In Keynote (and also in PowerPoint), a build refers to the appearance and/or disappearance of elements (such as text, bullets, images, audio and movies) within a given slide.

Working with builds is relatively straightforward. You select the item(s) that you want to create a build for and then choose the order to activate or deactivate each element. These controls are accessible via the Build Inspector pane, which you can get to by clicking on Inspector button or with the Command-Option-i keyboard shortcut. By default, builds are activated by a click with your mouse, or via the spacebar or right-arrow key on your keyboard.

There may be times when you want to add some creativity and more Steve-ness to your builds, and automated builds provide you this functionality.

In this picture, I have three elements that I want to "build in," or have appear, on the screen. I want "Who?" to show up first, "What?" to show up second, and "I don't know" to show up third

Using the Keynote defaults, these elements would show up in the order that I click: "Who?" after the first click, "What?" after the second click, and "I don't know" after the third click.

But let's say I wanted "What?" and "I don't know" to automatically appear in sequence after I click on "Who?" To do this, I just need to change the "Start Build" options of both elements. For the "What?" build, instead of choosing "On Click," I'm going to choose the "Automatically after Build 1." And for the "I don't know" build, I'm going to choose "Automatically after Build 2." Now, "What" and "I don't know" will automatically build in after "Who?" is clicked.

One neat thing about automatic builds is that they can apply to "actions" as well. So if, in this baseball example, we want the elements to move to different bases after a build, we would apply the same "Automatically after..." logic to them.

Got more Keynote tips (or want more)? Let us know in the comments.

I have rekindled my love for Automator and all things automation lately. If you can find any way to fit these tools into your workflow, I highly recommend exploring your options - including Ben Long's just-updated Photoshop Automator Actions pack. This collection of 86 actions has just hit v3.5, bringing support for Photoshop CS3 and a fresh batch of new features, such as:

• New Auto Color action - executing Photoshop's Auto Color command which puts the control in Photoshop's hands, but allows you to pass the image(s) along to another process without interacting with any kind of dialog or making manual adjustments by hand
• Add Watermark can now center and rotate watermarks
• Saving TIFF files now includes all the standard compression options
• bug fixes and more

Mr. Long also notes that he hasn't included new actions for any of Photoshop CS3's new features - those are coming in a future release.

The beauty of this pack of Automator actions is that they bring Photoshop's automation abilities into the rest of Mac OS X, allowing you to create workflows that pass anything you do in Photoshop on to another app. For example: you could build a workflow that grabs a folder of 200 images, auto-color correct them in Photoshop, add comments and metadata, import them into iPhoto, upload a copy to Flickr and then archive them all to a CD or DVD.

All with a mere double-click.

Ben Long provides his actions as donationware and asks for a very basic set of optional information to help gauge his audience and where he should take development.

[via PhotoshopSupport]

Tumblr is a unique new tumblelog service that employs a KISS philosophy: offering a very streamlined, one-column layout and a clever bookmarklet that is smart about what you're trying to share on your Tumblr blog. While the minimalist templates can be edited by hand to include just about anything you want, Tumblr's concept is to be a sort of blogging scrapbook; a place to toss all those unique things you find across the web that might not fit at any of your other blogging venues, or that you simply don't have much to say about. Take a look at the Tumblr Radar to get an idea of how others are using the service.

Now that introductions are out of the way, a recent update to Tumblr, as well as a how-to post from our sister Download Squad blog, has highlighted some Mac OS X-specific features that should make it even easier for Mac users to jump into the service.

First, Alex Hung (Windows developer for ecto, by the way) wrote up a great how-to at Download Squad that explores the construction of a Tumblr Dashboard widget with Apple's Dashcode. A DLS reader was even inspired enough to go through with it, creating theTumblr Widget that is hosted on Google Code. This widget also became one of two that Tumblr just highlighted in a recent blog post, with the other being more of a basic test widget that Tumblr cooked up themselves.

The second Mac Tumblr tool is an AppleScript for Quicksilver by Andrew Lilja. Andrew provides the AppleScript code and instructions for some unique syntax you can use to specify things like titles, quotes and links for your Tumblr posts, all from Quicksilver's handy UI.

It's great to see these kinds of tools appear for Tumblr, as it makes an already simple service even easier to use.

A while ago I had to help the TV Squad crew cover an award ceremony by snapping screenshots with my Eye TV. I needed a way to fire these shots off to members of the team with the least amount of effort, so I put together a few Automator droplets that could take whatever files I drop on them, attach them to a Mail.app message and automatically send them to pre-determined recipients with no questions asked. At the time I didn't think too much of the actions, so they got busy with collecting dust on my backup hard drive, waiting for a time when they might be called back into action. Well, this similar hint at macosxhints.com was just that time, as it inspired me to bring these actions out of mothballs. That hint seems a little overly complex to me, what with the scripts and the editing and creating folders and attaching - oh my! I figured this Automator action might be a little easier to deal with, so here you go. I call it Mail Man, and we're hosting it on TUAW. Here's how it works.

