Many switchers to Mac OS X have the same question: "how can I customize my application toolbars?" While this is fairly straightforward in Windows, Mac OS X makes it much easier. Just open the customization menu by right-clicking (if you have a one-button mouse you can control + click) on the toolbar, then select "Customize..."
When you do this, you are presented with a dialog box that "rolls down" to display all of the items that you can add. Just drag the ones you want to the toolbar. If you find you don't want a certain toolbar item, just open the customize panel again and drag the item off the menu bar.
This is going to sound sad, but the one application that I have missed the most in upgrading to Leopard is CandyBar 2. I've always been something of a customization addict, and being able to take advantage of some of the beautiful icons that artists have made over the years to make OS X look its best is something I can easily spend hours doing, productivity be damned
Fortunately for me, Panic (the guys behind Transmit and Coda) have just released the Leopard-only CandyBar 3, meaning I can now resume wasting time making my desktop look its prettiest. CandyBar 3 adds more than just Leopard compatibility - it is a pretty substantial program overhaul. Not only can system icons be changed, the dock can be now be customized too (free Icon and Dock sets available from the geniuses at Iconfactory). Additionally, Panic and Iconfactory have merged the CandyBar and the Pixadex (kind of like iTunes for your icon sets) applications together, providing icon management and customization in one package, instead of two.
From the CandyBar 3 release notes:
Integrated CandyBar together with Pixadex with an entirely new interface
Added large (512 x 512) icon support
Leopard dock customization
Additional system icons
Quick Look integration
More reliable system icon restoration, and much more
The program can be downloaded for a 15-day/250-icon limit trial here. The program is $29 for new users. Owners of either CandyBar 2 or Pixadex 2 can upgrade for $24. Owners of both Pixadex and CandyBar 2 can upgrade for $19. Any user who bought CandyBar 2 or Pixadex 2 after October 1, 2007 qualifies for a free upgrade.
Now, if we can only get a Leopard-version of Shapeshifter out - I can totally optimize my interface!
If going all-out with a custom Colorware paint job for your iPhone is a bit too over-the-top, perhaps some new iPhone skin kits from the everlasting DecalGirl are more your style. Printed on premium grade adhesive-backed cast vinyl with a high-gloss clear protective coating, all of their skins boast easy repositioning and goo-free removal (I've never used one of these - can anyone comment on their experiences with accessories like this and their goo factor?).
For the iPhone, DecalGirl already has over 160 designs that can easily be sorted by a large selection of colors and themes, and as a bonus, you also receive a matching iPhone wallpaper to complete the redecoration. Skins seem to all be priced at a reasonable $6.99, with extra protective or stylistic finishes - like Screen Armor, Matte and Gloss - available for $4.50 to $9.99.
Speaking of customizing your iPhone, why stop at just the background? Never content with the 'average joe' colors Apple designs their devices with, Coloware has just added the iPhone to their lineup of devices they are happy to colorize or - perhaps better yet - sell you pre-pimped straight off their factory floor. Using their proprietary and apparently high-quality process (I've never used their services so I can't personally vouch), you can chose between nearly 30 colors with which to customize the back, bottom, frame, button and logo on the iPhone itself, as well as the earbuds and even the dock (notice the slick TUAW Exclusive™ design featured in this post).
What does this customization process cost, you ask? There's the hard news: sending your iPhone in to have it done post-purchase will cost you $149. If you want to purchase a brand new iPhone straight from Colorware with their services already pre-applied, simply tack on that $149 to the original price of either iPhone model, resulting in $649 for a colorized 4GB iPhone or a whopping $749 for the 8GB model. While those prices could easily induce dizziness, the potential for 'exclusive iPhone design!' sales on eBay once you decide to upgrade to the iPhone 2.0 could sober you right back up.
iWebFlinger is great for those who want to use HTML to customize their iWeb sites, but they neither have nor want a .Mac account with which to publish.
On the customization front, this useful tool allows you to insert code into your iWeb sites by wrapping it in a specific tag, as well as customizing the site-wide header and footer with dedicated chunks of code (pictured).
