menu, which can be triggered from the keyboard with the Command-? (Command-Shift-/) shortcut. Typing the first few letters of the menu item you're searching for will highlight its location in the dropdown menus. I use it a lot, but somehow missed one great capability noted by TUAW reader Maarten: in Safari, the menu item search extends to your bookmark collection and Safari history!

Because the bookmarks and history items are contained in the menubar's menus, they're searched along with the other menu items, allowing blazing-fast navigation of the sites listed in the Bookmarks and History menus. I like speed; I have my bookmarks toolbar set up with numbered titles which correlate to their Command-number shortcut (the first non-folder item in the toolbar can be accessed with Command-1, the second with Command-2, etc.), and I have keyword shortcuts assigned to my other most-accessed bookmarks using various tools. There's only so much room in my life, however, for organizing bookmarks and assigning keywords. History search can be a tedious prospect, too, even using Spotlight or Safari's History menu hierarchy. This trick provides instant search and it's only a keyboard shortcut away. Because the History results are sorted into sub-menus named by date, the results from the history menu appear with their access date first, so it's easy to navigate the results to find what you're looking for.

The concept behind this tip applies to all kinds of applications. I started experimenting and found that the search bar in the help menu almost always included recent documents and open windows ... basically anything the application lists in its menus. The bookmarks/history search works in most other browsers, too. I use Firefox as well as Safari, so I was happy to find it worked there, with one minor caveat: the Command-? shortcut in Firefox opens the Firefox Help webpage, not the Help menu item, requiring a mouse click to focus the search box in the dropdown. I haven't found a way to add shortcut keys for top-level menu items in System Preferences, so if anyone knows that, or another way to access the search menu via a shortcut key, I'd love to know about it.

Happy searching, and a big thanks to Maarten for the tip!

Like many of you, I suspect, I still have PC-using relatives that have steadfastly refused to come over to the fairer side of life (and reduce my tech support burden). One of the biggest hold-ups has been their Windows-based software investment, particularly in Adobe applications. Well, with the release of CS4 it's time for upgrades, and I have some new ammunition in the battle to get my folks switched over: Adobe's competitive cross-upgrades.

Adobe allows registered users of their Creative Suite applications to switch platforms at the standard upgrade price (e.g. cross-upgrading from Windows CS3 to Mac CS4 is the same price as a Windows CS3 to Windows CS4 upgrade). So if somebody you know is getting ready to plunk down the cash for the Windows CS4 upgrade anyway, now would be a great time to suggest that they make a complete upgrade and switch to Mac at the same time.

Adobe doesn't seem to advertise the cross-upgrades that much and they're only available when purchasing the upgrades over the phone (800-833-6687). In addition the previous Windows versions must be destroyed and certified with a Letter of Software Destruction (pdf link). Nonetheless, if you have some Windows based hold-outs now would be a great time to get them on board the Mac train.