Posts tagged Quick look at The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

Posts with tag quick-look

Quick Look Suspicious Packages

Posted Jan 30th 2008 8:00AM by Mat Lu
Filed under: OS, Freeware, Security

As I've noted before, I'm a huge fan of Quick Look and I eagerly follow the third-party plugins released by developers. A new one came along recently that's worth a look, especially for the security-conscious out there. Suspicious Package will let you use Quick Look to examine the contents of standard installer packages before you install them. You can navigate folder structure and have a look at what it contains with one click.

Of course you can do this manually by right-clicking in the Finder and choosing "Show Package Contents," but this makes it that much easier to do a quick check. Unfortunately, it does not work yet on 'mpkg' meta-packages. Suspicious Package is a free download from Mother Ruin Software.

Update: As a commenter below notes, "Show Package Contents" only shows the contents, not where they will install.

[via QuickLook Plugins List]

10 ways to get the most out of Quick Look

Posted Jan 5th 2008 3:00PM by Dave Caolo
Filed under: OS, Leopard

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.

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.

Pogue: Visual Voicemail 'feature of the year'

Posted Dec 28th 2007 8:00PM by Scott McNulty
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPhone

There is no doubt that the iPhone is innovative (heck, even ComputerWorld thinks so), and there is also no doubt that David Pogue, New York Times tech columnist, is a big fan of Apple's products. It should come as a surprise to no one, then, that Pogue has included the iPhone on his list of the most important new features in tech of 2007 (the 'Pogies,' as he calls them). Note that this list highlights breakthrough features, and not innovative devices as such.

Visual Voicemail, one of the iPhone's signature features, was given the nod as the best new feature of 2007. I can't argue with Pogue on this one, Visual Voicemail has really helped me out (and I don't even get that much voicemail. I'm a sad, unpopular man).

What features in Apple's products do you think are the most innovative this year? Personally, I think Quick Look in Leopard is truly a marvel of technology.

Pixelmator 1.1 adds new filters, tablet support and more

Posted Dec 5th 2007 9:30PM by Mat Lu
Filed under: Software

The well-known alternative image editor Pixelmator has gotten an update to version 1.1 bringing some eagerly awaited features. Besides better Leopard compatibility, the "Kitten" release adds support for pressure-sensitive graphics tablets, "over 100 New Filters," and third-party filter support by way of "Core Image Units & Quartz Composer Compositions." Another useful addition is a Quick Look plugin that brings easy image previews for "any of more than 100 image file formats supported by Pixelmator."

Pixelmator 1.1 is a free update to registered users. The regular price is $59 and a demo is available.

Quick Look Folder and Zip plugins

Posted Nov 27th 2007 11:00AM by Mat Lu
Filed under: OS, Freeware, Leopard

Quick Look is a beautiful thing, and in my view practically itself worth the cost of admission to Leopard. Unfortunately, the more you get used to it, the more annoying it is when you get to a file format that Quick Look doesn't support. Fortunately, Apple was smart enough to design Quick Look with an open architecture that allows developers to write their own plugins and support more file formats, which Japanese developer Taiyo used to write two excellent plugins.

The first addresses a serious annoyance with the default Quick Look implementation on folders. If you invoke Quick Look with a folder selected in the Finder you'll get...a picture of the folder icon. Frankly, that's pretty stupid. Taiyo's Folder Quick Look Plugin fixes this by displaying the folder's contents, which is how it should have been done in the first place. Likewise, Taiyo's Zip Quick Look Plugin displays the contents of zip files.

I'm sure we'll be seeing more and more of these expansions of Quick Look in the days ahead, which will make this quintessential Leopard feature that much more useful. Both the Folder Quick Look Plugin and the Zip Quick Look Plugin are free downloads. Place them in your /Library/QuickLook/ or ~/Library/QuickLook/ folders and they should work immediately.

[via Digg]

Mac 101: Using Quick Look

Posted Nov 14th 2007 10:00AM by Mat Lu
Filed under: Leopard, Mac 101

So far as I can tell, practically everybody loves Leopard's Quick Look previewer. For today's Mac 101 I thought I'd share a few tips about using Quick Look.

First is nice little tip from Mac OS X Hints about zooming in Quick Look. If you invoke Quick Look with the spacebar you can actually zoom in on the image in a couple of ways. You can hold down the option key and use your mouse's scrollwheel/ball (or two-finder scrolling on a touchpad) to zoom in and out. You can also zoom in by holding down the option key and clicking on the image, or zoom out by holding shift-option. While zoomed in you can also click and drag to pan the image. Strangely, the same shortcuts don't work with PDFs, but you can still zoom in and out with ⌘ + and ⌘ - (command plus/minus) with the Quick Look HUD selected.
The second is that you can use Quick Look with more than one file at a time. So if you select several files in the Finder by command-clicking and then invoke Quick Look with the spacebar, you can scroll between the images with the arrow keys. However, there's also a nifty index sheet icon at the bottom that will bring up a kind of contact sheet with the selected files (as above).
Finally, I know some folks had complained that the slideshow option has disappeared from the Finder's contextual menu. But if you select a group of files in the Finder and then invoke Quick Look you'll also see a play button that runs a slideshow in the Quick Look HUD.

Quick Look Automator workflows

Posted Nov 2nd 2007 9:00AM by Dave Caolo
Filed under: Apple, Leopard

We've fallen in love with the convenience of Quick Look here at TUAW. With the click of the spacebar, you can preview documents right in the Finder. It's very useful.

Now, look what happens when you apply Quick Look to an Automator workflow: You're presented with the entire workflow, step by step. Say you need to remember how you pulled off a particular process or sequence of steps. No need to open the thing with Automator, just take a quick "peek" to jog your memory. We love it.

#	Blogger	Posts	Cmts
1	Cory Bohon	89	1
2	Robert Palmer	64	44
3	Steven Sande	58	22
4	Scott McNulty	40	0
5	Mat Lu	40	10
6	Dave Caolo	37	0
7	Erica Sadun	28	2
8	Brett Terpstra	23	0
9	Mike Schramm	20	1
10	Michael Rose	11	32
11	Christina Warren	10	38
12	Joshua Ellis	3	2
13	Lisa Hoover	2	6
14	Chris Ullrich	2	2

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Quick Look Suspicious Packages

10 ways to get the most out of Quick Look

Pogue: Visual Voicemail 'feature of the year'

Pixelmator 1.1 adds new filters, tablet support and more

Quick Look Folder and Zip plugins

Mac 101: Using Quick Look

Quick Look Automator workflows

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