As far as getting your recently-created iWeb site to where it's going, iWebFlinger's FTP features are pretty handy. Your password is stored in the system-wide Keychain, and you can even upload a favicon (the neat little custom icons that appear alongside a site's URL in the address bar). iWebFlinger also has the option to be smart about exactly which files it needs to upload and replace, which can save a lot of time when you make additions or changes to your site.
iWebFlinger is donationware from Chris J. Shull, and it's available at his site.
If the design of Apple's Mac OS X login screen just isn't floatin' yer boat, Visage Login might be worth a look. With two separate versions - one for 10.4 and another for 10.1-10.3 - this is one of the few apps I remember where 10.3 users have some features to brag about over Tiger users. As an app for 10.4 Tiger, Visage Login allows you to alter the login screen's logo and desktop image, while a preference pane for 10.1-10.3 has the ability to run screen savers as your desktop background, personalize system alerts, randomize the login screen background, and more.
Visage Login is shareware with a fully-functioning 3 day demo. A single license costs a mere $4.95, while a 50+ machine license for businesses and corporations is $29.95.
mimiFoto is simple, yet brilliant. Do you tire of the stock iPhoto icon with that silly default picture? miniFoto lets you customize iPhoto's icon with any photo you like. And when you're sick of the TUAW logo peeking up from the Dock you simply 'Get Info' on iPhoto and cut the icon, which reveals the default icon that never went away.
Neato! Now, keep in mind this is a .1 release, so things might go a little wonky.
Mac OS X's built-in spell checking abilities are fantastic, but what if you need to edit the custom list of words you've been building, or you want to nail a few birds with one stone by adding a collection of words in one fell swoop?
Christopher Breen at Macworld has a good tip for just such a case. It turns out that once you begin adding custom words to your dictionary (by right-clicking them in most Cocoa apps and choosing 'Learn Spelling'), a folder aptly named Spelling appears in your Home user folder. In there is a file that I believe is named after your particular language; in my case - English.
Opening this file in something like TextWrangler (or possibly OmniOutliner?) will allow you to edit the dictionary, including adding your own words a little more efficiently. Check out Macworld's tip for the details on how the rest of this works, including a basic method for (sort of) synchronizing your dictionary between Macs.
Are you getting tired of other good icons? Hawk Wings, obsessed with all things Mail.app, has tracked down a Photoshop template for creating your own Mail.app icon. Courtesy of John Godfrey, this Photoshop template contains instructions for inserting your own images into a Mail.app icon, and Tim Gaden also recommends rotating your inserted image to 11.2 degrees counter-clockwise, as well as using an 85 x 90 size to get just the right fit.
But, "how do I turn an image into a Mail.app icon?" you ask. Hawk Wings has a solution for that step too: img2icns is a Universal Binary freeware app that can convert JPEGs, PNGs, TIFs and GIFs to the ICNS format, ripe for using a previous (and simple) TUAW Tip for replacing Mail.app's icon with your much more exciting new creation.
I'm a pretty boring guy when it comes to my OS UI. I don't change the default icons, I don't change the sounds, heck I hardly even change the desktop picture. Now, I know some other folks like to go crazy and if Mail.app's defaults are too bland for you, this tutorial is the cure.
Two hip-hop radio stations, Power 106 in LA and HOT 97 in NYC, have signed on the dotted line with the iTMS to offer an integrated, customized version of the store right in their own websites. The radio stations can design the store any way they see fit, and feature any artists, recent releases and playlists they want. From some quick browsing, I was able to find the iTMS integration at HOT 97's site, but not at Power 106's.
hypebot, the blog where we found this, was quick to point out the vast potential this kind of partnership with the iTMS has for any kind of niche markets, businesses and organizations you can think of: "From skateboard sites selling radical tunes to a museum's site selling period music that matches their exhibitions, this could be a very exciting development for niche and indie music marketers". Indeed, this is a great example of that iPod expansion post Scott had yesterday; it sounds like Apple has plenty of tricks up their sleeve for the iPod and iTMS.
Earlier in May, SmileOnMyMac acquired Textpander, a really handy (and free) text insertion utility. Today, they released their first official version update in which they changed the name to TextExpander, added a few snippet-creation features and are now charging a lump-in-throat inducing price of $29.95. The new features include the ability to create snippets from selected text, snippet nesting and the ability to limit usage to an application list.