It's been a while since I've paid attention to Automator actions, and I'm beginning to realize that I never quite worked them into my daily habits. Since I'm making more of a conscious effort to fit some handy actions into my workflow, I stumbled across PDF Confidential at Apple's Automator Actions Downloads page, and it looks to be mighty handy indeed.

PDF Confidential performs four actions for any document on your Mac (since Mac OS X has built-in support for PDF):

1. Convert your document to a PDF (if it already isn't)
2. Encrypt (you enter desired password)
3. Compress
4. E-Mail (you enter details in provided dialog box)

If you open this action in Automator it might be best saved as a plug-in either for the Finder or for Print Workflows, depending on how you roll. The action's author, rickyprograms, also claims that PDF Confidential is 100% PDF compatible, though I would assume Windows users would need Adobe's Reader installed in order to enter passwords and open any docs created by this simple action.

If you're one of the increasing many who live inside PDFs and could use some added security, this free Automator action might be right up your alley.

I don't know how long the Unit Conversion plugin has existed for Qucksilver, but I just found it the other day in yet another one of those 'QS spelunking' adventures that many of its users sometimes embark on (I highly recommend them). They're almost always a good time for Quicksilver fans, as one can usually find something new and incredibly useful on just such an adventure.

This particular Unit Conversion plugin/module allows a user to type the first half of a conversion in the first pane, tab over to chose the 'Convert to Units...' action, then tab to the third pane to type in the final unit conversion type. Clicking the 'i' on this module once it's installed offers a few examples, such as:

• 1 mile Convert to Units... km
  
• 1 floz Convert to Units... cm3
  
• 32 ft/sec^2 Convert to Units... m/sec^2
  

Keep in mind though that the syntax of your conversion is key; the space between the number and the unit type, for example, is required for this operation to perform smoothly. One thing I can't find, however, is exactly how many times of unit conversions this operation can handle, as a document search at Blacktree's site yields nothing. I guess, as with many other Quicksilver toys, some experimentation is in order.

Ben Long has released v3.0 of his rocking set of Automator actions for Photoshop, introducing 11 new actions and a slew of new and updated abilities including:

• Add Layer, Add Empty Adjustment Layer, Duplicate Current Layer
• Render action allows saving as EPS, or using Save for Web
• Save for Web can also be used in conjunction with other formats, allowing users to save in multiple formats with one action
• Add Color Balance, Hue/Saturation and Channel Mixer effects as Adjustment Layers
• Shadow/Highlight, Mono Gaussian Noise, and Bleach Bypass no longer require that you activate GUI Scripting
• Smart Sharpen, Shadow/Highlight, and Unsharp Mask now provide an option to automatically add their effects to a duplicate layer that has its own Layer Mask (can anyone say 'non-destructive editing'?)
• Resize Canvas now offers a choice of background colors
• Mono Gaussian Noise now allows you to apply noise to a new layer filled with color. Full control of blending mode and opacity is provided

All of these new features, in addition to what is already a massive list of capabilities, make this a powerful package of donationware actions indeed. Photoshop Automator Actions v3.0 can be had from Complete Digital Photography.

In my newsreader today I saw an 'iPhoto Action Pack' from Automator World that adds a handy action for workflows involving iPhoto: "Find iPhoto Item Path". While debating whether that was TUAW-worthy, my newsreader became bombarded with more headlines like System Action Pack, TextEdit Action Pack, Preview Action Pack... until I finally decided to post a roundup to cover them all in one fell swoop. So here you go kids, a whole batch of Automator Actions that add some missing abilities to everyone's favorite (or the only?) OS automation utiliity:

• System Action Pack
• iPhoto Action Pack
• Filemaker Pro Action Pack
• TextEdit Action Pack
• QuarkXPress Action Pack
• Preview Action Pack
• Photoshop Action Pack
• InDesign Action Pack

These actions, to my knowledge, are provided free from Automated Workflows, LLC.

[UPDATE: Automator World's admin stopped by to let us know that some of these action packs are actually demos of retail versions of these products offered by Automated Workflows, LLC.]

Ben Long has released a v2.2 update to his most excellent set of Photoshop Automator Actions, a collection of over 70 workflow-enhancing actions for automating everything from switching color modes to cropping images and even archiving them to a disc. New in v2.2 is Intel Mac compatibility (some actions simply wouldn't work) and two new actions - Filter by File Type and Assign Custom Profile. Of course, there are the obligatory bug fixes and enhancements, so check out Ben's announcement post for details on this excellent action pack, and scroll down quite for details of this specific v2.2 release.

Photoshop Automator Actions are donationware and available from Ben Long at Complete Digital Photography.

You could also file this under "fantastic Automator actions that Apple should've advertised when Tiger was being released."

A post at macosxhints has discovered a simple Automator action you can use to open panel containing your entire iPhoto or iTunes library (pictured), complete with albums/playlists, DnD and even search abilities. This is for all those times you groan at having to start iPhoto just to grab an image or two. Bonus points for the iTunes library action: songs are playable from this panel.

Check out the macosxhints post for the drop-dead simple 3-step process (it's really only two steps) for creating this handy panel.

Discovering Automator is a new book from Hanaan Rosenthal that delves into the many facets of making your Mac do more work in less time for you with the power of Mac OS X Tiger's Automator. From Automator World's description, Discovering Automator details "the ins-and-outs of Automator: basic workflow construction, deployment, debugging and advanced topics such as creating shell scripts, Applescripts and plug-ins." The book also comes with over 70 Automator actions, including many requested actions for Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Discovering Automator sells for $14.99 at Amazon.com, but if you'd like a taste, you can download both a sample chapter and the table of contents at Hanaan's site.

[via Automator World]

As you may know, the US online Apple Store went down briefly this morning, and returned to reveal Apple Remote Desktop 3 (RD3). As we pointed out, this is a major update with a slew of changes. Automator World is pointing to a page at Apple's site that details the Automator-specific changes to RD3. Available actions include:

• Choose remote computer (sort of a no-brainer)
• Copy items to computers (nice)
• Execute new UNIX task (again, nice)
• Restart computers
• Send text message

There's more, of course. I've already begged the finance department at my day job to let me order this. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Yesterday Quicksilver started acting a little goofy, and I wasn't surprised; I have just about every beta and extra turned on as I just can't stop exploring all the neat stuff this app can do. During my troubleshooting efforts I resorted to the simple trick of quitting Quicksilver and simply moving its preference file (located with other preference files in ~/Library/Preferences) to my desktop, forcing Quicksilver to re-create a clean new preference file. This fixed the issue, but it also forced me to dive back into my preferences to tweak, toggle and change some of the options I use to make Quicksilver do what I want.

That experience made me realize, however, that part of the Quicksilver learning curve for new users really is to get to know its preferences, since they act as a handy springboard into what Quicksilver is capable of. A lot of fantastic tutorials, like those at 43 Folders and Blacktree's own site (the makers of Quicksilver), sometimes assume that you already know what you're doing with Quicksilver. Another complication is that the actions (and sometimes plugins) used in these tutorials are not installed or enabled by default. Some of the email actions - for example the "send item immediately" action that allows you to email an item to someone without ever touching a mail composition window - are oddly not enabled in a default Quicksilver installation, which means a user has to open Quicksilver's preferences (once invoked, a quick cmd - , does the trick) and dig around in the Actions section to find what they need. Ultimately, I figure there are three key areas of Quicksilver's preferences that might help new or aspiring but confused users get their feet grounded: Catalog, Actions and Plugins, and here is a brief explanation of each:

• Catalog - this is a pretty straight-forward list of everything Quicksilver keeps track of on your Mac. Looking through the Catalog and the Actions preference panel should help you get a grasp of what items Quicksilver can find and manipulate, and then how you can manipulate them.
  
• Actions - this is a list of the defining ability that separates Quicksilver from mere seek-and-find applications. Actions allow you to do something with the item you have found, far above and beyond simply opening it. Actions are (loosely) categorized to help you find your way around: Address Book actions allow you to do more with your contacts, Text actions (an optional plugin) allow you to do things like looking up word definitions right from within Quicksilver and appending text to a file buried somewhere, etc. If this panel doesn't excite your inner productivity geek, you should consider consulting your physician.
  
• Plugins - Quicksilver is highly, highly plugin-able, which is where even more of its beauty radiates from. Plugins for Backpack, alternative browser bookmarks, the Mac OS X Keychain, NetNewsWire headlines, a multiple-item clipboard, hundreds of web search engines and much, much more all have your name written on them. Go wild.

Quicksilver is one of the few apps that is so different and powerful that the classic "just open and play with it" phrase might not be enough for some users to grasp what's going on. If you are one of these users, I hope this brief explanation will help you to take your first step into the wide, wonderful universe of Quicksilver.

A MacOSXHints reader has put together an interesting set of Quicksilver scripts that will allow you to both easily tag your iTunes music as it is playing, and create on-the-fly playlists based on these tags. The way they work is simple: while music is playing in iTunes, you can use Quicksilver's text abilities to easily add tags to the music file's comments section. The beauty here is that tags are prefixed with an asterisk (*), and they are appended to anything that might already be in the song's comments field, preserving what you might already have added. The second script allows you to create an iTunes playlist right from Quicksilver based on any of your tags.

I haven't gotten to test these out yet, but the download includes detailed instructions from the author's site.

I'm finding myself spending more and more time at Apple.com/pro, as there are some truly useful tips for getting things done in OS X. Take this tip for example, that C.K. just sent my way: Adding Automation Through Folder Actions. Y'know those Enable/Configure Folder Actions options that show up any time you right-click (ctrl-click) a folder? Well, this tutorial will help explain what those are about by getting you started with setting up a simple action that notifies you when a file has been placed in a folder. Handy for a workplace environment where coworkers are placing items in your shared Drop Box. If I remember right, you can also attach applescripts and even Automator Actions you create or download as folder actions as well, which can really open up the doors for simple folder-based automation. Check out the brief tutorial to get your feet wet with the (geeky) goodness of automating OS X.