A 30-day demo is available, but I have to say: I'm really happy I backed up the disk image of the latest version of Textpander. I haven't installed this new retail version of TextExpander yet, but slapping $29.95 (without any warning) on a utility that was previously free donationware stings quite a bit (Fraser Speirs, I would argue, handled this transition a lot better with the FlickrExport 2.0 beta introduction). If any enthusiastic users of Textpander make the leap, feel free to share your impressions with the new features and whether you think it's worth $30.
[UPDATE: Peter Maurer makes a really good point: Textpander wasn't free, it was donationware. Unfortunately, the donation system clearly wasn't working, as Hawk Wings points out that many donationware-centric developers lament that only 1-2% of downloaders actually donate anything for the app. Let TextExpander serve as a good lesson for what happens when you don't show some donation love to hard working developers.]
If
default icons just aren't doing it for you anymore, Folder Icon X
might be just the tool you need to add your own touch. As the app's name suggests, Folder Icon X is a one-trick (though
feature-rich) pony that allows you to add other icons and images to standard folder and file icons to imbue them with a
more personal, relevant look. It offers a lot of simple DnD (drag-n-drop) abilities and can import/export a wide
variety of formats.
Rob Griffiths over at MacOSXHints has discovered MoRU, an app that builds upon the power of Spotlight with
its offering of far more customizable search queries. Instead of searching for everything across your entire Mac with
Spotlight, consider how much handier it would be to say: "show me these specific kind of files, with exactly X in
their name, made between this year and that year." If this concept seems a little strange, check out Rob's post
for a couple real-world examples of when a blind search across everything on your machine becomes less productive than
Apple advertises.
MoRU is shareware that
costs $10. If you're as unhappy with Spotlight's blind, system-wide search as Rob, it sounds like MoRU is definitely
worth taking for a spin.
Dave Caolo showed you how to take control of the Finder's sidebar a
couple weeks back. Today, I wanted to shed the same light on the Finder's toolbar, as you can customize it and add some
tools not found in a default Mac OS X installation.
The first thing I like to do is add 'other' kinds of
folders (and files) up there, such as my Library, that I don't necessarily want in my sidebar. To do this, you can drag
a file or folder up next to the buttons in the Finder, and wait a second - you won't receive instantaneous feedback like
you do when adding something to the sidebar. After a second or so, the Finder's search box will move over farther to the
right (like when you add something to the Dock), signifying that you can now add that item to the toolbar.
You can also add a few more tools to the Finder toolbar by right-clicking on it (just like many other application
windows) and choosing "Customize Toolbar." You will be presented with a whole set of handy buttons and
actions you can drag and drop to add such as eject, get info, connect to server, burn and more. Even though we covered
how to get a file or folder's
path by command-clicking on a window's title bar icon, I also like to add the Path button to the Finder's toolbar
with this trick for one more level of convenience.
Since I'm willing to bet that I haven't covered all the
Finder toolbar tricks, feel free to share yours in the comments.
This is going to sound sad, but the one application that I have missed the most in upgrading to Leopard is CandyBar 2. I've always been something of a customization addict, and being able to take advantage of some of the beautiful icons that artists have made over the years to make OS X look its best is something I can easily spend hours doing, productivity be damned 
If the design of Apple's Mac OS X login screen just isn't floatin' yer boat, Visage Login might be worth a look. With two separate versions - one for 10.4 and another for 10.1-10.3 - this is one of the few apps I remember where 10.3 users have some features to brag about over Tiger users. As an app for 10.4 Tiger, Visage Login allows you to alter the login screen's logo and desktop image, while a preference pane for 10.1-10.3 has the ability to run screen savers as your desktop background, personalize system alerts, randomize the login screen background, and more.
I'm a pretty boring guy when it comes to my OS UI. I don't change the default icons, I don't change the sounds, heck I hardly even change the desktop picture. Now, I know some other folks like to go crazy and if Mail.app's defaults are too bland for you, this tutorial is the cure.
Two hip-hop radio stations, Power 106 in LA and HOT 97 in NYC, have signed on the dotted line with the iTMS to offer an integrated, customized version of the store right in their own websites. The radio stations can design the store any way they see fit, and feature any artists, recent releases and playlists they want. From some quick browsing, I was able to find the iTMS integration at HOT 97's site, but not at Power 106's.
